A couple months ago I got the 64gb ASUS T200TA off Amazon for $459. My girlfriend has an iPad and I had an ASUS T100 before some creep broke out my car window and ripped it off... anyway I got another ASUS because I wanted the USB and HDMI ports that many tablets lacked. I also knew the keyboard on the transformers were pretty good, I get about 10 hrs battery life, and the T200 can hold a drive in the keyboard. I wanted a Windows machine because of work and open source software such as OpenCPN and Audacity. Although the T100 was very good to me, it lacked screen real estate, a second camera, and GPS. The 12"x8" T200 has proven to be an improvement on all those fronts, although the GPS chip may not be as helpful as I expected. There are plenty of reviews, so I won't repeat them and will focus more on my use on the boat.
I installed OpenCPN 4.0 and it is working fine. Following the instructions in the online help to get setting tweaked to the windows tablet made the driving experience smoother. I also downloaded GeolocationTCP and configured OpenCPN to get the GPS signal through it. GeolocationTCP worked flawlessly, displaying my coordinated accurately whether on WiFi or satellite... but despite help from the writer of GeolocatorTCP Petr and RhythmDoctor, I just couldn't get a feeling that my onboard GPS chip was supplying a reliable signal to OpenCPN. I could not find a way to control whether the signal came from router SSID broadcasts or from satellites.
And it seemed I needed WiFi turned on, but not connected to a network, in order for the onboard GPS to work. I had a BU353-S4 dongle and installed the Win 8 compatible driver... go to the USGlobalsat web site and make sure you download the right driver.
Using the external receiver on the T200TA, my OpenCPN tracking is working great. Zooming and changing scale is seemless whether using keyboard or tablet.
The two finger touchscreen zoom is a little touchy and I'm still adjusting to the sensitivity.
The extra screen real estate is very helpful.
Although some criticize the almost 1" wide margin around the tablet screen, I like it... I'm able to hold the tablet in my hands and avoid touching the active portion of the touch screen by mistake. I only have NOAA raster charts loaded at this point. I also got a micro HDMI cable for my 24" monitor, mostly for movies, but the T200's 11.5" diag tablet and adequate built in speakers have reduced my use of the big screen.
So far I'd say the T200TA with OpenCPN 4.0 is a good package...
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