We have experimented with a bunch of different softwares. I started with freeware and shareware z-planner, gap and v-planner. I eventually purchased Voyager (not cheap). Of course, along with this process there is mucho reading so I have purchased about a million dollars in books and used up another million or so in paper to print articles off the web (so it could be read at more convenient times in more convenient places).
In the end what I had was the ability to plan any dive with any model in the comfort of my office on my desk-top. The trouble was there isn't much diving to be done there. I have never gotten around to getting a lap-top. Of course my company lap-tops have never seemed to work on the road anyway. They seem to be a target for mishaps and battery failures and short battery life.
Diving air or nitrox it's not so bad cuz you can carry tables or (don't hurt me) use a computer but dive mix and you need that computer. Yes, I know what the WKPP does but I'm not ready to try that. I might use some of the principals to make minor modifications to a schedule but I don't create my own from scratch.
On our last trip to whitefish point one of the other divers brought a lap-top. Expecting a failure, I ran some tables using voyager (Voyager has some real nice features) in case the lap-top didn't work. I also ran a bunch of schedules for some generic repetetive dives. All this incase the damn computer didn't work. This would be real tuff to do for dives that really need to be planned as multilevel (unless you want to deco all day).
So to make a long story even longer, I thought I could live through the purchase of one more piece of software. I baught a copy of Dplan for the palm-pilot. The plan was that given the low cost of the machine, if I liked the software, we could carry a backup.
I think the small size of the palm pilot will enable it to be carried easier and in a more protected way than a lap-top. Five or six footers in the lakes tend to bounce things around and break them. On the downside we are back to a gas obsorbtion model (though with GF controled deep stops) that lacks some of the really neat features that some of the pc softwares have.
What kind of solutions have others come up with for planning logistics?
In the end what I had was the ability to plan any dive with any model in the comfort of my office on my desk-top. The trouble was there isn't much diving to be done there. I have never gotten around to getting a lap-top. Of course my company lap-tops have never seemed to work on the road anyway. They seem to be a target for mishaps and battery failures and short battery life.
Diving air or nitrox it's not so bad cuz you can carry tables or (don't hurt me) use a computer but dive mix and you need that computer. Yes, I know what the WKPP does but I'm not ready to try that. I might use some of the principals to make minor modifications to a schedule but I don't create my own from scratch.
On our last trip to whitefish point one of the other divers brought a lap-top. Expecting a failure, I ran some tables using voyager (Voyager has some real nice features) in case the lap-top didn't work. I also ran a bunch of schedules for some generic repetetive dives. All this incase the damn computer didn't work. This would be real tuff to do for dives that really need to be planned as multilevel (unless you want to deco all day).
So to make a long story even longer, I thought I could live through the purchase of one more piece of software. I baught a copy of Dplan for the palm-pilot. The plan was that given the low cost of the machine, if I liked the software, we could carry a backup.
I think the small size of the palm pilot will enable it to be carried easier and in a more protected way than a lap-top. Five or six footers in the lakes tend to bounce things around and break them. On the downside we are back to a gas obsorbtion model (though with GF controled deep stops) that lacks some of the really neat features that some of the pc softwares have.
What kind of solutions have others come up with for planning logistics?