TNTmips Testimonials / Reviews

Information update for the TNT products

11 December 2008

Testimonials and other Tidbits (2007:73)

The following are some of the complimentary written comments and related interesting items received at MicroImages since the shipment of version 2006:72 of the TNT products exactly as provided except for the comments and edit alterations [shown in brackets] to keep them anonymous where necessary. Please note that these quotations are not edited from their original form in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and so on, and many are written by those whose first language is not English.

MicroImages clients using TNT professional products

email from England on 7 March 2007

Great software support [from England]

Great - that's what I call software support.

email from the USA on 19 March 2007

Loving TNT [from USA]

Will TNT work with Vista or is it beta or what? Not a big deal for now because I mainly use it on a desktop with XP. BTW I love it. But it would be convenient to have it on my [Vista] laptop.

email from South Africa on 3 April 2007

Appreciating new features [from South Africa]

Thanks to the MI team for the 73 release - looks to be another great enhancement to the toolbox of tricks. Thanks for the implementation of features I had requested (e.g. the Garmin USB) - as always good to utilize software vendors who listen to user base. I also like the additions to the use of MySQL (currently testing this DB system as a cost-effective way of managing certain DB's in our company), watershed processing and so on.

email from USA on 10 April 2007

Happy client's clients [from USA]

By the way, I really have had a great time using TNT. Lately, I have made more extensive use of the software and the knowledge level has gone up. For example, I recently used LIDAR data to compare bare earth and bare earth + vegetation; did a cut and fill to extract the vegetation only; then grouped the plant elevation heights into categories (thanks to Demir's help). My clients were very happy and were impressed that a plant scientist figured all this out (again, thanks for your technical support).

email from Germany on 12 June 2007

TNTserver performs [from Germany]

Please feel free to explore the lower Danube. We are astonished of the good performance of TNTserver.

email from South Africa on 18 June 2007

Lost without TNTmips [from South Africa]

Thank you, that is a great relief to know that I will have access to my TNTmips - without it I am lost.

email from USA on 2 August 2007

Display speed is phenomenal [from USA]

The speed of display is phenomenal given the size of the dataset and fact that it is run through [i.e., from] an external drive [USB drive]. The Nevada MrSIDs [county files] take around 40-60 seconds to display on my beefed up laptop! [From the original MrSID files.]

[These comments refer to display of a single multifile raster object with 8192 by 8192 JP2 tiles compressed 15 to 1 (~60 GB). The single image covers all of Nevada in 24-bit color at 1-meter resolution (uncompressed ~800 GB).]

[The MrSID display noted above is for a smaller county-sized file being displayed from the USB attached drive. These county files in MrSID format are also compressed 15 to 1 and were used to build the single multifile raster object of the state.]

[The client's comments refer to a display time on his portable from this file of about 1 second at any scale and without any caching. If the multifile raster of the Nevada state coverage was on the hard drive the display time would be reduced to .3 seconds at any scale and without caching. This identical Nevada multifile raster object can be viewed at any scale in seconds via the TNTserver at www.microimages.com/geodata/StateOrtho.htm.

communication between 2 TNTmips users copied to MicroImages on 10 September 2007

Ongoing discussions [from USA]

user #1's entire email to User #2.

How would you compare the watershed analysis and topographic analysis capabilities of TNT and ESRI? I am trying to decide whether to bring my TNTmips license up to date and thought it might be useful for looking for landslide topography in the LIDAR, and they mentioned your name when I contacted them.

user #2's entire response to User #1

I have kept our TNT license up to date simply in anticipation of the upcoming LiDAR work. I have been perusing their web site and have talked with a few folks and feel that TNT will be worth some additional effort to bring it into the arsenal. Though the City has ESRI as it's standard, and [a name] has been working hard to use ESRI for our derived LiDAR products (Arc/Workstation actually - ArcMAP won't touch the processing!!), I see TNTmips as being my backdoor to a lot of future derivative products (mostly watershed based) which I think will get me there faster and with more tool options overall (I simply like the overall approach TNT takes with most of its toolsets - they are a might unconventional and very deep academically - something I very much appreciate).

