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The following are some of the comments to MicroImages during the last quarter exactly as written except for the [edit] replacements to keep them anonymous. Obviously many more comments, some negative, are received by MicroImages by voice and can not be accurately reproduced here.

A single written negative written response was received during the quarter and is not included. It was to the effect that the client is unhappy that they had a subscription for TNTmips through V5.00, considering the lack of new GIS and IPS features introduced during the previous year. Clearly the perception of the value of the new features added quarterly is of course related to the individual requirements of each client.

From an International Client.

"By the way do you guys know that TNTMIPS Ver 4.9 has been recommended by UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) as the image processing system to use in the world? I would support that and go further by saying that it should also be used as the GIS and CAD system."

From an International Client (still using V4.80).

"Further, I would like to express my satisfaction with the TNT-MIPS programme. With the extent of possibilities it offers and the price at which all this comes, TNT-MIPS is obviously in a class of its own. Congratulations."

"One down note nevertheless. The evolution of the software is so fast that your manuals and online help can't follow the pace. Too often, the operation description and pictures in your manuals are clearly pre-historic and too often, online help displays the message "Help text not found". Luckily, the programme is so intuitive that I don't have to resort to manuals and online help all that often."

MicroImages acknowledged in the MEMO accompanying the V5.00 TNT products that the on-line documentation and Application Notes are falling behind the rapid pace of the addition of new software features. This is especially true recently since the user interface is continuing to have a major face lift (e.g. toolbars) which rapidly change the appearance and procedures of every process. This makes the processes easier to use but immediately alters a large portion of the 4000 pages of written material associated with the TNT products, and its going to take a long time to catch it up.

The larger problem is that good scientific writers with a technical background are hard to find in Nebraska and are valued at MicroImages on a par with our software engineers. If any reader and user of TNTmips feels that they have talents in this direction they might wish to discuss them with the appropriate parties at MicroImages. MicroImages Press staff have considerable impact on the design of the TNT products and how they operate. Those who do scientific writing well find it to be a very creative and professionally rewarding activity producing very tangible daily results from their efforts.

From an International Representative.

"Saw [University client] this afternoon. He is very happy with TNT v5.0!"

From an International Representative.

"Thanks for the response. MicroImages has always been great in responding to user input!"

From an International Representative.

"I wish to place an order for TNTdemo. The client is [a name] for whom we have done a lot of work in the past. [a name] has had much correspondence with our contact in relation to TNTmips and it's superiority over A/I [Arc/Info]. The [a name] owns both A/I and Errr [Ermapper]. They are particularly frustrated at the cost and inefficiency of using A/I, having spent considerable money on consultants."

From a U.S. Client.

"Thanks for the great training. It was just what we needed to complete our transition from DOS MIPS to TNTMIPS. [a name] did a wonderful job while he was here. Everyone who had an opportunity to attend was very pleased with how it went."

From an International Representative.

[referring to a GIS publication] "The first issue mentions a marriage between ERMaper (image processing) and Genasys (GIS). We are highlighting this forced marriage as a weakness as against the strength offered by the integration in TNTmips."

"Awareness generally about TNTmips must be increasing. In [a nation] as we have recently been approached by several software integration and computer hardware Companies to join with them in tenders for GIS installation using TNTmips."

From an International Client.

"I wanted to let you know that on Friday 26th [May] I spent the whole day printing A4 layouts on our Laserjet 4M, with only one error - one of those "specified files does not exist" ones. NO application error at all, and I was using zoom function with vector points displayed as bar charts, which used to give a lot of trouble."

"It was a really urgent set of maps and plots we had to prepare for a presentation to the board of [company name], and TNTmips came through with flying colours. I was really pleased, especially after all that trouble I had in March."

"I have also spent quite a bit of time digitizing, and Vector/Edit [the old process] seems to be extremely stable. (I had a zero divide error after trying to use the Snap button, but that may have been operator error)."

From an Internet Exchange

[Question as posted]

"Hi all"

"I am looking for people using PCI or ER Mapper or Intergraph MGE in remote sensing processing. I would like to know if these softwares have a direct input data process for satellite images (able to read the images formats (SPOT), and if they include rectification processes using fields relative to ephemeris and altitude."

"Thanks"

[Answer from a MicroImages' client]

"Last year I purchased TNTmips. It was the best decision I ever made."

"Yes, it reads satellite data from tape."

"It has an excellent and innovative georeferencing module that allows one to interactively match an image to vector or raster layers, by overlaying or displaying in different windows. It applies projections at the same time as affine and polynomial transformation. It does have photo distortion correction capabilities, but I haven't used them so I can't tell you much about that."

"It has by far the broadest range of capabilities of any GIS / Image Processing System I have used, being a full Vector GIS (including 3D), Raster GIS, Image Processing System and also has CAD and relational database capabilities. I have used ER Mapper, ERDAS, PCI, MicroBrian, DISIMP, ILWIS, ARC/INFO, IDRISI and MAP. TNTmips leaves them all far behind. For the first time, I don't need to move data from one package to an other or write my own programs to do things, TNTmips does it all."

"It has a great user friendly interface and runs under windows or UNIX."

From a new client after TNTdemo expired.

"Please FAX authorization. We like the product and thanks for the demo!"

From a U.S. client.

