MapInfo Professional 5.5 for sale on eBay

Discussion in 'Buy, sell, trade, give away & exchange' started by permaculture.biz, Jan 6, 2008.

  1. permaculture.biz

    permaculture.biz Junior Member

    Joined:
    May 6, 2003
    Messages:
    369
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Occupation:
    https://cli.re/RWPlace
    Location:
    https://cli.re/RWPlace
    Home Page:
    Climate:
    Global
    G'day,

    Whilst hunting around for some stuff on Ebay I found that a vendor has available 9 copies of MapInfo Professional 5.5 (in original unopened boxes with manual and tutorial) for USD$85 each. I have since talked with the vendor about a bulk purchase and he has agreed to USD$65 each. This software is the one that I have used since 1997 for the development of our designs and cannot recommend it high enough. To buy the latest version costs around USD$1300 so this represents quite a saving.

    Whilst this version is a bit older the functionality, for the purposes that I put to use, is quite current as the main aspects of the software that have changed relate more to the GIS end of the product not the cartographical end.

    Mac users will be limited to those that are able to run Windows on their machines, such as enabled by the latest OS for Mac (Leopard) and its preloaded software Bootcamp.

    For those of you who are interested I have established a manual for using MapInfo for Permaculture Design on my website - the link being:

    https://picasaweb.google.com/permaculture.biz/MapInfoManual

    I drafted this manual as a consultancy for a student and have now published it online for open access.

    Anyways this allows people to get legitimate ownership of some extremely useful software and raise the quality of their output.

    The link to the eBay site is as follows:

    https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360009605956
     
  2. arawajo

    arawajo Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 9, 2007
    Messages:
    87
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    This is Arawajos's partner. I have used Mapinfo (7.5,7.8 & 8.5)professionally for the last 3 years. Its a great program although not one for the beginner.

    Most recently I have been doing maps of the Traveston Dam site in Queensland Australia for the opponents of the dam. Although it makes great maps you still need some data to start with. Geosciences Australia allows you to download for free the 1:250,000 topographic and other maps. State authorities like Sunmap in Queensland sell a CD of all Queensland topographic maps available in 1:25,000. NRW (National Resources & Water) Queensland has a lot of data on IRTM (Interactive resource tenure maps) that can be downloaded for free.

    There is lots of free data around for Mapinfo - even the gravity maps of Australia- though its not likely you would need that for in permaculture - ha. Last night I was downloading all the data on earthquakes in Queensland and relating it to the locations of dams. It seems that it is a known phenomenom that the hydrological pressure of the water on the ground beneath leads to an increase in earthqaukes around dams- they have to take this into account when building them.

    I have had a look at Picasa website and the manual seems reasonably good though whether it would be good enough for a novice I do not know.
    For instance in the registration of a topographic map you have to be really precise to 6 decimal places- if you don't your map can be 100's of metres off from reality- or totally distorted. Always remember we are in the southern hemisphere - MINUS signs must be put in Y positions otherwise map shows up in northern hemisphere.

    Martin
     
  3. permaculture.biz

    permaculture.biz Junior Member

    Joined:
    May 6, 2003
    Messages:
    369
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Occupation:
    https://cli.re/RWPlace
    Location:
    https://cli.re/RWPlace
    Home Page:
    Climate:
    Global
    G'day,

    Thanks for the commentary.

    A couple of things:

    1. First up - for those of you who are interested we have had over 30 replies today, so I would contact the vendor directly to secure your copy. My last post gave the eBay url to deal with there.

    2. I have been using MapInfo since 1996/7 for the digital design of about 950 odd properties of between 10-110,000 acres and as with any design scale comes right into everything. For a property that has high value land use objectives we use a professional surveyor to generate the high quality and millimetre accurate data required and necessary for that scale of development. For a retrofit of a clapped out sheep farm then we use a off the shelf aerial photo and over lay contours onto it. Is that going to be "100's of metres" out? No - I have not found that to be the case when we apply the design to the field (the true test). Certainly it is not as accurate as a survey but its not that bad.
    2. Correct me if I'm wrong but applying minus signs to Y coordinates only applies when you are using longitude and latitude coordinates. When using a metric coordinate system (such as the AMG in Oz or UTM in the US and elsewhere), as is pretty common, then this does not apply as these coordinate systems are typically subordinated into zones.
    3. I am supposing that people who might be interested in using this software might have some professional interest in doing so. As such there would be a level of dedication to training in its use and a base aptitude to doing so. I like MapInfo because of its ease of use when doing a design - its drawing tools are akin to MS Paint and it does what we need. I'm only using perhaps a poomteenth of its capacity as a GIS. As far as getting data into the software and geographically registering it, I find it pretty easy by comparison with other rival packages. To my mind it is a much less daunting start up than AutoCAD or ArcView for eg. though I am competant and trained to use them both as well. It has worked for me and so I am an advocate of its use in work similar to mine. There are other packages out there that people might find more appropriate and suited to their specific uses.

    Thanks,

    Darren Doherty
     
  4. matto

    matto Junior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2009
    Messages:
    685
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Love your work, Darren!
     

Share This Page

-->