Re: Trends in Marine Electronics
Actually not only do I like integrated and network systems but I don't see any problem with the pricing either.<br /><br />Last year I moved up the scale with a new fish finder, having just put radar on the boat a couple of months earlier. Everything on my boat was a stand alone unit, including the chartplotter and the backup GPS, the two radios, the fish finder, the auto pilot, and the radar. Both GPS units were Garmins and both radios were ICOM's but everything else was made by a different manufacturer. I'm mighty glad for NMEA myself. If it weren't for the standard none of this stuff would be able to talke to each other and of course the Auto Pilot's functionality would be less than half of what it is. NMEA allows all of them to make all of the others more useful, and all it took was a little bit of my time and some solder. Of course that's just an integrated system.<br /><br />When I was buying the new fish finder I looked at what it would have cost me to simply go to the NAVNET system. It would have been cheaper to have the integrated system and if I had wanted to I could have put the money into a second display, which would do away with much of the concern about a single point of failure. The only thing that stopped me was that I had just put out the money for the Radar (Raytheon) and I had the exact same fish finder (Furuno 582L) the NAVNET system would have given me. My chartplotter (Garmin 2006) was probably better than the one I would have been using with the NAVNET system and of course I would have had to use C-Maps instead of BlueCharts, and that was something I didn't want either. The bottom line was that the Integrated system would have cost me about $300 less than I had paid for individual pieces of equipment, when I added it all up. As for the other stuff, I don't know where you're comming from but I've seen nothing but price stability or even decreases in the equipment I look at. I paid $1,400 for my fish finder a year ago and I could buy them all day long for $1,200 each now. My Radar cost $1,400 almost two years ago and you could buy the exact same model (Raytheon SL-72) today for the same money, or buy the equal from Furuno (1712) for about the same price. Both of my radios (M-127 and M-59) have been discontinued but the models that replaced them are actually less expensive than they were when I bought them a couple of years ago. Antennas still cost a hundred and a quarter, or less, if you want a good one, I could buy the same Auto Pilot I have on line this evening for within a dollar of what I paid for mine 5 years ago.<br /><br />Thom
, all greek to me... Just complicates the mess.. You have one display, it goes out, you lost everything! Nope, give me each one seperately thank you...<br /><br />Furuno, Raymarine, Simrad, Garmin, Lowrance, H-bird... Are you guys listening?........