CD mapping

On 26 Feb 2005 07:56:42 -0800, [email hidden] (Jackie /

Dennis) said:

I thinking of buying a CD mapping system for a 50th birthday present
later this year, and looking for some advice on where to start.

Ideally would like 1:25,000 mapping. Would probably look to start with
the Lake District.

So far I've come across Mapwise 25 (ISYS Outdoors) and Anquet.

What should I look out for?

For people who have brought, do you find you make good use of the
product or have you returned to paper based maps?

Thanks

Jackie

I have Anquet (Lake District) and use it a lot. I'd use it even more
if I had a cable to connect PC and GPS!
It's very good for route planning, looking over where you went and
getting route data such as distance and ascent, and generally very
useful. Print off A4 maps at your chosen scale to take on walks -
doesn't matter if they get wet and muddy. Recommended.

--

R
o
o
n
e
y

I use memory map - great for downloading to/from GPS and for 3D images.
The results of 3D images and GPS tracks can be seen on my site.
http://www.stridingedge.net

Regards,
Sean

Jackie / Dennis said:

I thinking of buying a CD mapping system for a 50th birthday present
later this year, and looking for some advice on where to start.

Ideally would like 1:25,000 mapping. Would probably look to start with
the Lake District.

So far I've come across Mapwise 25 (ISYS Outdoors) and Anquet.

What should I look out for?

For people who have brought, do you find you make good use of the
product or have you returned to paper based maps?

Thanks

Jackie

Brill idea. I use it all the time now. Plan route, download to GPS,
print off small section of map, out it in an Ortleib map-case, keep full
map in rucksack.

This subject has a long history on this NG - I suggest you try google
groups to track down (hee hee) what's been said before.

Leaders are Memory Map and Anquet (I use the latter). Alternatives are
Tracklogs and Fugawi. Both Trail magazine and Mountain Bike Rider
carried out competitive reviews recently. One chose MM over Anquet,
t'other chose Anquet over MM.

The other thing you might want to bear in mind is whether or not you go
walking with someone who already has one product. Data interchange
between products is a mess, so best keep it simple and plump for the
same thing.

btw - once you've got it, plan on a GPS for Christmas!

Good luck with your purchase.

druidh

I have used Anquet for over two years now and would never go back to paper
maps.
1:50,000 is good enough for most uses as 1:25,000 will run expensive.

--
Regards, Kenneth.
www.kmiles.co.uk
"Jackie / Dennis" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I thinking of buying a CD mapping system for a 50th birthday present
later this year, and looking for some advice on where to start.

Ideally would like 1:25,000 mapping. Would probably look to start with
the Lake District.

So far I've come across Mapwise 25 (ISYS Outdoors) and Anquet.

What should I look out for?

For people who have brought, do you find you make good use of the
product or have you returned to paper based maps?

Thanks

Jackie

Many thanks for all the replies - I've whiled away some time looking at
your websites, so being cheeky, here is ours!

http://www.btinternet.com/~dandjwalks/

Dennis isn't 50 for a few months yet, so we have plenty of time to
ponder - I've searched some of the back posts as well.

We need to think through 50,000 v 25,000 as 50,000 would be much
cheaper - however we have a clear leaning to 25,000 as that is what we
use for walking and I would look to print off pages to use on walk.

Had a quick look at Trackwise.

I'm curious about no mention of mapwise 25 - this seems to work out at
about 1/2 the price of Anquet or Memory Map. Would much appreciate some
input from anyone who is using.

Comments about GPS made me smile - maybe we need to talk nicely to my
brother for next Christmas - he likes to give expensive presents. That
said we do have the one he brought us a few years back, and we tend not
to use it.

The problem with discussing it with Dennis is that he is going to do
very well for presents - he's already got a new camera, is getting an
extra holiday in Spain, a weekend away on his birthday, plus his mates
are looking to organise a boys weekend later in the year, and no doubt
I will feel oblidged to buy him a surprise as well!!!!

Thanks again for all your replies

Jackie

D and J <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Many thanks for all the replies - I've whiled away some time looking at
your websites, so being cheeky, here is ours!

http://www.btinternet.com/~dandjwalks/

Dennis isn't 50 for a few months yet, so we have plenty of time to
ponder - I've searched some of the back posts as well.

We need to think through 50,000 v 25,000 as 50,000 would be much
cheaper - however we have a clear leaning to 25,000 as that is what we
use for walking and I would look to print off pages to use on walk.

I bought a couple of Tracklogs 50,000 maps and found it them rubbish for
planning walks, too much detail missing, and far less accuracy.
The 25,000 is expensive, but a delight to look at and to use for
plotting walks. I have built up mine via Xmas presents and bought
some myself, but I have kept to the areas of walking interest.
--
Gordon Harris

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Gordon Harris <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

D and J <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Many thanks for all the replies - I've whiled away some time looking at
your websites, so being cheeky, here is ours!

http://www.btinternet.com/~dandjwalks/

Dennis isn't 50 for a few months yet, so we have plenty of time to
ponder - I've searched some of the back posts as well.

