"Greg Copeland" wrote in message
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On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:15:41 -0700, C J Campbell wrote:


"Bruce Horn" wrote in message
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I've been wondering...

What underlying OS do the various glass panels (Avidyne, Garmin, etc.)
use? It might actually make me think twice about buying a particular
system if I knew that (for example) it was Windows underneath.

The MX-20 runs plain vanilla Windows NT 4.0. I don't know why anyone
except
software bigots would have a problem with that. There have been no known
problems with the OS in this application.

Well, chances are, it's actually embedded NT, but I'll defer if you
factually know otherwise. The concern is, NT has a long history of
crashing and being less than stable. This is true of embedded NT, but to
a much lessor degree. So, for someone to have concern about the heart of
an important navigation tool, I think falls well outside of simple OS
bigotry.

The Apollo MX-20 boot-up screen says Windows NT 4.0

It has never failed. I have, however, seen the OS crash on Garmin handheld
GPS units. Frequently. To be honest, I would prefer the more stable Windows
OS.

All operating systems have a long history of crashing and being less than
stable. It would be interesting to know why you think Win NT would be
unstable on something like the MX-20. The device is dedicated to running one
program. It has no peripherals. It never runs for more than a few hours.
Basically, all the issues supposedly making Win NT unstable simply do not
exist on a closed box like this.