Pat
I have nothing against moving maps... I have two of them. I opted for the Echoflight in lieu of the 430 or 530 as I thought there were more features and I did not want to spend 30K ++ replacing my panel and throwing out all the king radios.
Works like a charm. Used it last week to dodge CB's in the SE out of FLorida. Does what it say it can do. I have the NEW flight cheetah with all the charts, approach overlays, and the GPWS mapping incl. the towers and obstruction databases.
I have used it for about 2 1/2 years. I use the email a lot and I really like the visual metars! It is better than trying to contact flight watch.
If there is any down side it is the size of the Nexrad blocks of information. They go by 10 mi blocks. Green means nothing. This represents level 1-2 or up to 40 DBZ. The next is yellow. I have flown thru lots of yellow and ends up being heavy rain. You still need a stormscope and I have pestered Echoflight to put on data from
www.lighteningstorm.com. This is one of their next projects. They are increasing the resolution of the nexrad and going for 8 levels rather than 3. I would use it for medium and long range planning and avoidance. I stay out of red and I rely on the stormscope. It would be nice to have lightening strike positional information that is more accurate than the stormsope for close haul work. It works 100 miles offshore and into Canada.
Second thing
If the data is 15-30 min old you must predict which way the wx is moving. If you are out for awhile it "plays back" the last few hours of data so you can get an idea where it is NOW. IE I would go to the west of a cell generally rather than east since wx moves W to E generally speaking.
There were some sat comm delays at times, but found this was interference and once I put in double shielded 400 cable and a low pass RF filter things improved.
My display is bright, really bright. In fact it is too bright at night time. Other than that there is room for software improvements. The software is rock solid and I have never had to reboot the system. Just some operational stuff such as flipping between Nav and the approach plates or doing Email OVER the nav page. Routing is a little clumbsy but doesn't matter as I use the 90B for enroute navagation.
With the Garmin I believe the information is limited to nexrad, metars, winds, etc. same as echoflight. I haven't heard what other features are available.
You can use it with a regular laptop but the displays are too dim for daylight viewing. The new Cheetah is smaller and I have it mounted on the yoke with the communicator up on the RS firewall.
Are they shipping the Garmin yet ? I haven't seen a feature sheet yet. I think it is far better than RADAR and you can't beat the information. Afternoon convection changes so quickly you need something to see "down the line" rather than 30-50 miles in front of you.
Just my personal opinion. I think it is an 8 out of 10 for what it does vrs cost. I sent Don and email in advance of my arrival to let him know I was going to be a few minutes late. Where else can yo do that?
fyi
bob