Personal flight computers

I'm an IT professional and a glider pilot, and here are my thoughts
after a lot of testing and experiementation over the last 5 years:

I've got a Vertica V1 and intend to get a V2 shortly. I prefer it
over several other PDA/PNA devices i've owned and tried, including:
the original Oudie, iPAX hx4700, HP 310, Mio Moov Spirit, and a couple
of chinese PNAs I've bought over the years to test. The V1 has the
"Oudie-like" GPS chip which does smoothing, therefore it is not very
accurate during circling. The V2 fixes that problem.

For my V1, I pipe in data from my logger to my gliding program over
the USB port (so I see EXACTLY what my logger is seeing, in terms of
altitudes and distances to waypoints) - so the V1 GPS "problem"
doesn't affect me in the slightest. I use the V1 GPS as a backup/
secondary input into my gliding program - its there only to help me if
my logger dies during a flight.

For _all_ of the newer PDA/PNA devices, you pay a price for the screen
brightness: battery-life. Displays are far and away the most power-
hungry parts of all modern computing devices, and PNAs are no
exception. Almost no device out there will give you more than about 2
hours of flying time, if you're using the GPS receiver and displaying
the screen at any usable level of brightness. So its mandatory to
plumb into ship's power or buy an external battery and use the USB
port to provide supplemental power.

I've also been a longtime user of LK8000 (and I used to fly with
XCSoar back before LK8000 was available).

The Naviter/SeeYou folks are nice; but with all the free software
options out there that are excellent (such as LK8000), I don't see the
need to pay extra amounts of money for SeeYou software or their Oudie-
branded hardware.

All of the top software programs perform almost all of the same
functions nowadays. For normal pilots making normal cross-country or
competition flights, any of the major software options will work fine
(LK8000, XCSoar, SeeYouMobile, ClearNav, LX, etc). They may have
slightly different menus and iconography, but in the end the
differences are styling, not function. As I said, my personal
preference is LK8000 - its got a few extra menus and bits to set up
initially; but I find it is responsive in-flight and the displays are
very customizable so I can group information together in ways that
make sense for me. LK8000 also lets me easily turn OFF features and
information I don't care about; which is nice. I think these programs
can give you way too MUCH info, and it takes precious extra seconds
for your eyes and brain to read and filter the info on the screen, to
figure out just what's important at the moment.

--Noel