Customer Reviews

National Geographic TOPO! Weekend Explorer 3D (San Francisco Bay Area, Big Sur, Napa Valley)

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

 

 

This software is great! I've used it for 5 trips now throughout the Las Vegas area. Mostly out at Red Rocks, Lake Mead and Valley of Fire. As soon as Mt. Charleston thaws out, that will be the next destination.

Features I like:
1.Multiple views from broad general overviews of southern Nevada to highly detailed 7.5 USGS spec maps that I can really plan a trip with.
2. Transferring waypoints to and from my GPS.
3. Route making ability allows me to project and plot routes.
4. Routes are measured by distance and profile grade. I can see if a route I planned is too steep or not down to a percentage of a grade.
5. Photo/Note tool allows me to chronicle my travels on the software and save the maps for later reference.
6. Print/Export capabilities allow me to print out the part of the maps I want for my trips and allows me to save them as JPEGS to send to fellow hikers. Also can send projected hiking itineraries to friends in case of an emergency.
7. You can download the CD map content to your hard drive so you don't need the disk every time you use the software.

Features I don't like:
1. Some of the maps used by the USGS for this area haven't been updated since 1982, so the water level around Lake Mead is not accurate. It makes trip planning out there more difficult because you always end up in the drink on the map.
2. The route making tool is a little tricky to get the hang of. They should have made this tool easier to use.
3. Anytime you change options on the 3D portion of the map, you have to reload that feature; it just doesn't update on the fly.

1. I first tried these electronic topo maps when they first came on the market years ago; actually when the current NatGeo maps were owned via the "Topo" company. I was very disappointed in that product and thus didn't utilize any cpu based mapping application for many years. But with the nice slick advertising of the current NatGeo maps, I decided to check out this product.

2. Bottomline, cpu based topo products still stink. The maps are not detailed enough, it's still moderately slow (but not bad), and the bottomline is, for a place like the bay area (ie basically urban territory), you're better off just getting a decent hiking book or paper topo maps; you'll actually have more helpful information that way. Perhaps in the next generation of electronic topo maps things will change, but forget this product.

I purchased this product to use with my GPS for trailriding. The five levels of zoom help tremendously when deciding where to take my horse. An added bonus is this application seems to allow me to open a fifth level of zoom with my State series which supports only four levels. I'm very happy with my purchase and have passed along this bonus information to my friends that have the State series.

Unbelievable. 20 years ago this might have been decent. In 2011 it's an embarrassment. I purchased this so I could do BWCA route planning. I naively assumed it would allow me to use the cursor to draw a rectangle or square for zooming in on. This would be perfect, as it would allow me to frame a large area and give me enough detail to see the best lake-to-lake route from one side of an area to the other. Instead, Topo! presents me with five preset levels for zooming: a several state "reference" map; a few thousand square mile "reference" map; a 500k map; a 100k map; a 7.5' map. Since we are actually in the computer age and computers now have decent graphics capabilities, why am I presented with 5 predetermined levels, all of which are absolutely useless for route planning? And it's not that I'm a novice. I've done about 40 trips in the BWCA, Quetico and Crownland, including one 36 and two 21 day trips. Also, when most people are used to grabbing and dragging to reorient an image or to expose an offscreen part of an image, Topo! decides to reinvent a square wheel by having the map "travel" in response to a click after selecting the "travel tool" on the menu bar. Why? Lastly, the jacekt for the cd proudly says this is for the "Boundary Waters", but the included maps HAVE NO PORTAGES!
I can't wait to take this piece of garbage back to REI and tell them how appallingly worthless it is. I am very seldom so harsh with a review, but pc sofware that simply mimics paper and then omits one of an area's most essential bits of information (portage location and length) should cost 30 cents, not $30. I give this one star only because the reviewing process does not allow 0.

I like this software overall and some of NatGeo's maps. I would have given it 5 stars if NatGeo had not been so tight with the map data. You get all of Maryland beyond Baltimore 3.5 hours West of Baltimore (almost 200 miles!)but once over the Bay Bridge (about 40 miles) there is little of the Eastern Shore beyond the actual shoreline. There are a lot of fantastic Parks and great Rivers just a bit further East and still in Maryland but NatGeo didn't want to give up the extra quads to include these areas since they also include Delaware. Shame on you NatGeo! Cheap and greedy of you. I would have gladly paid a few extra bucks to have the MD's Eastern Shore and the Delaware Shore included with the DC/Balto region. Also, the maps are pretty old--1970's. I'd like to see NatGeo put a little more effort into this one.

To get full use out of TOPO! you really need to install it on a laptop and have a GPS connected. I have neither.

What it is good for, however, is amateur radio and other 2-way radio operators, who want to get elevation profiles from wherever they are to the mountaintop repeaters or other portable or mobile stations they are talking to. In other words, to see how blocked their line-of-sight is or will be.

This product might be great, I would never know. I paid $80 for it and it didn't come with the disc to install it. I guess the worker in China was having a bad day that day. I tried on numerous attempts to contact the company, but was deferred to leave a message on a machine that nobody checks. You can't reach anybody at their customer service. I highly recommend not buying this product.