Personally, I am intrigued by the PRO-107 and as a "scanner geek" I know that this scanner wasn't directed at me - however.....
<nostalgia> The first "scanner" I was exposed to was not even a scanner - it was a Regency tunable VHF receiver. You tuned it like an BCB radio and you could listen to a single frequency. Then we got a "real scanner", IIRC it was an 8 (maybe 10) channel E.F. Johnson rig which was later supplemented with some early Regency xtal scanners. You had to get a xtal for each frequency that you wanted to monitor and install it in the scanner. Sometimes you would need to custom order one and that could take a couple of weeks to get. Eventually, I got some of the early programmable Realistic, Bearcat and Regency scanners but these had at most 16 to 20 channels and you programmed each channel directly into that position. They had various additional features - the Bearcat I had allowed you to search a specific segment of the band. As time went on we got more channels (now we needed banks!) and other features.</nostalgia>
Fast forward to now and we have scanners that will hold thousands of channels, monitor P25 signals and follow trunked systems. Literally we have advanced from a single channel, manually tuned reciever to the Uniden 996XT/ GRE 600 class of digital trunking scanners in the space of 40 years. Now we have a new "method" of programming - the SD card and the computer. I look at this as the 21st century equvalent of the old xtal of the 70's we used to use. SD cards are around $12 or so pretty much anywhere and most of the newer computers have card readers/writers already. For years we have had the capability to connect the scanner to our computer and upload/download data - but this is different. Now we can do this literally on the go by swapping out a SD card without having to have a netbook, laptop, etc. on hand.
In looking at the specs for the PRO-107, it definately does have some advanced features on it that IMHO make it a pretty decent analog scanner. It is a very good first step in using this new method of programming. I will probably pick one up soon as I think that I can see the potential advantages of this method of programming. For the user like myself, I would probably pick up an extra SD card and program it for the local stuff of interest and install it instead of the entire database that comes with the PRO-107.
One thing that I wish they had done was to make the SD card slot more accessable - think Palm TX - this would allow the user to swap cards in and out as needed _or_ have the ability to program the card externally. Personally, I would have liked the ability to swap cards out without taking the batteries out of it, so my preference would be for the Palm TX type of system.
Overall, I expect to see more and more scanners use this method of programming in the future.
Dennis
