Customer Reviews

National Geographic Back Roads Explorer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I bought this for desert and mountain 'off road' exploration and camping. In that capacity, I am completely satisfied with its seemless scrolling, map labelling and GPS downloading features. I can plan my routes, mark and print the highly detailed maps, and have it ready to go. Upon return, I can add small non-descript roads, trails, mine locations, etc that I find in the field via my GPS. I used to spend 20 to 30 dollars for paper topo's for outback trips. Now, I'll literally save hundreds with this software. And because this software doesn't require mega 3D computer capabilities, I actually installed this software in an old Pentium 1, with a 130 meg processer, and it works flawlessly! Now, I have put my old, and (formerly) no longer used computer to work in the garage for my trip planning. Something I couldn't do with the Regional State Series because of it's computer system requirements. The only potential drawback to this software is the lack of level 5 mapping. This software actually goes to 1:25,000 scale, but the only difference I can ascertain from pure 'level 5' is the missing gridlines and details. This system includes elevation cross section detail, and for my purposes, that makes up for any missing level 5 details. Comparatively, Delormes Atlas's are 1:150,000 scale, this software is full level 4 or 1:100,000 scale... and 1;25,000 as well, it's awesome. And if you really need to get closer, you can zoom the area you want. Overall, if you must have the level 5, which is 1:25,000 scale with level 5 detail, get the regional or state series sofware. But for the price, with 50 states of seemless 1:100,000 topo, and the system requirements, this software is exceptional. Tred Lightly!

This product packages scans of the smaller scale, 1:500,000 and 1:100,000 USGS maps for all 48 contiguous states and 1:250,000 for Alaska and Hawaii on 17 CDs. It takes its user interface from the hiker oriented National Geographic state series. While probably fine for planning hiking trips on the state series 1:24,000 scale maps, the program offers little in the way of tools that would be useful to a back-roads explorer.
The main value it does offer is in providing reasonably detailed topographic maps for the entire 50 states at a very fair price. Though that has its quirks, the program makes it fairly easy to navigate the maps. One quirk is that to get to Alaska and Hawaii, you press the "Information and Help" toolbar button, select "Start with a new map", press "GO", then click on the state you want, you will then be prompted to load the CD.
The 17 CDs are only a minor inconvenience in most cases. Each CD contains 2 or more states, so the state you want you only really have to deal with one CD once you've installed the software. More conveniently, you can copy some or all of them to your hard drive assuming you have about 8G free. The program allows you to configure both where you install it and where it should look for maps.
Beyond the basic maps, the purpose I wanted it for was route planning when "exploring back roads" and here is falls down. Yes you can do it but you have to do it free hand and the input method makes this tedious at best. Once you have done all that work, the end result is not particularly useful. The basic problem is that the routing tool is not in anyway linked the road overlay. Consequently you cannot get a list of route instructions from it. Another problem is that while it shows lots of roads, the road data is very basic. Very disappointing overall.
So if you like maps and are looking for a relatively inexpensive way to obtain and store the 1:100,000 USGS topo maps for the entire 50 states this is probably a very good value. It's fun to poke around the maps just to see what's there.
If you are a hiker then you should go straight the NG State series and buy the state you need. The scale of the maps here are too small to be much use for hikers except for very general planning.
For backroad exploring, I think you are better off with an already printed map book like DeLorme or Benchmark assuming it is available for your state. It you want backroad route planning software, this is not it.

I bought this program so that I can plot road bike routes and generate elevation profiles of those routes. The Back Roads Explorer does that well if the route is entered by tracing on the map with the mouse. The profiles are generated well and there is a link from the profile back to the map; clicking on the profile will put a marker on the map route, which will tell you where to expect that big climb. Map and elevation profile can then be exported to an image (JPG, GIF, etc.) file or printed out or stored to a PDA. Beware, there is no way to automatically generate directions from the route.

One of the reasons for a three-star rating is that the CD media was somehow incompatible with my CD drive. It took several tries just to install the program. After that it would take a very long time to load data from map CDs. The program would sometimes freeze and had to be restarted. It would freeze 100% of the time if my route required data CDs to be switched. To fix this I had to copy National Geographic CDs to the hard drive (which took multiple attempts because of CD read errors) and burn it on CDR media.

