Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
I also started out as a Mapinfo user back in 1992 and used it almost
exclusively for 5 years because it worked and it lacked an effective
competitor. We had bought a copy of Maptitude v.3 when it first came out
but found it too unstable to use as the primary GIS (e.g. it would regularly
fail when printing). When we got Maptitude v.4, though, it was a completely
different story. This was easily one of the best upgrades we have ever
purchased and it supplanted MI almost immediately as my primary GIS.
Maptitude does almost everything I want a GIS to do and when it can't I use
TransCAD. It is the best GIS value out there by a country mile.
Now I use MI once in a blue moon and feel no compelling reason to return.
Mapinfo provided extremely reliable service for a time but product
development has been very meagre after v.4. It needed a lot of improvements
to bring it up to even basic standards (I still can't believe it lacks a
proper scale bar integrated into the legend, and its thematic mapping is an
outright joke), let alone push the envelope, but for some reason the
developers stopped giving it the proper attention. Now I pity anyone who
has to use the program especially for line coverages. I regularly try to
convince others within my organisation who are still wedded to MI to make
the switch but it has been difficult to move the rest of the group out of
its inertia. They started out with MI and that is what they are using.
Period. Even if a better, cheaper alternative exists.
It seems irrational for people to hang onto something inferior but that's
what happens when it is the first program to enter the desktop market. It's
analogous to the QWERTY keyboard and other instances of "lock-in". That is
the uphill battle facing Caliper in the future. It will take a prodigious
effort to pull it off but I really hope they succeed.
Bob Leore
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