All - On another boating website there was a thread about PC Planner, a PC based program for plotting courses and transferring them to your chartplotter. I've had the product at home for a few years and weighed in with my opinion (which was shared by others) that the program was a little buggy and not intuitive to use. The reply below came from Amy, a represetative of the company and indicates that their recent software is much better and upgrades to it are free. sounds like good customer service to me. thought i'd share that here for anyone needing an upgrade.

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excerpt from thread on another forum.....

Several YEARS ago (remember, this is still a relatively new industry!) the original PC Planner was... very buggy. But it truly has come fathoms from that first few editions. It is a quite inexpensive little program, and most people love it. We actually use it in house to view our own charts.

We also have a full time Tech Department now, several years ago Customer Care (where I started out) handled everything, from dealer orders to tech questions to retail orders. Believe me, we've grown in the decade I've been here!

-The PC Planner program upgrade is free - just call us and we'll send the cd!
-Tech Support is available, just give us a call!
-The older Furuno (and other) chartplotters may not be able to use MAX Library charts, but we still fully update and maintain the NT+ that you use (which has no less detail).
-We fully update our NT, NT+ and MAX Libraries each Spring and Fall - just give us a call to update, upgrade or trade around your chart cards.

Here are the numbers:
Call 800-424-2627 or 508-477-8010
Choose '1' for Customer Care (updating, Club Jeppesen, upgrading, product inquiries, chart coverage questions, etc) or choose '3' for Tech (PC Planner usage, anything malfunctioning). The phones are manned from 8:45am to 5pm EST, with Monday and Tuesday always the busiest days and the busiest season mid-April through mid July (let me apologize in advance for those of you who call in May, there's just no way around the fact that this is a dramatically seasonal business!).

You can also email me directly at clubdesk (at) c-map.com, I'll be glad to help if I can.