Steve Wallace seems to have captured the scope of the uncertainties many
of us share about MapInfo at the present time. I appreciate the effort
it must take to weigh the relative merits of complaints, questions, and
wishes and to develop a balanced presentation that would technically
sound and financially palatable to MapInfo management.
I work with MapInfo on an almost daily basis, and MI 4.5 has performed
very well for me [from the perspective of a user since MI 3.0.] MI 4.5
is performing very well with the HP750c+ plotter and HP2500cxi printer I
have and remains very stable on the WIN95 workstation and NT network
that we have in our office.
If the MI 5.5 [or 6.0] code is being comprehensively rewritten, I can
understand MapInfo's reliance on publicizing its Oracle and internet
server applications in the absence of new MI Professional product, but
the fact remains that I will not be in a position to use or need these
applications. As a user I would rather see the MI Professional code
'thoroughly' refined before it is repackaged. When MapInfo demonstrates
that this has been done, I'll be more that ready to upgrade.
[A personal aside]: Steve, I continue to be reassured by your users'
advocate stance and hope that your efforts with the MI Technical
Advisory Board will be effective.
David Bruce
Pflum, Klausmeier & Gehrum Consultants, Inc.
Indianapolis, IN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Steve Wallace wrote:
>
[...]
>
> With the 1999 Wish List in the hands of MapInfo's CEO, and the Technical
> Advisory Board meeting taking place during the annual Partners Conference
> next week in Marco Island, FL, my position has been one of "wait and see."
> It is difficult for me to complain _MORE_ than the near 150 items on the
> Wish List and other stream of comments to MapInfo about problems with
> printing to Adobe Acrobat, working in MapXsite, MapMarker geocoding errors,
> buffers in the cosmetic layer being totally screwed up, and even MapInfo
> data that was sold as one thing and really was something else.
>
> I guess what it comes down to is, I'm waiting for MapInfo's next move. It
> seems to me that some of the bugs introduced in v5.5 should have been
> responded to IMMEDIATELY with v5.5.1. I seem to remember fixes like v 3.0.2;
> 3.0.5; 4.0.2; 4.1 and 4.5.2 -- where is the bug fix? I feel like many of you
> that MapInfo is too focused on the "big bucks" opportunities like
> (Enterprise and Internet) to remember the foundation of MapInfo in the MI
> Professional installation base.
>
> My guess is that they are working hard on improvements to the code. There
> probably is an actual v5.5.x release out there they are sending to large
> Oracle customers who have problems working with their database. The other
> guess is that they are in "freeze" mode while they finish their entire
> re-write of the MI Pro code. That being the case, there is likely even less
> we can expect from v6, as it had a focus other than "new / enhanced
> features."
>
> I use MapInfo 5.5, since I had purchased the maintenance agreement on MI
> Pro; however, my machine (and one other) is the only 5.x in our company. The
> others are 4.5's, as they do everything those users need. Since I've never
> used a MI Graph, don't connect to Oracle databases, don't use less common
> raster formats, and am used to making my own legends quickly -- I would not
> have purchased the 5.5 upgrade for those alone. However, I do make many maps
> and often run into problems with object processing. This was worth the
> upgrade, if it had been implemented without the buffer problems. As far as
> clipping goes, people must have forgotten how slow it already was in earlier
> versions, and that there were many times it would not display properly. It
> doesn't appear to be much slower to me now, and the results are much more
> reliable.
>
> It is true, in the past few months, I've channeled much of my non-work GIS
> hours towards Directions Magazine. All my efforts there have been efforts to
> enhance the entire GIS community in general, and the MapInfo user community
> in specific. That does not mean I am any less a self-appointed advocate of
> MI users across the globe. I have 12 hours of driving next week in order to
> attend a 3 hour meeting in South Florida, JUST for that reason (got
> appointed to the MI Technical Advisory Board back at MapWorld '99). While
> that meeting is shrouded in non-disclosure and I will not be able to comment
> about the content afterwards, I will be bringing _to_ the meeting the
> concerns of the MI user community.
>
> Steve Wallace
>
> GIS & Market Information Manager
> Florida Farm Bureau Insurance Companies
>
> Contributing Editor
> Directions Magazine
> http://www.directionsmag.com
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