[TNTmips User #1 is the Chief Scientist of the Geology Department for a state on the west coast of the US - User #2 is the Supervising Engineer for a GIS Department of the same state's second largest city.]

email from USA on 14 September 2007

Value of support [from USA]

Thank you so much for your help. I'll be looking forward to the solution. It's nice to see a team that is so responsive. This is exactly why I'm a MicroImages user.

email from USA on 3 October 2007

Catching up [from USA]

We finally upgraded to V7.3 from V6.8 (yeah!!) [a 4 year upgrade]. I've been eagerly looking forward to using some of the new features and also like the new look and feel.

email from Brazil on 12 October 2007

Upgrading [from Brazil]

Thank you very much. I'm really happy to upgrade my TNT version.

email from Australia on 12 October 2007

10 years of continuous use [from Australia]

Hello, this is fantastic, we have used TNTmips (in Australia) as our core GIS platform for the last 10 years or so. We use the software through the full range from image analysis, complex raster based modeling, large scale vector and database manipulation to large format hardcopy map production, all with extensive use of 'inhouse' SML enhancements. Our core business is veg mapping and ecological modeling for local gov. bodies on the Australian east cost. I do not know of any other companies using TNT products in Australia! It is going to be so good to be able to have dialogue with other users. Great Service!

[comments upon joining TNTtalk]

email from Japan on 22 October 2007

An eager client [from Japan]

The next release of TNTmips (2008:74) is done yet?

[He was informed that he could use this version now by downloading the development version.]

Addition to that, WMS or KML manuals [meaning TechGuides], recently which was released are very useful. I submitted my abstract to the next ISPRS2008 as the attached file. This analysis was done by TNTmips 2006:72 and 2007:73.

[This reveals the reason for the first question. There are a lot more features added to this next release related to using, managing, and making KML files as illustrated in the associated prerelease TechGuides.]

[The abstract shows how data prepared periodically on flood-inundated rice paddies in TNTmips will be released to the public using Google Earth.]

email from Australia on 22 October 2007

A president gets a 3D look [from Australia]

You may be interested to hear that an anaglyph image created using TNTmips was framed and presented to the president of (a country we are trying to strike a deal with) and it is now hanging in his office. The anaglyph was created from the global SRTM and depicts his country in glorious 3D. We donated him 50 pairs of anaglyph glasses as well.

Keep up the great work.

email from Australia on 4 November 2007

Understanding that the world is round [from Australia]

In general I find the intelligent, flexible way TNTmips interprets user input astonishing. No other GIS software could accept and interpret "-150.5", "W 150.5", "W 149 1.5" and "-149 90.0" etc correctly. These TNTmips features save valuable hours every week, besides making the experience so much more enjoyable - like driving a fully computerized luxury car with leather trim.

I look forward to upgrading my TNTmips licenses and benefiting from these improvements. I note the expanded support for KMZ/KML.

email from Australia on 6 November 2007

Switching to TNTmips on a Mac [from Australia]

I have just ordered TNTmips Professional from your New Zealand reseller. This is to be used on a MacPro [Intel with 8 processors] under OS X 10.4.10. I am a GIS specialist who is moving from the ENVI/IDL environment to TNTmips because I have been very unhappy with ENVI/IDL support (will not fix bugs that I have been reporting for years!!) and their lack of progress in moving their software to 64 bit on OS X. TNTmips already runs under 64 bit on PowerPC G5 but when is it to be released in 64 bit under Leopard?

[The current release 2007:73 of TNTmips was available in October 2007 for download and use with OS X 10.5.]

email from Australia on 9 November 2007

Structural geology [from Australia]

Good to hear that Randy has been working on the Dip-strike tool to work with massive DEMs. This should help getting the structural geos [geologists] onboard. I've been discussing this with senior management.

