Ok, I’m doing some research on possible units for my next boat. The ones I’m considering are the 28cHD vs 27c. I realize the HD gets me lots more preloaded maps, but does it also allow me to record directly to the HD or can you only record to the MMC??
Nex question. When recording to MMC, how much data is recorded on a 1 mile trolling run on say Mille Lacs?? Not much depth variation. I guess what I’m wondering is, with MMC and SD cards continuing to grow, do I really need an HD sonar unit??
Good question for Wade at Jolly Ann Marine.(site sponsor) 
Hello,
I went to one of Doc Samsons schools in January, those were some of the topics covered. Yes you can record to the HD, you need the chip to get it back and forth to your PC or a serial connection. You get 1 minute to 1 meg of information.
Lee
It depends a lot on how you are going to use it.
First off I’ve heard people say the HD unit record better than to a SD card, now I can’t back that up with any experince, but it’s what I heard. I suspect that has a lot to do with the SD card’s quality, the better the card the faster you can write to it, the better the info will take. I’m going to venture the guess to say that this will only matter to about .01% of people.
I think you are limited to a 2 gig sd card, with a unit, not 100% sure about that, eitherway it doesn elimante the need for an sd card, a smaller card would probably still be able to transfer the info, thought if you did really big files it may take awhile.
Now if you planned on making lakemaps of your own with the software available, the HD would probably be worth it.
The selling points as I see are mostly the write ability and storage of the HD, which again I think matter very little, and the points of interest and road maps. The HD comes fully loaded with street level road maps, anywhere in the US, so it actually would work in car for navigation, the only downside is I don’t think you can enter an adderess and get turn by turn directions. I suppose if you ran a Lakemaster chip and only in MN that wouldn’t be much of a selling point either.
I think everyone is still going to buy a navionics or lakemaster chip wither the get the HD model or not, fact is Navionic and lakemaster make better contour maps.
I’m not sure most of any people need the HD. I got the HD in my 111, I think I’d be just as happy without the HD, I doubt I’d buy an HD model again, given the cheaper choice of the non HD. I got a deal on my 111, so I ended up with the HD.
Kooty, From what I know of your fishing style and the lakes you fish, I don’t think you need HD. Doc can help you more with this but my guess is that you’d be best served by the 27C and a Lakemaster or Navionics chip.
My past fishing style may not be the best way to judge how I want to use these units in the future. 
Some day I’m gonna grow up…a little.
Wade are you saying the lcx27 come with a built in beer cooler for kooty? 
Advantages of recording to the HD
1. Unlimited space and you don’t have to have a blank card with you.
2. You still have to copy the files to a SD card to get them to your computer but you have a backup file on the HD in case of lost files
3. When you record a chart, the default location for saving it is the HD. If you have the non-HD unit you have to decide which card to record on and that is a major problem for most users. You will probably have a map card and a blank card in the unit and you don’t want to record onto a LakeMaster, Navionics, or Lowrance card as this can corrupt the card. I have information on recording to cards at http://www.hightechfishing.com/session1.html.
I think the HD records better but I don’t have enough data to prove it. If you select high quality for recording it records about 1MB per minute. High quality means the picture quality for play back. Low quality creates a much smaller file and I use this to record data to make my maps. When you first start recording charts use the high quality so you can review what was recorded. This is a powerful tool for fishing that most anglers have missed.
Very much appreciate your input Doc.
These other yahoos just don’t realize what kind of a fisherman I’m capable of being.
Better be a big cooler built in……cuz…..I am FULLY aware of what kind of fisherman you want to be Kooty.
Not to mention…I might want a ride in the new glitter rocket. 
As always thanks Doc!
I’m still struggling with the concept of having a Hard Drive in a marine unit and the reliability of the Drive in that environment.
Is it an actuall HD with spinning platters or is it a Flash drive? I would be concerned with losing all data and can’t imagine what the repair cost would be on a Hard Drive failure out of Warranty.
It’s a spinning hard drive, not a flash drive as far as I know they only make flashdrives upto 8 gigs as of now, there is either a 20gig in the 26/111 or a 30gig in the 28/113.
I just ordered a Globalmap 7600c HD from Wade, I see it comes with a lot of maps installed, plus the USA Topo maps. I have the Canada Topomap set of discs, how do I go about loading them to the unit, is ther a direct hookup for the computer to do this?
I have used hard drives in 2 Lowrance 111s for 2 years and a Panasonic ToughBook laptop in my boat for 3 years without any hard drive problems. Tournament fishing! MapCreate requires you to create a map in the software and copy that file to a blank SD card that will be read by your GPS.
Any reason they aren’t putting USB ports on the graphs/gps units for direct connectivity??? I imagine you’d still need more power than the USB connection could supply to run the unit. However a 12v adapter wouldn’t be such a hard thing to have with the units also. Just thinking out loud. 
I imagine they skip the USB mainly for the water issues, maybe hard to keep them dry and not ruin them and or the unit. Not to say it probably couldn’t be done, it’s probably just not the best way, not to mention it seems the nmea network has been in place for a couple years too. (not longer than usb I wouldn’t think.)
I Have a lighter plug power supply, I also have one of those lighter plug, plug in converters for the house (walmart $10) I actually do play with my graphs in the warmth of the house, emulators are good to a point, nothing beat playing with the unit itself, I’ve also run the updates sitting next to the computer. It just comes in handy.
Now with ethenet ports, you should be able to telnet into the device. I’m sure it would pull an IP addy from the DHCP server, maybe they will have a browser front end into the user interface some day???
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