• Regions are automatically extruded upward, with the height of the extrusion based on the underlying data values. 
• Use color to illustrate one variable, extrusion or "prism" height to illustrate another.

Our Opinion: 

• Very powerful for visualizing two variables:  eg., use color to distinguish one variable and region extrusion "height" to illustrate the second variable.
• Note that it applies to regions only, not to points or lines.
• Would have preferred this feature to have been better integrated in the menu system with other types of thematic mapping.
• Summary:  For many users, this feature alone will justify the upgrade cost.
  

• Detect and correct gaps, overlaps, and "self-intersections" in regions.
• Generalize or "thin" to remove unnecessary nodes and reduce file sizes.
• Split multi-polygon regions into separate one-polygon regions.   This feature also applies to other complex geometry:   the new multi-point objects and multi-line polyline objects.
• Faster operations, esp. for "Erase" operations.

Our Opinion: 

• Great additions--all now supported by MapBasic, too.   MapInfo Pro's internal map creation and editing in many situations now exceeds that of much more expensive software. 
• Remember that MapInfo Pro supports table digitizing and has always exceeded the competition in the area of raster/vector overlays--essential for on-screen digitizing. capabilities.
  

• Set translucency, brightness, & contrast individually for each raster layer.
• Stack multiple raster layers together, and still see the features.
• Directly display, without translation, DEM, DTED, and GTOPO30 raster formats. 

Our Opinion: 

• Power-users will love this feature, especially those with a cartographic bent.
• A historic problem with aerial photos, shaded relief maps, telecom propagation coverage and other raster maps is that they've been "all or nothing".  Make the raster layer the top layer and it obliterates or obscures everything under it.  Put it underneath and it's hard to "read" the color thematic or other layers on top.  With raster translucency, you can surmount this problem by adjusting the intensity and tranlucency of the raster image.
• Warning:  As documented by MapInfo Corp, you can't print translucent raster effects if you are running Win98, WinME, and Win95 due to operating system limitations.
• Cool slider control.

• New "scale bar in the Layout" tool.
• New "invert" selection tool button.  Select the few records you DON'T want then use the new tool to invert the selection. 
• New TIN-based interpolation method for creating improved 3D terrain views. [TIN=Triangulated Irregular Network].
• Improved HTML page-builder tool.  Automatically add html hot-links to points.
• ECW aerial photo image compressor software included at no extra cost (500 mB limit)
• Automatically create *.tab files when opening GeoTIFF images.   Also, automatically read/display TIF's with *.tfw files (it auto-generates the comparable *.tab file).
• Upgraded support for new versions of Oracle and Oracle Spatial.