Ohhh goody, PDA software price wars!

Well I would hope that sometime soon these screens would be available. The
real question is whether or not the manufacturers that currently sell the
units (CAI, Ilec, etc) would support this type of system. There would have
to be some agreement upon the hardware part of it wouldn't there? I guess
that it did happen with VHS and DVD's but not without a few outliers such as
Sony's beta. With so little money in this industry we should just be
thankful that we have nice toys to choose from currently but the small
displays have become a limiting factor. Also I'm tainted after having seen
one of the new Garmin (1000?) setups in a Gulfstream I went through a few
weeks ago.

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

"Kilo Charlie" wrote in message
news:id4_b.24001$o52.18383@fed1read02...
In my ideal world I'd like to see a single large flat panel screen smack
in
the middle of my panel with the various companies vying for who can write
the best program to use for displaying the various things you guys have
brought up. It holds all sorts of possibilites and with multiple windows
open would even mean that you could run programs from different
manufacturers on that same screen.

This nonsense of having to buy a latest and greatest hardware gizmo to go
with the software is crazy. One big screen would be much easier to
read....maybe I'm just getting too old to see the damn little things!
Maybe
they could even agree on a single box (hard drive?) to drive the thing as
well bringing it down to just the software competition.

Anyone know if the technology is currently good enough to make this work
i.e. flat screens wrt current drain, ease of use in high sun environments,
etc? I have no expertise in this whatsoever. Just dreamin'.

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix


KC, I just put together the following spec for a $1,626 12V computer. Is
this what you were imagining?

Espresso Mini Book PC (150mm x 106mm x 32mm 6" x 4" x 1.25")
VIA 1GHz Processor
PC100 SDRAM 256MB
Solid-State Flash Drive 512MB Compact Flash Disk
Espresso Docking Station with CD-ROM / Floppy Drive
DOS Format / No Operating System (Linux Ready)
One Year Part and Labor Warranty


10.4" TFT LCD Display with VGA input and Touchscreen

System Includes:
1 Carrying Case, 1 Microphine-in / Line-out / S-Video Out / VGA Port, 1 PS/2
Keyboard Port / Mouse Port / 124-pin Expansion Port, 1 Y Cable ( S-Video and
Composite), 2 USB Ports, AC/DC Power Supply, Built-in 16-Bit Stereo, Full
Duplex 3D Sound, Installation Instruction and User Manual, Intel 810
Built-In Full Motion 4MB Video, Touch Pad with Left/Right and Scroll Button

Bill Daniels

Sounds good to me Bill although I suppose the problems with visibility in a
high sun environment would still be an issue. Also in my ideal world I
would like to have a remote just like that used on the SN-10 in order to
avoid having to stretch a bouncing finger up to the panel to make
adjustments. I'm not sure why other companies haven't used this type of
remote since it makes it easy to scroll through the pages and make changes
with barely any movement on the part of my hand/wrist. The old B-100 remote
was even better because it was possible to depress the scroll buttons to
confirm a change (like the left and right mouse buttons).

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

Bill Daniels wrote:

Is anyone working on Linux flight software?

http://cumulus.kflog.org/

Marc

Bill Daniels wrote:
Is anyone working on Linux flight software?



This is a good one -

http://freshmeat.net/projects/gpligc

Very powerful, but you have to really be into Linux to get
it up and running with the support libraries it needs -
OpenGL, Perl/Tk, GnuPlot - but would be a good winter time
project to learn about if you want to get into the nuts and
bolts of GPS 3D flight plotting.

Bill Daniels wrote:
Is anyone working on Linux flight software?

I've been looking at some really neat PIII "Car Computers" with 7 inch
screens that run on a very modest amount of 12V DC current - a 7.5 AH
battery should run one 6 hours or more. They cost about the same as a PDA
but have bigger screens, more performance and are infinitely customizable.

Could you point me to a web site or two for these? Sounds interesting.

--
-----
change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
...
Bill Daniels wrote:
Is anyone working on Linux flight software?

I've been looking at some really neat PIII "Car Computers" with 7 inch
screens that run on a very modest amount of 12V DC current - a 7.5 AH
battery should run one 6 hours or more. They cost about the same as a
PDA
but have bigger screens, more performance and are infinitely
customizable.

Could you point me to a web site or two for these? Sounds interesting.

--
-----
change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Here you go, Eric.

http://www.mini-box.com/
http://store.karpc.com/cgi-bin/cp-ap...affl=stroletti
http://www.antelopetech.com/en/Index.aspx

I'm sure there are more. I found these in a couple of minutes with Google.

Bill Daniels

Andy Blackburn wrote:

Free software works, but only to the extent that you
can keep a community of talented volunteers interested
in continuing to innovate and support the product (the
latter being the tougher part since programmers tend
not to like all the administrative BS associate with
product support).

You have a highly flawed assumption above. Those that provide free
software do it for a reason, and their support is as good as of any
commercial organization. Have you ever tried getting real support from
Microsoft? A community of volunteer programmers helps, but success of
a commercial product depends on an analogous existance of motivated
(maybe by money) programmers, so a commercial product can stop its
development as well.


Personally, I don't find a few hundred bucks to be
all that much to pay for what these products do in

You are lucky.

terms of increasing the enjoyment and safety of cross-country
and racing flights - not to mention the potential for
improvement in overall pilot performance. I bought
a copy of WinPilot Pro last year and paid for copy
of SeeYou mobile. Consider it a subsidy for continued
development. They're both quite good pieces of software
and I hope they both prove successful in the market.


I think there is a contradiction here with your previous thoughts.
Since they are commercial products they do not need subsidy. If you
want to subsidise "increasing the enjoyment and safety of
cross-country and racing flights - not to mention the potential for
improvement in overall pilot performance" consider finding some way to
contribute to efforts of those that do that for soaring population at
large. This does not necessarily mean monetary renumeration.

Henryk Birecki