"Over the past 4 or 5 years, personnel in our offices and our associates (USFWS) have been using MIPS and TNT-MIPS. Early on we were often frustrated with MIPS and the conversion to TNT-MIPS was somewhat traumatic. Nevertheless, we are quite pleased with the performance of the most recent versions of the TNT-MIPS. We have, over the years, had four temporary personnel on staff to assist in various projects. All these people "mastered" the use of MIPS or TNT-MIPS in a relative short time despite the fact that only one of these people had training in GIS. Two of these people have continued on in the GIS field and have reported back that they much prefer TNT-MIPS over the system that their present employer was using (ERDAS). Both these people made recommendations to their employer that they acquire TNT-MIPS. This speaks highly of the quality of your product. Keep up the good work."

From a new client after TNTdemo expired.

"Thank you for the TNT MIPS demo package. The MicroImages' fully functional demo, complete with documentation, was extremely helpful. I was able to learn and use TNT MIPS on our Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, Pentium system within days from installation. I Tried TNT MIPS on the Microsoft NT and was very disappointed with the performance of NT. However, TNT MIPS operation on the windows platform was virtually trouble-free."

"In our line of work [environmental consulting], georeferencing historical aerial photographs to vector or CAD objects, and then exporting to various file formats, is very important to site investigations. TNT MIPS georeferencing module was easy to use and efficient compared to ERDAS Imagine. In fact, comparable image processing packages were not only twice the cost of TNT MIPS, but also not available for Windows 3.11. The instability of Windows NT - which we patched thanks to your internet server - and the high cost of products, like ERDAS Imagine, for the PC made anything other than TNT MIPS undesirable."

"Another satisfying feature of TNT MIPS was its ability to plot full-color output directly to our ENCAD Novajet plotter. We were surprised at the software's capability to import TARGA or TIFF files, and plot them close to true color without manual adjustments. Other Windows-based programs could not seem to match the quality of the TNT MIPS output."

"Thanks again for the demo package. Thanks also to the support staff for not using an automated answering device. I appreciate talking to real, knowledgeable people for software support. We are looking forward to using TNT MIPS. Enclosed, please find the demo key needed for our refund."

From an International Representative.

"[A client site] is running now a SGI Indigo 2 R4400 200Mhz, 128 MB memory, 2 GB + 4 GB on Hard disks, 20" monitor and XL 24 bits display board. It's like driving a plane!, it runs TNTmips really fast."

From an International Client.

Some explanation of the following material is in order. The Forestry Department in a Canadian Province is in the process of determining how to organize their GIS operations. The Province has about Area Offices under this Department for the management of its forests. Recently the Province and this Department has made a big deal about the need to move their decision processes and management initiatives out of their Capitals bureaucracy and into the hands of its staff in their Area Offices.

In order to determine how the Province should proceed to organize their forestry GIS operations, a staff member in the main office with GIS experience was asked to prepare a consulting report. This report was prepared without significant input from the Area Offices. The following is the response to the recommendations of this report which was prepared by an Area Office manager who began to use TNTmips about 6 months ago.

To the best of our knowledge, MicroImages has never talked to either of these individuals. The TNTmips users involved work only indirectly with MicroImages through a MicroImages reseller. However, the staff member who prepared the original report has just recently requested information about the TNT products.

The missing numbers in the Area Officer's response below contained information about the specific needs of the writer's organization and are not related to TNTmips or any other product.

2. "Contrary to your statement, there is already the formation of "camps" supporting different GIS applications. There are a number of very usable applications in use (MIPS [TNTmips] is our own selection) in various offices."

4. "The arguments for acquisition of Arc/Info on a Sun SPARC workstation are not convincing. [this area office] has been informed that Arc/Info is old, outdated, expensive, difficult to learn and use, and does not deliver its promised potential. [not by MicroImages] We have been told there is no truly functioning Arc/Info system in Western Canada, and it has been my personal experience that industry is abandoning use of this system generally in favor of alternate applications. The acquisition of a GIS heavy system should be done only after a thorough analysis of the [Province's] future job needs and information requirements. [heavy appears to refer to any workstation based system as contrasted to desktop PC based approach] This has not been done to our knowledge. Should such an exercise be completed (we would like to be a participant) and it is determining a GIS heavy system is necessary, then considerable analysis of competing systems should be done to select the most appropriate one. We do not believe Arc/Info would survive such a process."

5. "Note that a digitizing table to us represents old technology. There are more current and accurate means of capturing spatial data than such a subjective means (GPS, geo-referenced ortho-rectified photos)."

7. "We disagree with the concept of a dedicated GIS analyst, as this conflicts with your base objective of [avoiding] segregating GIS from its users. All staff must be capable of using whatever system is selected, or it will not be used at all eventually."

9. "Unlike your chosen Arc/Info system. [this area office] has major problems with the 8 month training program for one chosen GIS analyst [for each area office]. This is elitism and flies in the face of the absolute requirement for a completely democratic system. We do not believe it will be possible to pay these people the market rate for salary, and if we did, they would be paid more than the Regional Director. [this hits where it hurts the most!] It will be impossible to hold these people for any length of time."

10. "The proposed selection of MapInfo and ArcView software as the GIS light standards is not acceptable. There has not been a complete evaluation of all alternate systems. We remain convinced in the inherent superiority of MIPS [i.e. TNTmips] for photo analysis and map making and have committed C$30,000 [US$21,000] in its acquisition, hardware, and support. We are in addition running four major ortho-photography programs this fiscal year to demonstrate MIPS uses. We will not willingly cease this program given our level of investment to date. We believe the [a report from another Province] was correct in its recommendations that regional offices be encouraged to find their own unique solutions to their needs. A uniform system pressed onto field offices by outside agencies has less chance of staff commitment and eventual success than one bought into by local staff. This is what empowerment really is all about!"

From an International Client.