Patrick,
On 10 May 2006, at 11:05, Patrick Weber wrote:
> Anzir
>
> I would recommend to you that you give Manifold a shot, for your
> domain of work that would be best suited, it has an interface thats
> in my eyes superior to ArcGIS. It is surprisingly cheap (200£ for
> the Universal edition), given that it does basically everything you
> can do in ArcGIS and/or MapInfo.
> I use it daily for geodemographic analysis and create maps from
> that as well. It runs under Windows only, but I must say a Mac is
> probably a bad choice as a work tool if you are in the GIS world.
> if you own one of the new Mac's though that now support Windows
> installation, then that should be no problem.
My Mac does not support Windows installation, and I chose the Mac for
other reasons really (though I do know of geodemographic research
that has been done in GRASS, the use of it seems to be a closely
guarded secret. I have done no GIS work since leaving the transport
consultancy I was at, though I do work with someone who has MapInfo.
Right now, I would mostly be dabbling with GIS tools as my work is
mostly in other areas at the moment (the joys of being independent
rather than being stuck on a MapInfo machine in the corner of the
office)
> PS: If you work in GIS for a living, I must say you should weight
> carefully the pros and cons of using something "free", which is
> potentially not as good, versus something you pay for but with
> which you can be up and running quickly and earn money with. Any
> serious consultancy job should bring in enough cash to pay for an
> ArcGIS or Mapinfo license (even more so true for Manifold).
I know what you mean. I suppose it depends on the actual software...
I use OpenOffice for my word processing and spreadsheet needs, and it
meets them very well, but then I also run the Adobe Creative Suite,
which is about the same price as MapInfo, but that's paid for itself
already... There is a mapping plugin for Illustrator which is
supposedly very good for the kind of basic and presentational
analysis and cartography I am used to.
Thanks
--
Anzir Boodoo MRes MILT Aff. IRO
transcience, 72 Staplehurst, BRACKNELL RG12 8DD
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