What Scanner to buy?? Been a while!

Hi guys,

New around here, but NOT new to scanning. I've played around with scanners for 30 years, but never got real heavy into it. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a newbie, and 10 being a "professional scanner", I'd say I was/am a 6. I'm an IT guy, with a technical background but I'm NOT a radio genius, I just used to know my way around a radio/scanner.



BUT, I have not really touched mine for over 5 or 6 years or something. I currently have a Bearcat 245XLT with the old privately written BCint freeware software (think that was the name of it??) to control / program it, which worked fine for me over the years. The software was a bit rough, but it got the job done with some workarounds...



So here I am now, with an outdated Scanner and wanting to get back into it. I mostly just listen to local Fire, Police, Air and Marine activity, but sometimes go searching for other stuff. I live on Long Island, NY, in Suffolk County. The old 245 is not digital, and won't get the Suffolk County police's new digital system I would image.



So what scanner should I buy? Money being no object. I'm lucky enough to have plenty of beans to spend on it.



Requirements:

- Portable (HH), I can bring on the boat...

- Has to have software available for control, saving/downloading and programing my freq's...

- Not so complicated that it requires an engineering degree to understand, but....

- Has plenty of advanced features

- Alpha Tagging

- BIG display, I just turned 50 and can't see anything anymore! ;-)





Is the BCD396XT a good choice? It's 5 years old now, nothing updated, newer available? I hate buying "old" stuff. I prerfer the latest and greatest!



Thanks for the help!!