Early Season 2008 New Electronics

Well, its shaping up to be an interesting yet still somewhat disappointing year for freshwater fishing electronics this year. Humminbird, Lowrance and Garmin all three have new products out that have some new (to them) cool features, but nothing revolutionary or that hasnt been expected. And no one brand has all the cool features that together would make a truely remarkable product.Humminbird finally came out with a giant screen unit. The 1197C SI gives the side-imaging a giant 10.4″ screen, looks like its the same width as the 997 but quite a bit taller so maybe itll even fit in the BassCat consoles; but other than that its nothing new over the 997C SI; no high-bandwidth networking, no touchscreen, and appears no industry standard plug-and-play networking with non-Humminbird devices. But still, the side-imaging is WAY cool!Garmin has their 5000 series units which have touchscreen; also, WAY cool. No more arrowing up, down and across nested menus or having multiple button presses to get to new pages or change settings. A LOT safer to mess with while under way! And Garmin was already several years ahead in marine networking with shared networkable sounders and weather data, but still not high enough bandwidth for map sharing, and its still to my knowledge proprietary and not an open or industry standard for mixing the best brands for different functions of radar, gps, weather radar, sonar, etc. But touchscreen is an awesome feature as anyone with a iPhone will tell you.Lowrance wins the award for the MOST cool new stuff this year (but not necessarily the coolest single feature) with their new Navico branded high-speed marine networking. But sadly since its ethernet based it appears as though its hubbed vs a backbone so multiple units and devices apparently will have to have multiple cables even covering the same distance. I dont know for sure though so maybe a snowflake topology with multiple hubs rather than a pure star will work though; well see. Anyhow, its nothing that anyone who noticed the bright yellow hole on the back of last years new units shouldnt have anticipated though but its definitely a step in the right direction. With this came a network sharable remote sounder unit with some advanced high-definition and digitally processed and enhanced sonar images, but still not near as cool as the Humminbird photo-realistic side imaging. But this remote sounder will work with ANY unit with the yellow jack on the back, including the formerly GPS only GlobalMap units; marking a clear departure from previous Lowrance attitude where you have to buy all new units and plugged devices to use any new functionality. Maybe theyre finally coming around. Now if we could just get an industry standard compatible marine network sharable, side-imaging sonar unit that also shares gps maps (not just waypoints, routes, position, etc.) and has a touchscreen then well finally be all set! DekeLast edited by djk3030 on December 31st, 2007, 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.[font=&QUOT]Deke[/font]