Hi David, It really depends on: - what you need to do, and - what addons you would have for MapInfo or ArcGIS.
I don't do a lot of GIS work, and I have no experience with ArcGIS, but I do have MapInfo. I gather some features of MapInfo are supposed to be quite good for things like inputting and managing data, which is why it has been quite popular in local government (at least in NZ and Australia). As I see it MapInfo's main downsides are: 1) It isn't very powerful - you need to buy all sorts of addons if you really want to do much in it. (I guess with QGIS you also need to use something like GRASS for some things. The trouble with MapInfo is that it seems like you're not really getting anything for your dollar.) If some of the major addons were included with MapInfo then it would be a lot easier to understand why people buy it. 2) In some respects e.g. map-making it is very user-unfriendly. Especially the problems with the way its layout windows are connected to map windows. And QGIS is just generally much nicer to use than MapInfo. 3) It doesn't handle data in all sorts of different formats nicely like QGIS does. I generally don't even think about using MapInfo these days - I haven't bothered to install the last couple of updates. And MapInfo isn't going anywhere fast - like someone mentioned in the link below, they seem to put all their effort into marketing, while the software stays stuck in the mid '90s, with little indication that it will ever really improve. The one MapInfo feature that I currently miss in QGIS is the ability to perform operations in the Object menu like "Split" on selected features - ftools in QGIS only operates with whole layers. I guess MapInfo is _a little_ less buggy than QGIS, but not as much as I'd expect, especially given that it doesn't really seem to do much, and there is so little change in each release. You might be interested in some of the discussion at http://woostuff.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/browser-wars-qgis-vs-mapinfo-11/ But I'm not sure how relevant this all is to you - it sounds like you are thinking of building some sort of standalone application or web-based solution. How would that work with .Net and QGIS? If you're integrating with .NET I imagine you should check out Mapwindow. Have you? Mapwindow is quite nice, but it generally* doesn't seem to be as powerful or user-friendly as QGIS. *For some specific things there are very good plugins for Mapwindow that aren't available for QGIS. Regards, Alister > Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:16:01 +0000 > From: David Speyer <david.spe...@pctel.com> > Subject: [Qgis-user] New to QGIS, Best solution? > To: "Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org" <Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org> > Message-ID: > > <E569CBF1CCBAED43B04EC1569C80777F1EDCB3@mbx025-w1-ca-1.exch025.domain.local> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Hello - > > I am still in the middle of evaluating various map solutions and would find > it *very* helpful if anyone could compare the > features/functionality/reliability of Qgis to MapInfo Pro or ArcGIS or even > Google Maps APIs. I'd be integrating this with Microsoft based UIs (.Net). > We are already using MapInfo with MapExtreme (a version that is a few > versions old). > > Thanks! > David. _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
