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One of our customers wrote to his friends (we couldn't have said it better):
FOR THE INFORMATION OF ALL YOU hikers, and bikers, and bird peepers, and mountain climbers, and off-roaders, and no-roaders, and prospectors, and ghost towners, and happy campers, and cliff-dwelling explorers, and elephant (butte) hunters, and pot hunters, and photographers, and fishers, and indian scouts and non-indian scouts, and miners, and petroglyph finders, and pilots, and back-packers, and horse backers, and sometime astronomers, and all you other general outdoor Arizona scallywags, and tourists.
If you have a treasured hord of 7.5 minute USGS, Topographic maps, (purchased for $6.00 each) like I do -- the idea of getting 64 of them on a single CD-ROM for $32.00 might sound pretty good. It did to me! I know, sometimes there is no substitute for a paper map. I have mine, all carefully folded (using the British Boy Scout method), and neatly filed in a large boot box. But the idea of also having them available on my computer, for viewing, and to copy and paste into other documents, and -- best of all -- having them fully calibrated so that they work interactively with my GPS as "smart maps" for moving map display etc. was just too tempting to pass up.
A company named Metabien (www.metabien.com/maps/), is selling fully calibrated (i.e., geo-referenced) USGS Digital Raster Graphic Topo Maps on CD-ROM in 1 degree square increments. In other words a single CD-ROM covers a piece of Arizona, for example, from 33 to 34 degrees N Latitude by 110 to 111 degrees W Longitude. This CD contains the 64 7.5 minute USGS topo maps in .TIFF form which cover the area, three "overview" maps, at a larger scale, documentation in both .txt and .pdf, and two different types of viewing software for DOS and Windoze machines. And, although I am of the Macintosh faith -- I have already found a half dozen Mac applications which will read the documentation and display the maps so I like CDs, even though I can't use the included viewing software (Arc View 1.0 and Aerial View Lite).
The price offered by Metabien is less than half the price of these same maps if purchased from the USGS directly. It should be noted however, that from the USGS you pay a disk charge as well as a charge of $1.00 per topo -- however you can pick and choose the individual topos that you want on the disk. With Metabien the price is $32 per disk but you get all the topos covering the 1 degree square area you choose -- so there are some trade-offs. So far, I have two of the Metabien CD-ROMs and I am very pleased with them. ...
Happy mapping,
John Matthews
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions about this web site, please send email to webmaster@metabien.com or postal mail to:
Metabien Software
3370 N. Hayden Rd. - Suite 123-118
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
USA