National Geographic Backroads Exploror

I bought this for desert and mountain 'off road' exploration and camping. In that capacity, I am completely satisfied with its seemless scrolling, map labelling and GPS downloading features. I can plan my routes, mark and print the highly detailed maps, and have it ready to go. Upon return, I can add small non-descript roads, trails, mine locations, etc that I find in the field via my GPS. I used to spend 20 to 30 dollars for paper topo's for outback trips. Now, I'll literally save hundreds with this software. And because this software doesn't require mega 3D computer capabilities, I actually installed this software in an old Pentium 1, with a 130 meg processer, and it works flawlessly! Now, I have put my old, and (formerly) no longer used computer to work in the garage for my trip planning. Something I couldn't do with the Regional State Series because of it's computer system requirements. The only potential drawback to this software is the lack of level 5 mapping. This software actually goes to 1:25,000 scale, but the only difference I can ascertain from pure 'level 5' is the missing gridlines and details. This system includes elevation cross section detail, and for my purposes, that makes up for any missing level 5 details. Comparatively, Delormes Atlas's are 1:150,000 scale, this software is full level 4 or 1:100,000 scale... and 1;25,000 as well, it's awesome. And if you really need to get closer, you can zoom the area you want. Overall, if you must have the level 5, which is 1:25,000 scale with level 5 detail, get the regional or state series sofware. But for the price, with 50 states of seemless 1:100,000 topo, and the system requirements, this software is exceptional. Tred Lightly!

This product packages scans of the smaller scale, 1:500,000 and 1:100,000 USGS maps for all 48 contiguous states and 1:250,000 for Alaska and Hawaii on 17 CDs. It takes its user interface from the hiker oriented National Geographic state series. While probably fine for planning hiking trips on the state series 1:24,000 scale maps, the program offers little in the way of tools that would be useful to a back-roads explorer.
The main value it does offer is in providing reasonably detailed topographic maps for the entire 50 states at a very fair price. Though that has its quirks, the program makes it fairly easy to navigate the maps. One quirk is that to get to Alaska and Hawaii, you press the "Information and Help" toolbar button, select "Start with a new map", press "GO", then click on the state you want, you will then be prompted to load the CD.
The 17 CDs are only a minor inconvenience in most cases. Each CD contains 2 or more states, so the state you want you only really have to deal with one CD once you've installed the software. More conveniently, you can copy some or all of them to your hard drive assuming you have about 8G free. The program allows you to configure both where you install it and where it should look for maps.
Beyond the basic maps, the purpose I wanted it for was route planning when "exploring back roads" and here is falls down. Yes you can do it but you have to do it free hand and the input method makes this tedious at best. Once you have done all that work, the end result is not particularly useful. The basic problem is that the routing tool is not in anyway linked the road overlay. Consequently you cannot get a list of route instructions from it. Another problem is that while it shows lots of roads, the road data is very basic. Very disappointing overall.
So if you like maps and are looking for a relatively inexpensive way to obtain and store the 1:100,000 USGS topo maps for the entire 50 states this is probably a very good value. It's fun to poke around the maps just to see what's there.
If you are a hiker then you should go straight the NG State series and buy the state you need. The scale of the maps here are too small to be much use for hikers except for very general planning.
For backroad exploring, I think you are better off with an already printed map book like DeLorme or Benchmark assuming it is available for your state. It you want backroad route planning software, this is not it.

I bought this program so that I can plot road bike routes and generate elevation profiles of those routes. The Back Roads Explorer does that well if the route is entered by tracing on the map with the mouse. The profiles are generated well and there is a link from the profile back to the map; clicking on the profile will put a marker on the map route, which will tell you where to expect that big climb. Map and elevation profile can then be exported to an image (JPG, GIF, etc.) file or printed out or stored to a PDA. Beware, there is no way to automatically generate directions from the route.

One of the reasons for a three-star rating is that the CD media was somehow incompatible with my CD drive. It took several tries just to install the program. After that it would take a very long time to load data from map CDs. The program would sometimes freeze and had to be restarted. It would freeze 100% of the time if my route required data CDs to be switched. To fix this I had to copy National Geographic CDs to the hard drive (which took multiple attempts because of CD read errors) and burn it on CDR media.

Another reason for three stars is that the GPS route import is very rudimentary. It may work better when the GPS unit is connected directly to the computer (I haven't tried), but only text file format is supported by file import tool. The text file format is arbitrary and may not directly import into the Back Roads Explorer. In my case, it will not directly import the text file generated by Garmin eTrex.