We need to think through 50,000 v 25,000 as 50,000 would be much
cheaper - however we have a clear leaning to 25,000 as that is what we
use for walking and I would look to print off pages to use on walk.

I bought a couple of Tracklogs 50,000 maps and found it them rubbish
for planning walks, too much detail missing, and far less accuracy.

I agree, however I do have a large area of 1:50k for places I sometimes
visit 'by accident', but can't justify the 1:25k prices for, and they're
also reasonable for driving use .. they have all the roads, they just
don't have all the ROWs and field boundaries.

Quoted message said:

The 25,000 is expensive, but a delight to look at and to use for
plotting walks. I have built up mine via Xmas presents and bought
some myself, but I have kept to the areas of walking interest.

I've found that now I have just about all of OS grid square 'SO' (which
happens to pretty much correspond to Shropshire) the Tracklogs program
now takes quite a while to start (it seems to store map data by OS grid
square, and the database for 'SO' is now 133 Mbytes). It still pans
around at reasonable speed once it's started though.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I've found that now I have just about all of OS grid square 'SO' (which
happens to pretty much correspond to Shropshire) the Tracklogs program
now takes quite a while to start (it seems to store map data by OS grid
square, and the database for 'SO' is now 133 Mbytes). It still pans
around at reasonable speed once it's started though.

Not sure of the total area of mine, but I wish my PC had 1Gb of memory,
when I drag the map around fully zoomed out, there is much thrashing of
the disc. The processor is fast enough at 3.4Ghz, and the hard disc
is 250Gb, but 512Mb of memory isn't enough to prevent a lot of disc
activity.

I haven't had the case open yet, and the hardware has a three year
warranty, but I don't suppose a memory upgrade would invalidate.
Question is - is there enough empty slot to take another module or not?
I'll have to have a peep.
--
Gordon Harris

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

Go look at tracklogs (www.tracklogs.co.uk). They have a free demo (of
some part of wales that nobody could ever want to buy, iirc).

Ahem. Does the Lampeter area map include Llyn Brianne and the
Teifi Pools area? Nowt wrong with either of them; the latter
can be a brilliant wild camp spot if you go when it's not to
soggy underfoot - or so I'm hoping, because it's a beautiful
part of the country and I'm determined to camp up there
sometime or other.
--
If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs...
then you've failed to grasp some important aspect of the
situation.

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

I've not bought my mapping, I download mine in 2km tiles as I need
them. I store routes I have plotted as vector files and load them as
overlays, printing them to A4 sheets for walking with. I know it is
nowhere near as swish as the commercial products and a bit more time
consuming but it is cheap.

I understood the first and last sentences of the above.
Unfortunately you lost me totally in the middle.
--
If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs...
then you've failed to grasp some important aspect of the
situation.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person Fran <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

Go look at tracklogs (www.tracklogs.co.uk). They have a free demo (of
some part of wales that nobody could ever want to buy, iirc).

Ahem. Does the Lampeter area map include Llyn Brianne and the
Teifi Pools area?

No it doesn't. It covers 55 to 65 East, 45 to 55 N, (feel free to
download and play with it .. the price is right).

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Gordon Harris <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I've found that now I have just about all of OS grid square 'SO'
(which happens to pretty much correspond to Shropshire) the Tracklogs
program now takes quite a while to start (it seems to store map data
by OS grid square, and the database for 'SO' is now 133 Mbytes). It
still pans around at reasonable speed once it's started though.

Not sure of the total area of mine, but I wish my PC had 1Gb of memory,
when I drag the map around fully zoomed out, there is much thrashing of
the disc. The processor is fast enough at 3.4Ghz, and the hard disc
is 250Gb, but 512Mb of memory isn't enough to prevent a lot of disc
activity.

I haven't had the case open yet, and the hardware has a three year
warranty, but I don't suppose a memory upgrade would invalidate.

Not from any vendor I am aware of (although that's the sort of trick PC
World/Tiny might try).

Quoted message said:

Question is - is there enough empty slot to take another module or not?
I'll have to have a peep.

Bet money there is, since most motherboards have 3 or 4 slots ... again,
certain el-cheapo vendors excepted.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person Fran <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

I've not bought my mapping, I download mine in 2km tiles as I need
them. I store routes I have plotted as vector files and load them as
overlays, printing them to A4 sheets for walking with. I know it is
nowhere near as swish as the commercial products and a bit more time
consuming but it is cheap.

I understood the first and last sentences of the above.
Unfortunately you lost me totally in the middle.

I think they are referring to Oziexplorer or similar, where you can use
any-old-graphics file as a raster background (once you have
geo-referenced it with a couple of known points). Obviously tracks,
waypoints, and anything else you draw (or download from a GPS) are in
different (vector) format, but Ozi can put them on the same screen (and
plot them on the same sheet of paper).