[This response is after being informed that MicroImages has updated the TNT interactive toolscript that uses an image and a DEM to map out Strike/Dip [see www.microimages.com/documentation/cplates/73strkdip.pdf.pdf]. This script can now use and mix huge tileset geographic or map projected rasters as input. As a result the script can use any georeferenced image with MicroImages' 90-meter SRTM global, 20-meter Canada, or 10-meter USA as the DEM layer.]

email from Australia on 8 November 2007

GIS and global mineral exploration [from Australia]

The proliferation and rate of change with which we can access and obtain datasets via the www continues to enthuse me with the possibilities it presents. We are living through amazing times with a complete revolution taking place around us. Who could have predicted where Google would have got to from 'simple' word searches to developments into spatial searches and detailed global satellite imagery? As I have been telling colleagues recently, we now have the ability to see every near surface mineral deposit in the world, both discovered and undiscovered. The challenge for us is now to be able to identify them!! The digital age means that we can easily be data rich but information poor. The ability to speak various languages and interact with different cultures - to be open minded - is as important in the GIS world as it is in our World. Anything you can do to link TNT with Arc will increase your profile and with it my ability to promote the specialized and leading edge functionalities in your products. The isolation Policy of countries rarely works (look at North Korea or Albania!) so whatever can be done to communicate and integrate could be positive - must be two way. [continues with further comments on their corporate uses of Google Earth]

[These comments relate to the recent announcement that version 2008:74 of the TNT analysis products can now add maps and images published by any Web Map Service (WMS) or ArcIMS as layers in a view where they are combined with local geodata layers. Using a TNT product to select from hundreds of thousands of maps and images published on the web by these services is very similar to the selection of any local layer in a variety of geodata formats. The catalog or index of the layers available from these Web Map Services is maintained and updated by a web search process run continuously by MicroImages. Each time the WMS or ArcIMS layer selection option is chosen, the TNT products access the current catalog at microimages.com to search these web published maps and image layers by title or geographic coverage.]

email from Poland on 16 November 2007

Mosaic speed is impressive! [from Poland]

PS: the speed of the new mosaic process is impressive!!!!!!!!

[from a faculty member of a Polish University using TNTmips for teaching and research and refers to the use of the new mosaic process in the development version 2008:74 of TNTmips]

email from Croatia on 20 November 2007

Suitable for Education [from Croatia]

For education (Remote Sensing) at the Faculty and for research. We have a full version of TNTmips, but TNTlite is very suitable for education at the University.

email from the USA on 20 November 2007

Recommended by others [from USA]

I invite you to look carefully and impartially at both these GIS suites [GRASS and IDRISI]. In particular, look at the OS/X and Google functionality being developed for TNTmips. Look at its analytical, geospatial database management and visualization capabilities. Evaluate the number of different data and GIS file types it can handle. Once you do, I believe you will see how very capable TNTmips is. I leave it to you to rate them against each other. I believe you will come to the conclusion that TNTmips is inferior to none, perhaps superior to all. ... Even at $6000 [for a floating license, $5000 for fixed] it's less than half the price of and much more capable than an initial, base ESRI installation, and WAY cheaper to maintain, update and upgrade. And, licenses "float" between operating systems.

[This was extracted from email to another organization with a copy to MicroImages.]

email from South Africa on 19 February 2008

Terrific software! [from South Africa]

Didn't know about that... TNTmips continues to surprise me, terrific software!

email from Canada on 29 February 2008

Getting the right answer [from Canada]

As Always, this is exactly what I was looking for. It works perfectly!

Thank you, thank you, thank you ...

[responding to advice from MicroImages Support on how to accomplish an objective]

From MicroImages Resellers

email from an International Reseller on 15 March 2007

100,000s of spatial objects are easy

I have a directory with approximately 8000 rvc files in it each of which contain a variable number of raster objects from 2 to 3 to several hundred.

email from an International Reseller on 19 April 2007

TNTmips blew them away

In other news I had a great meeting today with [a company], and TNTmips really blew them away. It is an absolute pleasure when we can finally get in front of a full, company wide software replacement as they are currently using Intergraph's GeoMedia pro, Microstation and about 4 graphics softwares to do their jobs - a job that TNTmips can easily do as one piece of software. The key factor for them was interoperability with Oracle, which I demonstrated live and worked like a treat. It was a brave move - not something I had done before - so I was chuffed when it worked smoothly.

