Re: [Maptitude] The "Value of Maptitude"

kbyrnes Thu, 01 Feb 2001 11:40:27 -0800

Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html

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Margie:
OK...you've appealed to my Irish sense of humor & my anti-ESRI bias, so here a real quick response for starters.....To see where Maptitude represents a better value, I compare what one can do with the product off the shelf and ask if the "other guy" can do the same. Of course the feature set most valuable to me may not be as important to others...

GIS Feature	Maptitude	ArcGIS (based on hearing short presentation)
National-scale geocoding	yes	buy extra extension
Ability to edit address-ranges to improve geocoding results	yes	no
Geocode by value	yes	don't know
vehicle routing (simple)	yes	buy extra extension
import/export multiple formats	yes	yes, finally
good documentation & responsive tech support	yes	no (based on hearsay)
Smooth importing & batch processing of updated TIGER	yes	don't know (but I doubt it)

Also, while ESRI's charitable donation of "free" software may be noble, I don't think that should be a factor in evaluating which products do the best job for the money...if you make plenty of money selling software extensions, tech support and user training for a non-user friendly product, you can afford to be magnanamous...kind of like Gillette giving away razors so that they can sell you razor blades!
I'm sure other actual users of both products like Dick Hoskins may have some thoughts on this. We've heard from Dick before about ESRI products).
We certainly will hear plenty from ESRI about the wonders of their "latest" mousetrap as they roll-it out and try to convince ArcView users to upgrade, while continuing to sell ArcView 3.2 because of the admitted sticker-shock which they expect to be associated with buying ArcGIS.
Oh,... remember a product called Atlas GIS which was a very popular and successful desktop competitor to ESRI jsu a few short years ago? Remember how Mr. D acquired AtlasGIS (more for access to their proprietary data sets, methodology and customer base than the software) and promised the user community that it would be a fully supported ESRI product. Anybody seen any efforts to market it lately in the ESRI newsletter or promote the development of extensions for that product? Sure, you can order it off the web site, but you might want to take note of the fact that they don't offer a single user training class for Atlas. Can you say, "planned obsolescence", boys & girls? What's the biggest buzz word in the ArcGIS 8.1 hype? "Geodatabases" (say it with me now and keep repeating it until you think it's something new!) Maybe "geodatabases" is a better marketing concept because ESRI's Arcview market doesn't understand "topology"!

Of course, Caliper doesn't (like ESRI) have annual and regional conferences for thousands of users in exotic places which can be justified by public agencies as a professional development experience for their GIS personnel. Maybe Caliper missed the boat on that one...but they do make some pretty good software and Howard S. does actually read his mail and write to us (unlike, I suspect, Mr. D).

So much for my ranting...got to get back to some real work!
Kevin

P.S. Howard/Peter....you know where to send that check!!!

Marjorie Roswell wrote:

Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
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> am more convinced than ever that Maptitude still represents superior
> value as a desktop GIS. While I'm not tempted at all by ESRI's "siren
> song", it might be
Kevin,
I'm curious as to why you think Maptitude beats out ArcGIS. I guess if you
look at "value" it's obvious, because Maptitude is cheaper, but many
(environmental) organizations are eligble for free copies of ESRI
software.
Well, let's say Maptitude and ArcView cost the same. What do you like
about Maptitude over ArcView/ArcGIS?
I'm running on instinct, to tell you the truth. I don't know Arc products,
but my early exposure to ArcInfo and ArcView turned me off for a long
time.
To put it another way, Caliper will probably make a comparison of
Maptitude with ESRI when it fits their marketing goals. Maybe we can roll
our own.
(Er, admittedly, I'm using "we" in the liberal sense, because I don't use
Arc stuff.)
There are several old threads at
http://www.mail-archive.com/maptitude%40listbot.com/
"AV and Mapt comparison"
"Av will not open dbf files"
"Maptitude vs ArcIMS"
"GIS Comparisons"
A comparison is offered here at:
http://www.menet.umn.edu/~tnan/gis/gis.htm
Richard: is your offer still good from
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00050.html
Suggestion to anyone who wants to follow up on this trhead: put the word
"vs." in the subject. That'll make it easy to find this stuff on
mail-archive.com later.
Margie
_________________________________________________________
            Marjorie Roswell, Spatial Analyst
UMBC Center for Health Program Development and Management
1000 Hilltop Circle                     Fx: (410)455-6850
Baltimore, MD 21250                   E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: (410)455-6802    http://umbc.edu/~roswell/mipage.html
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Re: [Maptitude] The "Value of Maptitude"

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