Another reason for three stars is that the GPS route import is very rudimentary. It may work better when the GPS unit is connected directly to the computer (I haven't tried), but only text file format is supported by file import tool. The text file format is arbitrary and may not directly import into the Back Roads Explorer. In my case, it will not directly import the text file generated by Garmin eTrex.

I received this as a gift and what a dissapointment. Magellan has a topo product (mapsend) that works well with all gps's. All in one CD. It doesn't use images for the topo, just a simple map format. This product however is very inferior and offers even less detail than the other topos plus it can't be downloaded to gps's. I am very dissapointed and I continue to try to find out what features it excels at given that it has 17 CD's. It has to do something with all of that right? As it turns out it is just a poor design that was used as an attempt to get that paper topo map feel. It seems they just scanned in all the topo maps for the US, no wonder it took so many cd's. Don't waste your money.

Bought this at the Apple Store on an impulse and boy am I sorry. Ditto what the other reviewers said plus there's no hardcopy documentation and what is on the .pdf help file is laughable. Here's another thing, on the USGS 1:100K level, the maps consistently DO NOT line up and are often cut off. C'mon guys, how hard is it to scan in a map and line them up? If you're happy with 1:100K or 1:500K,or need a fine quality state/county map or even a road map with elevation info, then this might be for you, but don't expect to go hiking with it.

I've used versions of topo mapping software from Topo!, Garmin, DeLorme and National Geographic.

I use maps for hiking and the quality in the 17-CD set is very good. Garmin MapSource has the same territory in 3-CDs and the detail in much more minimal.

Back Roads with version 4.2.3 of Topo! from Nat Geo's website is one of the better products out there. You can adjust the shading factor, get 3D view, and send co-ordinates to your GPS.

I did have to contact support to realize there was a new version, but they got back to me in 24 hours. I had a tech support question on Garmin MapSource and got no response from their tech support.

The only downside of Back Roads for me was that it can only upload waypoints and not maps to my Garmin GPS. Otherwise I would use it exclusively.

Back Roads allows you to enter your co-ordinates in UTM, unlike MapSource. The drawing and route tools are better. The elevation profile is another feature that is not there in MapSource.

I read the complaint about elevation lines not meeting up, but you get the same problem with paper USGS maps.

Back Roads also prints nice maps that you can slide into a plastic sheet for hiking. Nat Geo also makes a paper that prints sturdy topo maps.

You can get topos and aerial photos from the web. The USGS site [http://nationalmap.gov/gio/viewonline.html] has links to 7 map servers. Microsoft Terra Server is a free one that can be a good tool. The print capabilities of Back Roads/Topo! are still better though.

Back Roads/Topo! isn't perfect but it's the best tool of the 4 mapping softwares I've purchased. If it sent maps to my Garmin GPS I would give it a 5.

I had this software working once on an older computer, but it functioned poorly, i.e. froze up and crashed intermittantly. I recently installed it on a newer computer (Dell Dimension 9100, Window XP Professional) and it won't open a map, even after several reinstalls of the latest download from their Web site. Save yourself the trouble and frustration. Use Google Earth to get a close view, and buy good maps from a reputable source. The creaters and sellers of this software should be ashamed of themselves.

Which would you prefer? 17 different CDs to keep track of and constantly switch in and out of your computer, or 1 or 2 DVDs? This product may be good, but I made a mistake by not waiting until it came out on DVD.

I found this easy enough to use. The only drawback was that I was not able to use my GPS. I bought a new laptop and it didn't have a serial connection for the GPS. I did use the software to map the route the rally race would take and find the best places to watch. The only drawback is that it would have been fun to get a 3D flyby graphic. I know it wouldn't be extremely accurate but it might have helped visualize the grades of the elevation changes.

I received this as a Christmas gift and had to return. Was not compatible and couldn't load on a brand new computer. Software gave no ability to customize the installation. No help from the Nat. Geo website support. Went thru the entire install and at last bar.....sorry, disc couldn't finalize hit finish to continue and it kicks you out completely to start over again.

From the other poor reviews, I'd have to say I'm glad I returned.