ESRI, the developers of ArcGIS (that eeeeevil GIS software we all love to hate, but so many of us depend on) have been pushing out significant upgrades not just to their flagship software - ArcGIS 10 - but to their on-line services at ArcGIS.com AND to their free desktop GIS data viewer, ArcExplorer.
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer/index.html
If you are looking for a free GIS data viewer that has some real capability I recommend give ArcGIS Explorer Desktop a look. (If you have not been paying attention to the ESRI world lately there are now two products called ArcGIS Explorer. One is an on-line version available through the ArcGIS.com website that is built on MS Silverlight and offers some very nice functionality for a web app, and then there is the desktop version that offers even more functionality.)
It has been about two years since I gave ArcGIS Explorer a serious look - with my organization's move to web-based GIS services I didn't need pay it much attention. However, we recently had a group start working at my jobsite that needed the ability to view and make notes against some of our GIS projects while out in the field. We couldn't afford to put ArcView on their systems and ArcGIS Mobile just ain't there yet, so I decided to give ArcGIS Explorer another look.
I was surprised at the improvements/additions to the application. Most significantly, ESRI has greatly expanded how you can get data into the map. Shapefiles, file geodatabases, SDE connects and really good raster handling. In addition is can use any of the GIS mapping services available on ArcGIS.com.
Keep in mind that this is just a data viewer, so you can't build GIS data layers, edit data, etc. However, you can view attribute data for layers you add to the map and the software has some fairly robust markup capability.
ArcGIS Explorer also comes with a very extensive coordinate system library, so your favorite flavor of State Plane should be available.
I recommend you give it a try. You might find it useful!
Brian
Very true. I've played with QGIS in the Ubuntu environment and have been impressed. I'd love to see an open source package get some real traction in the market. If it's one thing ESRI needs, it's competition.
Unfortunately, in the enterprise environment the words 'open source' give IT managers nightmares, both from a support and a security perspective.
It's available for Windows also.
