I’ve been using the Swiss Map 25 and Swiss Map 50 products for a few years, if you’ve not heard of them they’re basically the Swiss topographical maps on DVD. They’re not cheap and they’re not reliable. Right from the start I’ve had problems with them and each time the operating system on my Mac gets an upgrade the maps stop working in a variety of ways. Generally you can’t print which is a huge problem as I only use these products to print maps to laminate and take out with me.

When the product does work it’s so slow and resource intensive that my Macbook starts spinning the fan like crazy and heating the house on it’s own. It’s written in some old Macromedia toolset that’s never been supported on Intel Mac’s so it’s a disaster area all round.

All the time I’ve been using this product, and calling the support every couple of months when it breaks, they’ve been telling me they’re working on a new release. Apparently, even after being stuck with a mapping product written in a high-level language which is exactly what you wouldn’t choose for a graphics application, they were going to rewrite it in Java. Presumably the “thinking” being that this would make it portable between Microsoft and Mac’ while the past experience ought to have suggested this was just a variation on the original product and would come with all the same problems.

I’d guessed a while back this new product, years in the making, wouldn’t be seeing the light of day and today that seems to be confirmed. I got a mail (below) from Swisstopo announcing the new online product and on visiting the webpage for the product I’ve got I see confirmation it’s not supported from June onwards.

The new product is online and subscription based. The subscription is 29 chf per annum and there is a upfront cost of 49 chf. As an existing customer they’ll let me have that for 41 chf.

Let that sink in for a moment……..

I’ve been using Swiss Map 25 and Swiss Map 50 products for about 5 years, I’ve paid 1012 chf for those products, by my reckoning that’s nearly 35 years of use according to their current pricing and in return for my money and putting up with an awful product, they’re going to give me a discount of 8 chf on the new product. I don’t why they bothered, it’s an insult, why not charge existing customers double or triple? If you’re going to take us for a ride why not go the whole way?

I don’t want an online product, I want one that works on my laptop when it’s not connected to the Internet, I know SwissTopo aren’t the only ones to do this but it’s a a really dumb idea. Why on earth did they not talk to their users? In fact, I want a product like the one I bought only one that works this time.

There’s taking the mickey and then there’s daylight robbery and this is the latter. And, if it’s an online product, why do they need to send it out on a DVD? It doesn’t look good for providing an online service if you can’t even get the software out over the internet.

For the record, here’s the email :

Chère cliente, cher client,

Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer la parution du nouveau Swiss Map online. En misant sur de nouvelles technologies pour accroître les possibilités d’utilisation des géodonnées, nous avons ainsi pu répondre aux multiples souhaits de la clientèle.

Grâce à Swiss Map Online, vous avez désormais accès à toutes les échelles de carte ainsi qu’à des photos aériennes haute résolution (orthophotos) quadrillant l’ensemble du territoire suisse. L’ancienne subdivision en trois produits (Swiss Map 25, Swiss Map 50 et Swiss Map 100) et l’ancienne répartition par secteurs ont disparu. En revanche, les données sont directement accessibles via Internet, ce qui signifie que vous disposez en permanence des données les plus récentes et profitez automatiquement de toutes les mises à jour.

La mise en œuvre de la nouvelle loi sur la géoinformation va entraîner une baisse sensible des coûts que nous avons décidé de répercuter dans son intégralité sur la clientèle.

Pour 49 CHF seulement, vous disposerez ainsi pendant une année entière des géodonnées les plus récentes. Et pendant toute une année vous bénéficierez automatiquement et gratuitement de toutes les mises à jour! Sans compter que la reconduction de votre abonnement pendant un an ne vous coûtera que 29 CHF. Nos clients manifestaient régulièrement le souhait de bénéficier d’une actualisation permanente des géodonnées: grâce à cette formule, c’est désormais chose faite puisque Swiss Map online est constamment à jour.

Naturellement, vous pourrez continuer de superposer les itinéraires de randonnées pédestres, de calculer des profils, d’effectuer vos propres saisies sur les cartes et – nouveauté – sur les photos aériennes grâce aux fonctions graphiques, ou encore d’échanger des points de cheminement et des itinéraires avec votre récepteur GPS. Vous disposez également d’une fonction d’impression et d’une fonction de sauvegarde des graphiques.

L’application englobe par ailleurs tout le réseau SuisseMobile, y compris les routes cyclables.

Swiss Map online paraîtra fin juin 2011.

Offre de fidélité pour les clients enregistrés

Pour vous remercier de votre fidélité, nous vous proposons le nouveau Swiss Map online au prix de 41 CHF franco de port, au lieu de 49 CHF. Cette offre spéciale, destinée uniquement aux clients enregistrés comme vous, est valable jusqu’au 31 juillet 2011 seulement. Pour profiter de ce tarif spécial, commandez dès à présent Swiss Map online par courrier électronique auprès de mapsales@swisstopo.ch, en indiquant la mention «client enregistré».

