Approaching this from what is good for me as opposed to the high concepts of what is a good program.

I have actually made maps with Campaign Cartographer 2, GIMP, and ( a very long time ago) MS Paint. Of the three, I prefer GIMP. It is a decent little program and has a great price tag. Now if I could get a version that gets rid of the multiple, independent windows, I'd be happy.

CC2 Pro was a good experiment. I made a decent continent back in the day. The problem comes in that the maps are flat and ultimately uninteresting (to me). There seems to have been a deliberate choice to duplicate the style of the original Forgotten Realms boxed set. While I like those maps, further refinements in fantasy cartography make them look a little dated. I have considered upgrading to CC3, but I had a bad bit of customer service with Pro Fantasy so I have been real hesitant.

MS Paint. Well, aside from following RobA's regional map tutorial, that one map was the single longest endeavor ever. I hand painted the mountains and trees in, using an advertisement for Might and Magic 3 as inspiration. There were problems with the map, but I was very proud of it. Lost it in a computer crash.

Since picking up the GIMP, I've installed Paint Shop Pro 8 and Photoshop Elements 2. In many ways, they are easier to use than GIMP, but come with far less functionality. I cannot afford Photoshop CS ?, so it looks like GIMP is to be my raster program of choice for some time.

I played with Inkscape a little, but truth is, I prefer raster to vector. Seeing the tutorial for Xara though, I've considered experimenting.

And I've used both Dundjinni and Dungeon Crafter. Interesting toys, but I find their symbol sets more useful than anything. Autorealm was an interesting alternative to CC2, but suffered from being even more uninteresting.