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Earth Explorer 2.5
R. Mohan EmailPrint
April 18, 2004

Well segregated Information, Loads of statistics
System memory hogger, No built-in search utility
My knowledge of geography during school was very respectable.
The only place where I made the major blunder was pinpointing the
Black Sea in the African zone. Just got misplaced!! Didn't mean
to offend the Africans, just trying to prove why I scored 2/10 in
the map-location tests. Luckily, I just stumbled upon this software,
which should increase my knowledge in this field.

For starters
The Earth Explorer is a geological-based software ideally meant
for people who have an interest in learning more about world locations
in a slightly more produced manner than installing those big encyclopedia's.
The Earth Explorer gives you a complete set of satellite image shots
of the earth from various angles and has a complete catalogue of
almost all the cities of the world, countries, rivers, islands and
other information like latitudes and longitudes, distance between
two locations of the world and much more.
The software provides vector-based map layers such as political
boundaries, coastlines, islands, lakes, and latitude/longitude grids.
The entire list includes 267 countries and regions, 40,000 ranked
cities, 15,000 islands and 1,700 noteworthy historical earthquakes
since 1980. One can zoom in/out the entire globe only to a certain
limit after which you will need to pay. If you register with this
product, you will get to see high-resolution images of every point
for a 1 Km distance. Really awesome, but I don't think it will zoom
in to your bedroom.
Statistics Rich
The side panel is a very good feature as it gives a complete list
segregated into cities, countries, capitals, islands, earthquakes
and latitude/longitude, population, GDP, area etc. The same information
can also be easily viewed in the tips balloon, which appears on
pointing to the country of your choice. This software also helps
you calculate in Kilometers the distance between any two locations
in the world like political boundaries, rivers, etc.
There are options for scrolling in any of the four directions with
the click of a button. So, you get a complete view of the world.
The software also helps you to save the images in BMP and JPEG formats.
Although, you cannot get high-resolution images of the point (1
Km range) in this shareware version, you can expect to get an in-depth
capture of the terrains and mountains in the full version.
Presentable
Overall, the software impressed me, but lacked too many extra add-ons.
The entire geographical statistics of the world has been properly
provided. The overall visual treat is good but too slow, even though
being an offline utility. There should have been an instant search
for the city of your choice for faster browsing. Also, the database
as it claims is not complete, with too many cities missing within
India itself. This software consumes almost 45 MB of memory, which
is too much for a small software offering the basics of the various
locations in the world. Since the full version is 94 MB, it is difficult
to comment on whether you can zoom up to your neighbour's doorstep.
Web site http://www.motherplanet.com/
Download Link: http://www.motherplanet.com/download/InstallEarthExplorer.exe
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