FAX from an International Reseller on 19 June 2007

Wonderful

Multifile raster capability is wonderful as well as SRTM import and hole filling.

email from an International Reseller, summer 2007

Interest Growing

The [a name] fair has been quite a success for us. First of all it is worth to mention that for the first time our booth was as large as the booth of ESRI. In the past ESRI used to cover around 15 to 20 sq m on the [fair's] floor and more than 300 sq m at the [exposition], while we always book 5 sq m for the [fair] (like ESRI did this year) and up to 18 sq m at the [exposition]. Their booth has been empty of visitors and staff most of the time, no lights, no [language] materials. Quite good for us. See attached materials.

We have had some promising discussions with people already using Geomedia and ESRI products. And we have had a great feedback from those already using TNT products and know the ESRI products as well. Most of them prefer to do their work with TNT products!

On the [fair] we have met with [2 client names] who are both heavily using the TNTmips SAL [Special Academic License]. It is [a name] who now wants to extend the TNTmips SAL to 10 seats. One reason is the free use of TNTserver.

The interest in the TNT products seems to grow. One reason might be that after more than 10 years of GIS usage in authorities and engineering companies the staff is more experienced and can now understand what TNT really offers.

[The expositions noted here are a national fair and European exposition focused upon geospatial activities.]

email from an International Reseller, 23 July 2007

Describing a project

If the system becomes as extensive as planned, I would see us needing one TNTserver per operating region, which would mean 7 more as a minimum and a number of other product licenses depending on what level the operators are asked to go to. We are getting our client interface under control and enjoying the simplicity of communication with TNTserver. The stability of TNTserver [version 2006:72] is superb by the way, especially with the challenges we present it with at times. As well as drawing layers from the TNTserver machine, we are also running a PostGIS server alongside it where we are storing certain derived layers for reporting purposes. Basically that means we dump attribute data from derived layers to PostGIS and then use our interface or crystal reports (an in house version they run) to turn those into usable reports for the team. The main reason I raise this is because if ever your team needed congratulations on a part of the TNTmips package, it has to be for the PostGIS import/export functions. We have never, ever had an issue with that function, it simply works every time. It probably sounds a little trite, but we pass a lot of data, typically in exports, through this function without incident. That sort of usability is why we love this software.

[describes part of a project being installed by the Reseller]

email from a USA Reseller, 12 September 2007

Great documentation

I just wanted to let you know that I received my new license code and everything works fine. I also read the latest paper on watershed accuracy. Please pass on my complements to the author - it's really a great document.

[refers to a TechGuide entitled Terrain Operations: DEM Quality Determines Watershed Accuracy]

email from an International Reseller, 2 October 2007

Academic license use

The use of the SAL [Special Academic License] at [a University]: Mr [a name] and in addition [a name] from the faculty of geodesy are heavily using the SAL license. It was the idea of Mr. [a name] to extend the SAL from 6 to 10 seats. And we have met a few students using TNT. One of them stated that ESRI might be quite nice, but he is preferring to use TNTmips over ESRI.

email from a International Reseller, 5 October 2007

You are legend

You are an absolute legend, that has worked a treat and is a nice tidy way of dealing with it. Thanks very much for the help - brilliant as always.

email from a International Reseller, 25 February 2008

Doing it faster

Thanks very much for that [help]! I have had a look at the colour plate and it definitely clears up the Image Pipeline tool for me. I didn't realize I could process other formats than the TNTmips RVC. This will be very useful for our purposes as our AT software [some other product] uses IMG files and our scanner outputs TIFF files. The Image Pipeline will enable us to dodge and change the image format at the same time [in a script]. This will save us about half the labor time that we currently spend on image correction prior to AT, I will download the latest V7.4 as soon as it becomes available and try the fixed feature out.

