Free alternatives to MapPoint?

[Syt]

What it says in the header: are there any freeware or cheap alternatives to MapPoint?

[Grey Fox]

Google Earth.

There's nothing free out there.

[DGuller]

Yeah, Google Earth is the only free alternative I can think of.

[Syt]

The Excel integration isn't so good with that one, though.

[Vricklund]

Grass GIS? What are you up to?

[Syt]

Mostly for visualizing country numbers or the numbers of subregions within a country.

[Syt]

I see that MapPoint will be discontinued at the end of the year.

It'll be replaced by PowerBI's PowerMap features for Excel, it appears. Only 400-600 bucks per year per person.

[DontSayBanana]

The Excel integration isn't so good with that one, though.

It's not so intuitive, but it's doable: http://ramblings.mcpher.com/Home/excelquirks/getmaps

Basically, the trick is to think of it as using Excel to generate KML files instead- so you're not generating maps so much as generating overlays for an existing map.

[Syt]

Thanks.

The colleague just went ahead and bought MapPoint, anyways.