Getting Productive With QGIS, Postgresql, PostGIS, and Google maps

QGIS is a great GIS program.... and free .... and open source ,,,, and cross platform .... and .... 

Besides the inbuilt capabilities, its extensibility through plugins makes it a very powerful tool. -  Having not used the system before, I wanted to give it a test to see if it could stand up to the claims and how easily it could do the tasks I needed. - While QGIS has several ways to achieve a similar result, including direct incorporation of Google and other maps providers with the 'Openlayers' plugin, the first test was to take points captured (in an external Postgresql database) from Google Maps, and add these points as a PostGIS layer in QGIS.

Bottom line:  I am impressed !