Lake maps and laptops

[fishnowworknever]

They might be sitting on a goldmine, but we fishermen are the only ones who give a rip about this particular gold. It's a tough deal; give 'em out cheap and hope to cover their costs in volume, or keep 'em spendy and guarantee that they will make some coin for their efforts.

I have an older version of Mapsource that I was able to hook my etrex Legend to it and get realtime location updates. I don't know why they would turn that off in more current versions. My biggest hangup is that my laptop now runs Vista, and all of my cobbled together mapping software (Garmin Mapsource, DeLorme TOPO USA, Nat Geo TOPO!, and Lakemaster CountourPro using Windows XP) are all rendered useless. Frustrating, but Vista and Windows7 are what we are going to have to deal with from now on.

Simple solution to that (the Windows Vista and or 7 issue).

Windows 7 has a nice new feature available for download, Windows Virtual PC XP Mode.

You can also set a program to launch via XP mode in Vista and Windows 7.

[hydro]

I have the 2008 version of Lakemaster Contour Pro running on a Vista laptop and it works just fine. It took a LONG time to load the install but it finally worked.

It does not, however, work with the Microsoft GPS puck (from the Streets & Trips software) and the support at Lakemaster wanted nothing to do with trying to help on that one. Other pucks may work but I would be sure to have a confirmed scenario from Lakemaster support before I fork out the $ for a new GPS receiver. I use the Streets & Trips with their receiver on the work laptop in the car and it works great. Now if Lakemaster could just incorporate that into their platform (like they promised at the Ice Show last year) I would be good to go.