Viewing GIS Data
OK. You say you have some GIS data you would like to view, but are not sure how to do it. Well, you are in luck. There are quite a few free GIS data viewers available which make this task easy and inexpensive. I have listed a few of my favorites (over here).
Before we start, I need to say a word about GIS data. It can be delivered in many different formats. Some of the more common ones are a shapefile, ArcInfo export (e00) file, and the geodatbase. In MyComputer or WindowsExplorer, navigate to the location in which you've stored your GIS data. If you see a file with a .shp extension, you have a shapefile; an .e00 extension lets you know you have a file in ArcInfo Interchange format, and a file with a .mdb extension tells you have a geodatabase.
If you have a .e00 file, you must import it using Import71 (the download link is about half-way down). Here is a good tutorial on how to do this tool.
It is a common practice to zip the files before they are sent, so you might have to unzip a file before you see any with the above extensions.