2km tiles (at 1:25k) is what you can get from the OS www.get-a-map.co.uk
site (or streetmap.co.uk, but hey, might as well drink straight from the
source - less adverts there).

It is 'just about legal' for personal use (my reading of the OS T&Cs) ..
just don't publish anything derived therefrom on a popular website or
the OS will be on your case.

----------- tutorial -----------

[vector format: one or more (X,Y) points (Lat,Long or East/North) with
some indication of what is at (or between) them .. road, pub, whatever.
OK, you can also have 3 (or more) points which form the corners of a
polygon .. forest, lake, or similar area feature.

Raster format - picture .. could be a picture of a map, hopefully, could
also be an aerial photo, or could be granny's latest quilt].

Vector->raster conversion .. trivially easy, it's called 'plotting'.
Raster->vector conversion .. impossible in most cases where it would be
useful (like maps) without copious human intervention.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Gordon Harris <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I've found that now I have just about all of OS grid square 'SO'
(which happens to pretty much correspond to Shropshire) the Tracklogs
program now takes quite a while to start (it seems to store map data
by OS grid square, and the database for 'SO' is now 133 Mbytes). It
still pans around at reasonable speed once it's started though.

Not sure of the total area of mine, but I wish my PC had 1Gb of memory,
when I drag the map around fully zoomed out, there is much thrashing of
the disc. The processor is fast enough at 3.4Ghz, and the hard disc
is 250Gb, but 512Mb of memory isn't enough to prevent a lot of disc
activity.

I had a look at mine Gordon (ctrl-alt-delete, take the 'performance' tab
on task manager) and it is not actually using enough memory to get into
paging even with 512Mb .. however it is doing a bunch of disk IO, so I
guess it must have some scratch files of its own somewhere.. if that's
the case, more memory might not help as much as you think.

fwiw, I hardly ever zoom right out - it does get very slow then. I find
it quicker to pan around zoomed in a bit. I suspect that it's the API
they are using to put the map on the screen which chokes when handed a
few hundred MB of raster map data and told 'scale and display this' -
whereas tiles which are not on the screen are probably never even loaded
for rendering.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

----------- tutorial -----------

Saved for re-reading later on when I've had some shut-eye. I
didn't understand a word of it first time round; hopefully
I'll do better tomorrow. Goodnight, and ta.
--
If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs...
then you've failed to grasp some important aspect of the
situation.

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Question is - is there enough empty slot to take another module or not?
I'll have to have a peep.

Bet money there is, since most motherboards have 3 or 4 slots ...
again, certain el-cheapo vendors excepted.

It's a Medion, bought from ALDI. I'll have to look at the type of
RAM.

PCWorld want about 70 squid for 512Mb, but there's a dealer just outside
Stockport I may try.
--
Gordon Harris

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Not sure of the total area of mine, but I wish my PC had 1Gb of
memory, when I drag the map around fully zoomed out, there is much
thrashing of the disc. The processor is fast enough at 3.4Ghz, and
the hard disc is 250Gb, but 512Mb of memory isn't enough to prevent a
lot of disc activity.

I had a look at mine Gordon (ctrl-alt-delete, take the 'performance'
tab on task manager) and it is not actually using enough memory to get
into paging even with 512Mb .. however it is doing a bunch of disk IO,
so I guess it must have some scratch files of its own somewhere.. if
that's the case, more memory might not help as much as you think.

Yes, I began to think that maybe the graphics card is the limitation but
128 should be enough.

Quoted message said:

fwiw, I hardly ever zoom right out - it does get very slow then. I find
it quicker to pan around zoomed in a bit. I suspect that it's the API
they are using to put the map on the screen which chokes when handed a
few hundred MB of raster map data and told 'scale and display this' -
whereas tiles which are not on the screen are probably never even
loaded for rendering.

I usually zoom out only to find places, or to look at the walks we have
done in one screen full, but it does pan quicker when zoomed in, as you
say.
--
Gordon Harris

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person [email hidden] said
<snip>

Quoted message said:

GPStrackmaker is free, is ozzie?

Yes, if you can live with some of the features turned off (just enough
to be so annoying that most people will eventually pay and register it).

<snip>

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Gordon Harris <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Question is - is there enough empty slot to take another module or not?
I'll have to have a peep.

Bet money there is, since most motherboards have 3 or 4 slots ...
again, certain el-cheapo vendors excepted.

It's a Medion, bought from ALDI. I'll have to look at the type of
RAM.

PCWorld want about 70 squid for 512Mb, but there's a dealer just
outside Stockport I may try.

www.crucial.co.uk is the best place. Guaranteed compatibility, delivered
(usually) next day, reasonable prices (for stuff that's actually
tested). You will need to tell their configurator what machine you have
... after that it's a doddle.

PC world is about the last place to try (right ahead of Tiny)

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
SC recommends the use of Firefox; Get smart, or get assimilated.