Topo USA

I've been using this software and many others for years and find this to work good for high level work or hooking the gps up to a laptop while driving in remote areas. I use this software more for putting together road bike training routes than for hiking.

I used Delorme Topo USA version 4.0. This product has some very cool graphics features, when they work, but I was very disappointed in the quality of the package overall.  I will no longer use it. I have read reviews of version 5.0 and it apparently is not much better.

Positives: Covers entire U.S., with roads as well as topographic information.

Negatives: Dismal installation program. It sent me on an extended hunt to figure out if I already had DirectX installed on the computer, and if so, what version of it. The software doesn't necessarily work after installation. Difficult to use, at best. Requires you to read lengthy caveats, work-arounds, and operational instructions in text files that come with the software. Full of bugs. The map images themselves are of inferior quality, compared to Topo! products. Much less readable and reliable, I would say. I would not recommend this package to anyone.

Read reviews on Amazon.com before investing much money in this product. I tried this software on Window NT and Windows XP. It worked better on NT.

I use DeLorme Topo 4.0 all the time. I love the 3-D view feature! It was pretty easy and intuitive to learn. Only had trouble when I was learning how to save maps to a file.

Although out of date and fairly undetailed, I still use Topo USA 3.0 all the time. It makes profile viewing easy and quick trip planning. As far as printing the maps, I'll stick to the USGS quads. I've never gotten it to work with any GPS unit (a common problem for all manufacturers), but I will keep using it until I find something a lot better.