Hi.  I'm a Mac.  Running coastal Explorer.

Make no mistake, running Coastal Explorer on your Mac is experimental.   It can require a little bit of tweaking, and is not recommended unless you feel comfortable installing and configuring the Windows operating system and applications.   This article is not a how-to, just information to point you in the right direction and make you aware of what is possible.  Having said that, we do have customers who are using Coastal Explorer on their mac as their primary navigation system, and seem quite happy.

Virtualization Software

Regardless of what kind of Mac you have, in order to run Coastal Explorer, you need to be running virtualization software which enables running Windows and Windows-based applications on your Mac.  In addition, you will need a copy and license for Windows XP or Vista in order to install the windows environment that supports Coastal Explorer.  

We will explore three different methods of running Coastal Explorer, using 3 different Virtualization software products.  The first two methods, Boot Camp and Parallels, require one of the newer Intel-based Macs.   If you have one of these,  you can get very good performance, in some cases rivalling or exceeding that of a dedicated windows computer.    The third method, Virtual PC for Mac, works on PowerPC G4 or G5 based Macintosh computers, but has lower performance.   Each of these methods will be detailed below.

Method 1: Apple's BootCamp (intel Macs)

BootCamp is software from Apple, Inc that lets you install Windows without moving your Mac data.  Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have toscrounge around the Internet looking for them.  Once this is done, you can restart your mac in either Mac or Windows mode.  Generally, this method gives the highest performance and reliablity you can get from your Macintosh using Coastal Explorer, at the expense of not being able to run Mac programs at the same time.

Boot Camp is free, and available from Apple.

Method 2: Parallels Desktop for Mac (intel Macs)

Parallels Desktop for Mac gives you the flexibility of running Windows AND Mac OS Xsimultaneously without rebooting. You can use Parallels Desktop for Macon any Intel-powered iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, & MacPro Towers.    Parallels supports either Windows XP or Vista.

Unlike Boot Camp, you can literally run Coastal Explorer side-by-side with Apple Mail, or Safari, for instance.   If you have multiple monitors, you can have Coastal explorer running full screen on one monitor, and your favorite Apple applications on the other.  

Parallels even lets you share your internet connection between your Mac and PC applications.   Although not quite as fast as Boot Camp, Parallels takes advantage of the Virtualization technologies built into the new Intel chips to run Coastal Explorer very efficiently and quickly. 

Method 3: Microsoft's Virtual PC for Mac (powerPC Macs)

Although we haven't personally tested it, we have heard reports that Coastal Explorer runs fine on the G4 and G5 PowerPC based Macs by using Microsoft's Virtual PC for Mac.    Because the processor is having to emulate an Intel processor, performance will be the lowest of the three solutions by far, however we have customers who seem fairly happy with this approach.

Issues and Workarounds

USB/GPS Connectivity - From my experience, the biggest issue involved in either Boot Camp or Parallels is getting Windows to properly interface with the USB GPS.  Honestly, I'm not sure there is anything specific to running on the Mac that makes that extra hard, just that getting the right drivers installed in windows to support whatever USB to Serial conversion needs to happen can sometimes be a challenge.  This is specific to the type of the GPS you have and the article elsewhere on this site can help you.

Virtual Memory/Disk Settings - When deciding how much storage to allocate to Windows, be sure to take into account the size of charts, Coastal Explorer, Windows, and any other Windows applications you might want to run.    In general, this is at least 10-12 GB for just Coastal Explorer, Windows, and the charts.