Microsoft MapPoint 2006 Standard Edition :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

$25 worth of features in a $270 box

2006-07-10
We purchased this software to map retail locations on a region. It is missing too many features to be usable. For instance, when you import a custom graphic pushpin, the software doesn't resize it as you zoom which forces you to create multiple sizes in another program. You can add text description boxes but have no control over the font or sizing -- and they don't resize either.

We highlighted our specific region but the software doesn't let you print just that region (called 'territory.) We searched the help files and their word 'territory' is not even listed.

You cannot save your map graphics in any standard graphics format, e.g. JPEG, PDF or ai. We tried printing to a PDF generator, but Map Point's map output is of very poor resolution even on the highest settings.

After wasting a lot of time, it's apparent we should have tried Google Maps/Earth with our graphics editing software for a solution that works.

Mappoint 2006

2006-07-03
Mappoint is a great product but I don't understand why there aren't more city maps for Mexico included. This product is supposed to be for North America, to which Mexico belongs. Monterrey, Nuevo Leon and Mexico City were improved this time but it is very disappointing that the other major cities are still just shown as crossroads,

Great demographic program

2006-06-28
I was very pleased to discover all of the data packed into this program. Setting up the query parameters is easy & the amount of info concerning places of interest (services, banks, transportation) is substantial. About the only drawback I found was the quality of the help contents, which was not very user friendly. Most of the time I was unable to find solutions to my question/problem because the data was way too complicated (displaying data in technical equations) or was not listed at all. However, calls to technical support usually resolved the questions. Finally, I was disappointed that the program does not allow you to print written legends off to the side on your map (ie: a listing of addresses for your push pin locations). Other than that, the program is very handy, loaded with tons of great data & the quality of the maps is superior.

Make sure it is appropriate for your application

2008-05-18
All I want is a political map of the world with a group of 60 countries on it shaded. There is little control over shades -- I have a choice of sixteen colors for my group of shaded countries. That's it -- and oddly, none of them are colors I would willingly choose. The map is labeled not only by country names but also by certain states in the United States. There is no way to turn off this labeling. For my simple purposes, this program is unusable.

Disappointed

2008-05-06
Once I began defining the territories, using the US census geographic unit, my system crashed. I was not even halfway through the process. Microsoft's suggestions were to uninstall and reinstall but this did not fix the problem. Currently I am able to use about half of the functionality. I am very unhappy with this purchase.

Printing is difficult

2008-04-11
This product is fine if you do not want to print your map. I created a territory and added locations via the pushpins. At a lower zoom level, my pushpins overlap and are unreadable. I wanted to print the whole territory at a certain zoom level to allow veiwing of all the pushpins without overlap onto however many pages it takes. This is not possible. It will only print what you see on your screen. If you want to print your whole map, you literally have to save your screen view into a graphic file, scroll to the next area, save it as well and repeat until you have saved your entire territory. Once you have saved the whole map in peices, you can print all your files and tape them together to make one big map. Ridiculous!!

Great Tools

2008-01-14
There is a lot of meat to this product; identify drive times from a certain location, overlay income or other demographic info and convert selected areas into zip codes and export to Excel. Export maps in Word with push pins showing the location of important locations for others without MapPoint. Not particularly easy to learn and the book MapPoint for Dummies is an earlier version. Still, its a powerful program with great tools.

Beware of Upgrades

2006-07-26
First, keep in mind that Mappoint is NOT forward-compatible; i.e., your 2006 maps will be useless to anyone who owns prior versions. And, the 2006 version will not "save as" an older version either. In short, if you upgrade, everyone else will also need to upgrade.

Otherwise, it's a decent program, although its "idiot-proof" functionality inhibits flexibility. For example, city names will obscure your every map whether you want them or not. I remove them by exporting my maps as jpg files, and editing them in Photoshop -- but that is a huge, and unnecessary, nuisance.

Mappoint is a basic mapping program with some data-plotting features. Easy to use, colorful, very readable, but limiting. Microsoft could use some competition.