["to dodge" means applying the Locally Adaptive Contrast class in the script to the scanned image read in TIFF and output to IMG]

From TNTlite users

email from USA on 10 April 2007

Easy to use [from USA]

From the very little exposure I've had to TNT, I get the feeling that it is much easier to use than Arc-anything.

email from Australia on 8 May 2007

Academic recommendation [from Australia]

I am a student at the Canberra Institute of Technology and I will use this software in my classes because my teacher says it is better than MapInfo.

email from Croatia on 20 November 2007

Academic recommendation [from Croatia]

For education (Remote Sensing) at the Faculty and for research. We have a full version of TNTmips, but TNTlite is very suitable for education at the University.

Network Chatter

posted on a blog

Painless WMS for your Mac Dashboard

I've had the MicroImages Dashboard Widget installed on my MacBook Pro for some time, but today, jazzed with my new understanding of WMS from FOSS4G, I put it through its paces. It rocks. It takes the pain away from building WMS requests. Most importantly, it makes it easy for an unskilled user to put any WMS layer into Google Earth.

The widget set is 5 linked widgets that query WMS servers for layers and capabilities, build the requests, preview the layer. One widget presents a list of known WMS servers, grouped by theme, provider, and reliability. Someone at MicroImages is apparently doing some editing and organizing, so that you aren't left with a list of dead links. A dynamic GUI lets you choose layers. Once you have your layers chosen, the toolkit will launch TNT (the MicroImages flagship GIS) or Google Earth with those layers enabled. Google should buy this from MicroImages and make it part of Google Earth.

Download the widgets from

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/information/tntmap.html.

A two-page overview is at

http://www.microimages.com/documentation/cplates/72TNTmapMacintosh.pdf.

Since Dashboard is a Macintosh-only technology, Windows users are out of luck.

I'll add that I am not a huge Dashboard fan. But this kit is one of the few really compelling Dashboard Widgets I've seen.

MicroImages does make a light version of their GIS available for free download. It runs on MS-Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. They also offer a standalone, supported X11 server for MS-Windows.

What the heck is WMS and why am I excited? WMS (Web Mapping Service) is a standards-based way for a server to provide an image of a map, in a cartographically correct and platform-independent way, so that it can be incorporated into a client mapping app. Paul Ramsey of Refractions Research publishes an automatically-derived list of WMS servers. The standard is defined by OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium).

Why select TNTmips?

from Graham in England who was not using TNTmips

The following is a discussion of this question on the Internet.

As TNT isn't that well known I wondered if users could find the time to explain why they use TNTmips.

Is it part of a GIS toolkit, or is as much of an "all in one" program as it appears.

My areas of interest are natural resources and ecology, based in the UK, and the GIS programs I have some familiarity with are ArcView, MapInfo, IDRISI, ILWIS and Manifold.

I am beginning to make more use of GIS and reviewing my options for updating my software, particularly as I am moving away from Windows toward a Mac/Linux mix.

I know this is a rather open ended question, but would appreciate some comments.

Many Thanks.

to Graham from Stuart in New Zealand

Hi Graham,

We've been using TNTmips for a few years now, and there are many reasons why it's our platform of choice, and why we wanted to represent the software in our part of the world. Here's a few of the key ones:

1. Cost of ownership. TNTmips is excellent value for money to start with, but it's the ongoing cost that is really important to companies like ourselves. We came from an ESRI and MapInfo backgrounds and as an independent business that needs to run lean and hungry to manage growth, restrictive licensing and high-cost maintenance really hurts. We commonly deliver systems as web services, and if we did so using other products, the more users we have, the more connection licenses we get stung with and the higher the cost of ownership becomes. We also need functionality on tap as every system we build needs facets we've never built before. With other products this would mean having to purchase and maintain new extensions. Often those extensions are 3rd party and that in turn raises the time cost in support and ultimately leads to higher cost of ownership. Likewise if we have to add extensions every time we build a new system, what's the return on investment of the original software? Not much is the short answer. Speaking from an Economic point of view, building a business with TNTmips, and the rest of the TNT suite, just makes good financial sense.