Tags: maps | Reviews | Swiss Map 25 | swiss map 50 | Swiss Map Online | swisstopo

After I’d posted some photo’s and details about these and managed to try them for a few hours I thought I’d post a quick update. We took them to a local TSL marked route, the route is fairly well tracked and we did about 400m ascent/descent and moved off-track a little to give the snowshoes a little workout.

I think the real test of these snowshoes is going to be how well they last and obviously it’s going to take me some time to get and idea of that but so far I’m fairly impressed. Both Julie and I used them which gives two perspectives, I regularly use MSR Denali Evo Ascents but also, from time to time, Inook and TSL’s while Julie has a pair of Inook Odalys.

My impression was that the three straps of the Aldi model compared to the four that the MSR’s have didn’t make any real difference. In other ways I couldn’t detect a lot of difference underfoot, the grip was fine on the steeper hard-packed sections both ascending and descending. I found because the plastic tab on the heel riser doesn’t have a hole (see photo) in it that I couldn’t engage the riser with my pole as I can with the MSR, I may find a trick to do that in time though.

The other thing I noticed was the buckle arrangement for the strap, as you see on the photo’ it’s an open buckle which makes taking them on and off with gloves on quite easy, so that’s a plus point, however on the minus side the buckle isn’t orientated right in my opinion. The open end is facing forwards, the downside of this is that if you’ve not got the strap tight and load forward quickly you can push the strap out, this can’t happen on the MSR because the buckle is closed. It would seem that this shouldn’t be a problem if you’ve got the straps tensioned correctly but it’s certainly worth taking an extra minute when you put them on to get this right.

Julie, comparing them to her Inooks, was quite impressed. The straps on the Aldi snowshoes are rubber-like as are the MSR ones and these flex slightly more than the straps on the Inooks, she felt this was quite positive and slightly eased the fatigue on the feet that snowshoes can cause.

So, all in all, they still look good given that we only tried them for a few hours on a marked trail.

Tags: Aldi Snowshoes | snowshoeing | snowshoes

From time to time Aldi¹ seem to have some interesting offers, it’s not always easy to spot the real bargains in the cheap products but there’s some good gear from time to time, for example, the base layers I’m using most are from Aldi a couple of winters back and I use them in preference to some way more expensive ones I’ve got.

So I was interested when the Aldi flyer arrived with an offer for snowshoes, in fact they offered a couple of designs in the flyer. The first being a basic tube frame with plastic deck that you see a lot of cheap snowshoes copying and the other being something that is very similar to an MSR Denali Evo Ascent.

Since Aldi retail these at 99 CHF compared to the MSR at around 329 CHF I thought I’d take a look.  These are branded as “Adventureridge” and the product is called “Raquettes à neige trekking” (trekking snowshoes in English).

So, the first couple of things you notice are that it’s a three strap fixation compared to the four that MSR use and that there’s a flotation tail. The basic construction looks pretty good, the plastic doesn’t feel quite the same quality as the MSR but it seems comparable to the TSL and Inooks that we use.

The detail of the flotation tails is interesting, I quite like the tube inserts, I think that’s adding a good bit of strength and rigidity which I would hope would take some stress out of the actual locking mechanism. The MSR mechanism is a little bit of a fiddle to attach the tails without removing the snowshoe, you need to thread and locate three screws and it’s awkward in heavy snow with gloves.

By comparison, this is simple but I’m extremely dubious that it will stand the test of time. The tube inserts may take the stress of the locking catch as you move but I think general wear and tear might destroy this catch and I can’t see an easy way to make either a field repair or something longer term back in my workshop.

Looking at the heel riser it seems a fairly standard affair, pretty much identical to the MSR. It’s anchored securely on the base and I can’t see any issue with it long term.

You’re also seeing here a protective cover that’s shipping with the snowshoes, it just straps over the base to keep the sharp teeth from damaging things around them if you threw them in the car boot for example.

And this is just a quick look at the base. The teeth and rails look just fine to me, they’re well attached to the deck and use a pattern that looks effective.

We can always use some extra pairs of snowshoes to avoid rental fees and for 99 CHF we’ve grabbed a couple of pairs to test, we’ll be using them over the next week or so and I’ll report back how they work out. Obviously the problem with Aldi for this sort of gear is that they have limited stock, I’d guess if you went next week they’d have none left. But, it’s generally the case that they stock the item the next season so we may see these next winter and if our test pairs work out we’ll certainly look at grabbing some more.

Just to get an idea of the similarity, here’s a couple of shots of the MSR Denali Evo Ascent, there’s some more shots of them in this web album

Notes.

1. Aldi is a chain of discount supermarkets originally based in Germany but operating in other countries. They specialise in budget purchases typically non-branded and advocate a “no frills” retail policy.

Tags: MSR Denali Evo Ascent | review | snowshoeing