Ozi Explorer Laptop/Notebook

Chas,

OT but as your a visitor I have no other way of contacting you :(

Dates have changed for the Lake Boondooma Weekend trip.

See changes here

I hope this still suits, I have been able to contact all others thus far.

Cheers Kev

Hi Chas,

Everyone will have a different view on what is the best solution.
From my own experimentation, the best current solution is the Hema Navigator.

I have tried a laptop mounted between the front seats and found that although the screen size was good, the size of the laptop was too intrusive to be practical long term and the glare from the sceen was bad in bright sunlight.

I then graduated to a PDA and while definitely less intrusive, the screen size was just too small for my aging eyes. This PDA also used a GPS connected via bluetooth which gave the occasional problem, but other PDA's have built-in GPS units and would be better although the screen is still too small to be really practical.

I now use a Hema Navigator and this is as close to the best option available in my opinion. The Navigator is reasonably unobtrusive when mounted anywhere on the front windscreen of the vehicle, yet the 5" screen allows a good sized image to glance at while travelling. The touch screen provides excellent control of the various screens and options and allows one touch marking of waypoints you wish to record. The built-in GPS works extremely well at all times and as the Hema comes pre-installed with everything you need (and one or two things you don't) there is no real setup hassles to concern yourself with, just a learning curve to customise it with what you require.

There are two exceptions in my opinion.
Route 66 is "clunky" to use and as I have a separate Tomtom device for city navigation, I don't use Route 66.

Topo Nav Memory Map appears to provide a similar functionality to OziExplorer, I think.
As a long term OziExplorer user I have no desire to try something slightly different and as you can only run one program at a time, I always run Ozi so have no experience with the Memory Map alternative and what different detail or functionality it may, or may not provide.

All up, the Hema Navigator is the best current solution for Countrywide travel, running OziExplorer and Navmap digital maps, or one of the supplied Hema maps for certain areas such as the excellent Desert Map series, all with moving map display of where you are and a great reference of current speed, heading, altitude, etc. depending on your chosen options.
There are cheaper options available, such as a VMS unit, or cheap "like" unit from ebay, but you need to purchase and install all the navigation and digital map software to achieve similar results.

I could also suggest other alternative navigation hardware/software solutions such as the Garmin Nuvi range, but as your stated requirement was for "an OziExplorer real time tracking package", this rules out the Garmin units which have there own unique software/application/mapping solutions and cannot run OziExplorer.


Bill.

Hi Chas
Like Sandman has mentioned above, everyone has their owned preferred means of real time mapping. I have the best of both worlds a Hema 5" on the front windscreen and a small Toshiba Netbook that sits on the centre console. I am not crazy, but take my track files very serious for mapping details. In the past we used to have a 15" laptop in the front but it took up too much room in the front cabin.

Here is what my set ups look like when we were out on the Anne Beadell.

Cheers

Stephen

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Cabrolet,

Yeah I reckon you cannot go wrong with a 10" unit for this task. I use a laptop for all our major navigation and the items provided in the package you mention are basically what we use for all trips being personal or trip recording/survey work and the solution works well. The 10" units are heaps easier to mount than my 15" unit and I would go for a 10" style unit if I was starting again.

One of the major advantages of a laptop approach is that you can just plug in your camera's etc and dump data off onto disk and/or thumb drive. Plug in your phone or Wireless device and get your email, browse the net etc all from the one device. Excellent choice and as for which unit to buy they all offer very simialr specs for the money. Get the best one you can afford. The only variation I would suggest if possible is to have a SSD drive installed and not a HDD. The SSD (Solid State Drive) uses flash style memory that is much much less susceptible to vibration damage. I have removed the HDD units from my LT and installed SSD. I do not think this will be a standard offering but it is worth asking about at purchase time.

Good luck and enjoy.
DM

We also run a $299 10 inch notebook with gps mouse and Oziexplorer for general map viewing but beware they are not all the same , the EEE pc with a non-glare screen offers the best viewing , sun glare washes out many others.
(can still get with win XP I think)

Is there something better - well this really depends on what you are doing.

We long ago came to the conclusion that much of the available mapping is relatively poor or goes out of date and that for real stuff you often need to generate a plot yourself and follow it.

There is only one product that can navigate your own generated track or plots from this site etc and that is the now discontinued garmin 276c GPS which can only be picked up second hand.

I use a mini ITX PC connected to a touch screen on the dash. The advantages over a Laptop are
1)It takes up a lot less space than the laptop but you still get the big screen.
2)It is wired to power up and down automatically with the ignition so you can forget about it. ( you can't do this with a laptop withour opening it up and cutting tracks.)

Other thoughts are a) memory map is not as spohisticated as Oziexplorer but it is waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy easier to use when on the road.
b)there is a small mini wireless keyboard on ebay that is a little longer than a Iphone for $50 that works a treat.
c)The free 250K to 1 maps are pretty good. I think these are the basis of the shonky maps for Garmin.

Lastly if you decide to go for Memory map, it will work on IPAD's.

I got my car pc here

Also agreee with a poster above, get flash disks.

Thanks Guys
I think I will now go for the 5" Hema. I have a 15" Lap Top to take for emails etc and may later get the OZexplorer maps for it if need be. As I often travel only with my Bluey the Hema would be a lot easier to read, and besides my Bluey often gets her "turn left" mixed up with her "turn right's" !!!
Thanks to all
Chas

Not probably the best ystem, but probably the cheapest, and it works just fine. I have a notebook (Acer 7, but alos fine up to 10inch model) with ozi and a gps mouse. It mounts on the dash, I made a plywood base. Iused two self adhesive plactic clips on the bottom of the windscreen. The plywood base goes under these so it cant lift up. The computer sits on the base. The base is several inches wider than the dashboard (ie, it projects into space so it is nearer to me) but it cant tip up because of the clips on the windscreen) At the front of the base is a wire cable I can tension downwards so it pivots the base upwards (but it cant go anywhere because of the adhesive clips on the bottom of the windsceen. This arrangement keeps the base totally stable in any conditions and the whole thing can be taken out in seconds. A wide couple of rubber bands across the keyboard secure the netbook to the base. I made a large cardboard sun shield around the screen which gives much better viewing.
I have oziexplorer and my maps installed on an SD card which plugs into the computer. This is not as good as a solid state computer, but nearly as good as the program and maps are all on solid state memory so that nothing much is moving internally on the computer as I drive. Much cheaper thsan a solid state computer and it has never given any problems over the roughest of terrain.I also have a permanentdedicated 12v outlet just for the notebook so I just need to put it to sleep when I stop. I have a logitech wireless keybord and mouse but find I dont need them when on the road.
I also have a MOOVe gps for in the city.

Hi,
I went through the laptop phase like many of the other contributors including dash mounted monitor. Finally went for an in-dash combi unit from Brash Imports. It comes standard with IGO8 Street navigationon a 2gb card. I loaded the CE version of Oziexplorer onto an 8gb sd card including nat maps. To get the Oziexploer to load you must change the name of the Oziexploer.exe file to IGO8.exe. The system work fine including radio cd/dvd etc.

Check out Brash Imports

Cheers
Racey

I run Ozie on a laptop that feed a 7 inch in-dash screen. It fold away when not in use and also has a feed from the video player in the back and the reversing camera.