2. Support. Everyone needs it. In the past I have been involved with help desks for other GIS products and know very well how they are conducted in a way that drives sales rather than supporting users. When you have a support query, you want answers as soon as possible. In competing software houses you may call support and be told it will be looked into and two weeks later you receive a message to tell you it's a software flaw. Typically you may be told that if you wait for the next upgrade that will be in 6 months and will cost extra, or you can buy an extension that you mostly won't need now and it will fix the problem for just another six thousand dollars. That doesn't do you or your business any favors. On the other hand the support from MicroImages is quite phenomenal. We are at the opposite end of the clock to the MicroImages crew in our time zone and yet if we lodge a support query at the end of our day, there is detailed help when we arrive back in the office the next day. Furthermore, the support team really understands all facets of the software, and while there are specialists when needed, genuine help is never far away. For us however the best thing about MicroImages' support services is that they think hard about every query and when customers need functionality that could be added to the software and would benefit all users, it may be built in for the future. This type of support is very user focused, so for us as high traffic and platform oriented users the level of support available from TNTmips and the MicroImages team is many times better than anything we have ever experienced before and a core reason for using the products.

3. Flexibility. We are system integrators as much as anything, so we need software that can talk with anything. We are faced with obscure formats, unsupported databases, stubborn suppliers and all the things that go along with being data agnostic on a daily basis. When we look to build a solution for a client, we first do our homework on their business as a whole. Typically we have graphical packages, databases, cad systems, other spatial products, hardware based systems, mobile connectivity and sundry other systems in use that we need to pull together into one nice holistic system. TNTmips is like a universal translator in that it can understand and re-communicate to many different sectors. What's more, it can natively use data from 3rd party systems with ease, meaning that operators are in the box seat for dealing with data. It's very common for clients we take on to have invested huge money, and possibly backed the wrong horse, in certain products. From their perspective, they don't want to pull the pin on a large scale investment and want someone to make it work the way it always should have. If that means they have spent a million dollars on a non-relational database built in Visual Smalltalk for example, they will not be ultimately receptive to being told they can have a spatial system with all the extras as long as they change all their data to fit a new format that will work spatially but will also mean they can't communicate data back to suit their need. Of course TNTmips isn't just flexible in a data sense. As you are no doubt aware it's platform independent, has a small footprint for a complex software, is non modular so it expands in its delivery as your needs increase. Furthermore, when used in combination with TNTserver, can be used to deliver your data to end users without the need for multiple low usage software licenses. Flexibility is extremely important to us as technical people, and also to us as a business as it contributes greatly to the cost of ownership and return on investment as noted above.

4. Speed and power. TNTmips is fast. Lightning fast compared to many software's of this nature. We have massive databanks here and that data needs to be processed and moved automatically in many cases. Big data has always been a strength with TNTmips, and our internal benchmarks border on unbelievable at times. In running a very complex network analysis TNTmips did the job 322% faster than the next fastest GIS product for instance. Even then the benchmark on MapInfo was unfair against TNTmips as the other product simply couldn't produce the results as completely as TNTmips. In reality if the other product could have matched the functionality, the speed of operation would have made it impractical for production use. More notable than out-right speed is the sheer power of the software. Where else can you switch from Network analysis to basic cartography, to 3D CAD and then to HyperSpectral analysis without changing software. That is serious horsepower in anyone's language. Moreover since Mike and his team have been working on the underlying architecture, the processing power has grown greater still. There is a flyer in the MicroImages materials from some years ago that uses the tag line of 'Tools, not toys'. We believe that to be truer than ever with TNTmips in comparison to other products.

5. Evolution. TNTmips and the rest of the products in the MicroImages suite have evolved with us, our technologies and industry standards. When the spatial world moves, TNTmips moves with it. In fact often ahead of it. In something as simple as coordinate reference systems, our newest system (NZTM/NZGD2000) was available in TNTmips several years before it was in other products. We like to think we are at the cutting edge with some of our systems. The only reason we are is because TNTmips allows us to be and continues to evolve as fast as we operate.

One could wax lyrical about the virtues of the software all day, but the above represents what I see as the core reasons we chose this path. Its also why our clients come to use for outsourcing and custom applications - we have the flexibility that TNTmips affords us. I for one wouldn't choose anything else.

