I've been away from flying for a while. I stopped flying at around the
time the government plates were rumored to be changing to a new format.
I used to use Jepps.

I picked up flying again recently. The pilot's store I went to was out
of the Jepp express packs, so I decided to give the government plates a
try. They're a lot better than I remember them - and appear to be
pretty close to what the Jepps looked like when I stopped flying.

Has anyone recently done a comparison to find out what the government
plates lack? Here are a couple of things I noticed:
1. The alternate takeoff minima provide a climb gradient in ft/nm
whereas I recall Jepps had them in fpm (for various ground speeds).
It's not a big deal - you can just flip to a table that provides a
correspondence between ground speed/gradient/fpm.
2. No NOTAMs.

The gov's cost a whole lot less than the Jepps and you don't have to
file plates every few weeks so unless there's a big drawback, I may
just stick with the gov's.

As an aside, what are people using to determine weather these days? I
hated DUATS and I assume there are a lot of much better weather sources
for pilots on the web these days. I've seen the AOPA weather
materials, but is there something superior?

Thanks