National Geographic TOPO! Streets & 3-D Views, Expansion Pack

Initial Review

Tester Information

Name: Raymond Estrella
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Height: 6' 3" (187.5 cm)
Weight: 200 lbs (90 kg)
Email address: rayestrella@hotmail.com
City: Huntington Beach
State: California
Country: USA 
Date: May 19, 2005

Backpacking Background:

I have been back packing since I was 14 years old. My style of hiking is to get up early, and hike hard for most the day. I put the miles on, usually 15-18 miles a day.(24-29 k) I like to get to my days destination early enough to enjoy the afternoon. Most of my hiking is in the Sierras. I hike year ‘round, in all weather. I am making a concerted effort to lighten weight everywhere I can, without giving up a comfortable tent, and cooking good meals.

So far in 2005 I have logged 183 miles (293 km) with a pack on. Coming up is Shasta, the Skyline trail to San Jacinto, and a 4 day hike in Kings Canyon.

The product

Manufacturer: National Geographic

Product: TOPO! Streets & 3-D Views, Expansion Pack

Year made: 2004.

MSRP: $19.95 (US)

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

The software comes in a stiff 4 color paper tri-fold package. It has slots on each of the interior pages to hold the 3 CD-ROMs included. One is the set-up disc, the others are map data discs. The installation guide is printed inside, along with a serial number.

The following is from their Web-site.

System Requirements:

Windows 98, 2000, ME, & XP; DirectX version 9 (included); 8MB+ video card that is Direct X9 compatible is required for 3-D views. Also requires at least one TOPO! State Series

With TOPO! Streets & 3-D Views you can:

Draw your own trails and fly along the trail as it winds and climbs to your destination.

Stop anywhere along the trail to zoom and pan to see the view.

Use resizable split screens to expand any screen for better viewing.

Lay an updated road network on your map on either the 1:24,000 or 1:100,000 scale USGS topo maps

Click on any street to see its name and to make it easy to find your destination.

Get the latest USGS quad maps and updated roads for any of the TOPO! State products. Live Map Update automatically searches your defined areas to see if something new is available and gives you the tools to quickly download new information to replace older quads and roads.

Get GPS USB support with the latest connectivity built in to enable you to use your TOPO! software with the newest GPS receivers.

Field Conditions

During the course of this test, I will be hiking from 400’ to over 14000’ elevations, in temps ranging from over 100F (38C)to 32F (0C). I will encounter extreme desert conditions, snowy alpine accents, and river crossings. I will be from as far south as Palm Springs, to as far north as Mt Shasta, in California. As I do a lot of elevation gain/loss in my hiking the 3-D feature should be quite noticeable during pre-trip planning.

Installation

I have 3 computers that I am testing TOPO! With. The first is a Hewlett Packard desktop with an Athlon XP 2800+, 512 MB RAM, and a Nvidia Gforce 4 memory card with 64 MB of shared memory. The second is a HP 5478 laptop with a 2.8 ghz Pentium 4, 448 MB RAM and a Radeon 345M video card with 64 MB of dedicated memory. The third is a self-built gaming system with an over-clocked Athlon XP 2600+, 1GB paired RAM, and an ATI Radeon graphics card with 128 MB memory. This computer is in Moorhead Minnesota where I spend a week each month.

When I put the set-up disc into the first computer, it would not Auto-play. I tried loading it into the drive again, with the same results. I then opened the drive, (right click, Explore, or double click) and then double-clicked the Set-up file. It immediately froze up. I had to forcibly exit the program, and start it again. This time the software installer came up, and installed with no further problems. Upon installation the program requests a disc to be inserted from my state series. After recognizing the California series, it went online and updated itself, including the street information. Because of this, I was never prompted for the included map data disc.

I then installed it on the laptop unit. As before it would not auto-play, and needed to be opened to access the set-up program. It installed with no problems, and updated itself the same as earlier.

The home-built system installed with no problems either. As I only have dial-up access to it, I did not go online with the program, and loaded the California map set from the included map data disk.

Initial observations

Let me first state that I have been using National Geographic TOPO! California for a couple of years now, and like the program very much. I use it a least twice a month, and often weekly.  The expansion pack changes the look of the older TOPO! California. It is brighter, and the icons are colored, and flat now, not the gray 3-D look of the earlier version. One immediate difference is the Overview window, to the right of the main map window. In the earlier version it could be closed, or re-sized by grabbing the border. It must now be closed by accessing the View menu on the Main task bar, and un-checking it. (Control-shift-O will do the same) After 2 years of using the TOPO! California, this is the hardest for me to get used to at this time.

It has also added the ability to paste a photograph along with the written notes. I have not played with it much yet, but pasted one into a hike that I had already done, and have saved, and it works quite well. I may go back through and place pictures from my hikes onto the spots along the trail that they correspond to.

I tried the fly-by feature out on a couple of my saved routes. It is kind of cool, but seems buggy at this point. It very well could be me. I will get deeper into it over the next month, and will be more accurate in my conclusions.

The street overlay function works well for major roads, but on my initial testing was off as much as a half mile (.8 km) on smaller streets. This is another area that I will focus on in the coming month. I do like the pop-up street names that display as the cursor is moved over each road. This is handy for the Forest Service roads that many of my trail-heads are located on.

I look forward to using this program more, and sharing my findings. I thank National Geographic, and BackpackGearTest for the opportunity to test this product.