All Star GIS Favorites of the Year 2000 - the Results of GISVision's Survey 2000 by Susan Smith Tallying the votes for this contest reminded me of our as yet unresolved presidential election. But unlike the presidential ballot, I provided a place to write in other products that people might want to include in each categories, just to see what I might have forgotten and was important to our readers. The products listed on the Survey are products and new releases released in the year 2000. We wanted to find out which ones to watch in the coming year and review in GISVision. I appreciated the overwhelming response - people took the time to fill out the survey and add products they'd like to see there. There were a few fun surprises-our first place winner for full GIS software is a write-in candidate. Full GIS Software So, let's get down to the results. In our category of complete GIS software, a product that I had not put on the survey won first place-Idrisi32, from Clark Labs. Idrisi32 won by one vote. The reasons cited for this choice were almost unanimously: technology and price. Idrisi32 is a very inexpensive full GIS software with quite a following. The winner of the products listed on our survey (see survey) was ArcInfo 8.0.2. ArcInfo 8.0.2, ESRI's newest release of their flagship GIS, was chosen for its robustness, ease of use and technology. Coming in a very close second to both ArcInfo 8.0.2 and Idrisi32 was Intergraph's Geomedia 4.0 Product Suite for Enterprise GIS which includes GeoMedia, GeoMedia Professional, GeoMedia Web Map, and GeoMedia Web Enterprise. The GeoMedia Suite was cited for its robustness, ease-of-use, technology, flexibility and price. Internet GIS First place for an Internet GIS goes to ESRI's new Internet mapping and GIS system, ArcIMS3. ArcIMS3 received 40 percent of the total vote count for this category. Second to ArcIMS3 are Intergraph's GeoMedia Web Map and GeoMedia Web Enterprise, the Internet enabled solutions in the GeoMedia 4.0 Product Suite for Enterprise GIS. Internet capability is an obvious reason for choosing an Internet GIS, but price, ease-of-use and technology were also cited as important in making that choice. MapGuide Release 5 from Autodesk came in third. GPS Receivers Among the GPS receivers we had listed on our survey-Garmin, Lowrance, and Magellan (which was added on by a voter)-the votes were astoundingly even. Garmin eMap inched ahead of the others by two votes, eMap being a shirt pocket size GPS with simplified controls. From this survey it would appear that all of the choices for GPS Receivers listed on the Survey are popular, so personal preference would play a large part in choosing which GPS receiver to buy. Voters cited ease-of-use, technology and price as the reasons for making their choice. Image Processing/Remote Sensing Software LizardTech's Mr.SID Geospatial Edition 1.4 was the clear winner in this category. Mr.SID Geospatial encodes and mosaicks imagery into industry standard Mr.SID format. Price and ease-of-use were the most commonly cited reasons for choosing the winner. Second place in this category is awarded to both ERDAS' Imagine 8.4 and a product that was added by voters: Idrisi32. Both of these products were chosen for their ease-of-use, price, technology and flexibility. Products receiving several votes included LizardTech's Mr.SID Online Viewer, Space Imaging CARTERRA five-meter basemap product. Other image processing/remote sensing products added to the "ballot" included GlobeXplorer, ER Mapper, TNTmips 6.4 AM/FM Software ESRI's ArcFM Water Data Model for water, wastewater and storm water networks tied for first place in the AM/FM category with MapInfo decibel Planner 2.0 for MapInfoi, a wireless network planning solution. This was a close race for second place as well, so we think that the GE Smallworld suite of AM/FM offerings which includes GE Smallworld, GE Smallworld Design Manager, GE Smallworld PowerOn, GE Smallworld Physical Network Manager, and GE Smallworld Logical Network Manager; and Bentley's Viecon Public Works Network should all receive second place mention for this category. TNTmips 6.4 from MicroImages, Inc.was added to the list by voters. Geographic Presentation/Desktop Mapping Software In this category, the winner was MapInfo Professional 6.0 enterprise mapping solution. Coming in a close second was ESRI's ArcView Image Analysis 1.1 upgrade which expands geographic imaging capabilities for ArcView GIS users. ERDAS Stereo Analyst and ERDAS IMAGINE 8.4 which is compatible with Windows 2000 tied for third place. Other geographic presentation/mapping software added to our list by voters were ESRI's ArcView Version 3.2a, Cadcorp SIS V5.2, and Map Modeller. GPS Software The GPS software category offered many choices, but ESRI's ArcPad 5 for mobile mapping and GIS nabbed the prize with 50 percent of the votes for the category. MapInfo's MapXtend, wireless spatial technology for delivering enterprise applications to handheld devices, took second place. Delorme's Street Atlas USA 8.0 complete map and navigation package, and Solus Pro 2.0 Palm OS mapping and GPS software, shared third place. And Cartalinx, a product developed by Clark Labs, was placed on the "ballot" by voters. Location based solutions MapInfo's MapinHand was the first prize winner in this category. MapinHand supplies field staff with enterprise wireless spatial solutions on Oracle 8i. MapInfo's MapXtend Java Edition for creating customized applications for accessing location-based data on wireless handheld devices, came in second in this category. Autodesk Onsite View, for viewing design drawings on mobile devices, took third place. Map Servers MapInfo's MapXtreme Java Edition 3.0 was the clear winner in this category. EarthTec Image Web Server was placed on the ballot by voters to share second place withMapInfo's Routing J Server. Specialty Software and Extensions: Congratulations to first place winner Safe Software's FME Suite 2000, a bundle of six FME member products that together provide a complete data access solution. Second place goes to ESRI's ArcLogistics Route 2, the new release of ESRI's desktop routing and scheduling solution. Nearly every voter used products from many different vendors. ESRI customers, for example, also used products from GE Smallworld, LizardTech, MapInfo, Bentley or FME Safe Software to complement their GIS systems. The same was true of other full GIS customers who might use products from some competing firms in addition to their primary software. The biggest factor to influence ESRI customers were: robustness, ease of use and technology. Overall, Intergraph customers cited robustness, ease of use, customer service and flexibility as their primary concerns. Idrisi32 customers cited technology and price as their qualifiers. LizardTech customers chose that product because of ease-of-use, price and flexibility. For a full list of the products on the Survey, see GIS Favorites 2000 Survey.