Non-Geo Person Reviews MapInfo

Trudy Walsh reviewed MapInfo 9.5 in GCN. Walsh makes it clear she’s not a GIS person:

“As a casual map aficionado, I found MapInfo fun to work with after I had mastered a few simple file opening techniques.”

Some of her comments confused me.

“This version of MapInfo has taken great pains to work in an open source way with as many other kinds of files, systems and software as possible. “

“It also gives you access to the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Feature Service, a service offered by an international standards consortium that lets clients retrieve and update geospatial data encoded in Geography Markup Language. “

She ended up giving MapInfo 9.5 an “A” for performance, an “A” for features and a “C+” for ease of use. I’m guessing the last score is in comparison to Google Earth, the only other product mentioned. My comparative GIS students who have done projects with MapInfo all pointed to its ease of use as one of its strengths.