Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
Don't mean to bore anyone with Maptitude war stories, there is no really
useful info in this email, you can delete it right now, but ...
One of the biggest hurtles is that Maptitude is regarded as a toy GIS, I
guess because it doesn't cost > $1000. I run into this problem all the time.
Then when I show people how much easier it is to use, and how it can read in
shp files better than AV and that one doesn't have to go through that
"project" silliness that drives the operational paradigm in AV, etc etc etc
and more etc. then they get it. They will look me in the eye and say "wow
this is great!" Then they still go buy AV because they are afraid to buck
the trend with the tax assessors office across the street or some GIS wonk
in Natural Resources told then the only GIS in the world is AV and AI, etc.
Then they buy AV and NEVER use it. Then they call me up and ask me to tmake
the maps for them because they can't figure out how to use AV even after
they spent $1500 on 3 days of training and that was just last week. Never
mind that I gave them 1 day of free Maptitude training which had them making
and printing maps, doing aerial overlays, tagging death records with the
nearest toxic waste sites, etc by tea time. And every person who has done
this, they all tell me my Maptitude course is great and that the ESRI
training is awful, Grrrrrrr ....
I once gave a Maptitude and public health training course where 3 AV
"experts" came to see just what Maptitude could do. Clearly they were there
to disrupt, that is take the info and somehow validate what a crummy toy GIS
Maptitude was. After lunch they started peppering me with questions "Can
Maptitude do x?" It was a blood bath. They were hamburger when I finished.
Not only did I answer all questions (I can use AV pretty well and its $2500
extensions) but I continued on to show them what Mapt could do that AV
couldn't and how much more quickly I could carry out virtually all
operations than AV. Then I showed them a AV layer I got of the ESRI site, a
so-called "free" dataset. (If you get a "free" dataset and it eats 3 hours
out of your day to get it to work and crashes your machine, then it is not
... free) AV crashed reliably with its famous "segmentation error." whatever
the hell that is ... Then I read the same layer into Maptitude. No problem.
Then I exported it back out as a shp file that guess what? AV would then
read in. I have had this happen a 100 times.
It would be nice if Maptitude had a decent raster capacity, and a bunch of
GISDK programs for users to play with, but the vast vast majority of users
do not use those things. And Surfer is a great complement to Maptitude and
has more capacity than Spatial Analyst anyway and is 1/3 to 1/4 the price.
ESRI can sell dog poop on the corner and get away with it, and then re-write
the dog poop in VB6 or something, and sell it again ... at a higher price.
It amazes me. I guess you have to give them credit ...
Richard Hoskins
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
GMT -8
-----Original Message-----
From: Marjorie Roswell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 5:29 AM
To: Maptitude
Subject: Re: [Maptitude] Maptitude vs. ArcView & mapinfo
Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
> I'm sure glad I found out about Maptitude (quite by accident), I wonder
why
> it doesn't have a higher profile than it does considering the amazingly
> extensive features and data built into the package for the money. Thanks
so
> much, Caliper!
Seems to me that:
Product Marketing
------- ---------
ESRI Mediocre Great
Caliper Great Mediocre
Boy, I sure wish Caliper would attend conferences, and underwrite a few
give-aways. For most conferences I've been to: it's as if my product (and
MapInfo was the same way) didn't exist.
Attend the conferences even without underwriting anything. Just to hear
the marketing lingo. And to be a part of the Open GIS Consortium stuff?
Come to think of it, I understand that Caliper will be attending next
year's web GIS conference at Penn State. That's a start.
>
> Murray Rice
> Altavision Geographics
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Health Maps" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Maptitude" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 4:00 PM
> Subject: RE: [Maptitude] Maptitude vs. ArcView & mapinfo
>
>
> > Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
> >
> > I have millions of death records for several NW states (points) and
other
> > layers of parcels, census blocks, rather large attribute databases with
> > hundreds of variables, and I run these on a modest Pentium III. I have
had
> > no problem. I did try to do this in AV and its not possible. Too slow,
> limit
> > of 255 variables in the attribute data, etc.
> >
> > Richard Hoskins
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > GMT -8
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Carl Chance [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 12:51 PM
> > To: Maptitude
> > Subject: Re: [Maptitude] Maptitude vs. ArcView & mapinfo
> >
> >
> > Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
> >
> > At 01:25 PM 2/7/01 +0000, you wrote:
> > >Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
> > >
> > >Carl.
> > >
> > >I am interested about the limits to which Mapt can be pushed. I am
about
> > to
> > >start
> > >a large project, involving some 150000 parcels. In the last 5 years I
> have
> > >preferred maptitude over other GIS, and I would like to use it for this
> > >project.
> > >However, I do not know how well Maptitude would perform with such a
large
> > >database.
> > >
> > >In your experience, after digitizing the parcels, how did Mapt perform
in
> > >managing
> > >(displaying, laoding, quetying) the database?
> > >
> > >Maybe the people at Caliper could provide some comments about actual
> > >applications
> > >of Mapt (or other of tbeir products) with large databases.
> > >
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
_________________________________________________________
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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To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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