Stu

from Graham in England to Stuart in New Zealand

Many thanks for this detailed reply, it has to say a lot about the product that both you and Jack are willing to put this amount of time and effort into answering my questions. Its certainly food for thought, while I remain undecided on the best way forward for my GIS needs. Its certainly encouraged me to spend some serious time with TNTlite before making my final decision.

to Graham from Jack in the USA

I have been using TNTmips since 1989. At that time, it was a DOS-based program called MIPS (Map and Image Processing System). I had just taken a university teaching job at Fresno State after having been at JPL where a scientist like me was not allowed to do his or her own processing and programming. Eventually, it became a Windows (X-Windows) based package ... called TNTmips.

When paired with the free TNTlite program (which is great for students who need to have a GIS software package at home for doing homework), TNTmips in my educational lab was a perfect way to handle teaching and learning situations. TNTmips includes ALL of the processes that are now related to geospatial information handling:

- Raster data

- CAD data (not the same topology requirements as vector data)

- Vector data (with points, polylines, polygons, and more in ONE file)

- Database data (stand alone or as "attached" attributes to GIS elements

- Hyperspectral data (a special class of raster data ... hypercube format)

- Surface modeling tools

- Unsupervised and supervised classification tools

- A scripting language (SML) (that I use daily ... many written in just a few minutes for special purposes)

- Direct access to many external files: Raster, CAD, vector, database, text (and spreadsheets) files

Today, I am an independent consultant. I use TNTmips to serve all of my clients. I give guest lectures to university students and teach them, in the space of a 3-hour lab, how to use TNTlite to do a practical project ... from start to finish.

When MicroImages, Inc., added export to TNTview, then this $500 program could be used to export TNTlite-created objects to external files.

Other GIS software packages, which do what TNTmips does, cost much more than TNTmips. Many of them do not include all of the elements in the list above. TNTmips is a complete package.

TNTmips does not time out. You can, if you wish, use the purchased package for the rest of your life. Or, you can pay a small annual maintenance fee to keep it up to date.

And, when I call technical support at MicroImages, a live person always answers and quickly addresses my need for information or for changes to the software. Some of the processes now in TNTmips are ones that I created.

I now work mostly for commercial ag companies. They use TNTmips almost exclusively.

Even though I have had almost 20 years of experience with TNTmips, I don't use but a fraction of the total capabilities in it. And, I never found a GIS-processing need that could not be done with TNTmips. The extensive documentation on the MI Web site is all I need to learn how to do some new process ... new to me ... as I might need to know how to do for a specific new situation.

I have worked also in a GIS environment where many different GIS software packages were being used. TNTmips always was my "secret weapon" for solving development problems that arose ... ones that other software could not address.

Jack

from Graham in England to Jack in the USA

Many thanks for the detailed reply. I certainly like the completeness of the programs and the downloadable tutorials are impressive in their coverage. TNTlite is also extremely useful to fully explore the program.

From a teaching point of view however, I am using ILWIS as I cannot develop any realistic ecological projects that fit in the size constraints. Which is a shame as it is a wonderful teaching resource.

Any way thanks again, for the useful comments.

to Graham from Balen in India

TNTmips is a commercial software and not a shareware (like ILWIS), so I could not appreciate the word 'shame' in this context, however to add my comments on "Why TNT?" my observations as a user are

a) It doesn't have innumerable plug-ins or add-ons, hence not very confusing as to which to buy? [a marketing ploy]

b) Pricing is fixed as a policy, open to public and not a variable factor depending upon prospect type as I observe with other vendors.

c) The tech-support is an "icon". Just click it and it serves your purpose, trust me it is one of the best in the industry.

It is unfortunate that TNTmips may not be known to many, the reason of which needs to be researched but as we all know in Industry, "being technically good" and "high market share" is not always directly proportional. [PC vs Mac]

from Graham in England to Balen in India

Thanks for the further comments. I think you maybe misinterpreted my meaning of 'shame'. This wasn't a criticism just a comment on the limitations of the Lite version, which prevented me from using it for teaching.

As an aside, I didn't think ILWIS had ever been shareware, the last I looked at prices it was the same price as ArcView/MapInfo. It did however go Open Source earlier this year.

And of course I fully agree with you about the lack of correlation between quality and market share.