With some repeating of the previous reviews, comparing with MS
Streets & Trips 2003,
Pros:
1. A relatively complete database of points of interest. I can
find Walmart, Safeway, Food4less, etc. The advanced find tool
is powerful. I can find a name or an address in a city or
a part of the map, etc.
2. Voice instructions and voice commands for GPS. If you drive
alone with a GPS connecting to a laptop, you will see that
this function is very important.
3. There are many advanced features if you dig in. For example you
can specify the road preference to a very detailed level; you
can create simple road or modify road properties; you can find
radio station coverage and traffic condition phone number
information which could be useful if you are stuck in a jam or
snow storm.
Cons:
1. It's very slow sometimes! My laptop is an IBM Thinkpad, 1.6G Mobile
Pentium 4 with 512M memory, 40G hard disk. I think this computing
power is pretty good for a laptop. I do not have problem
with panning/zooming the map or calculating the route. However
switching between tabs can be slow sometimes. Moreover, at first
seems the voice functions are, although not perfect, working OK.
But the only time I seriously used the voice instructions for my travel, it
lagged so much that it spit out one word or two at a time and by
the time it reminded me to go on a high way, I was already preparing
to come off it. I re-installed the text to speech engine as indicated
on the support webpage and the voice instructions became normal
again. But how can I depend on such a product to find my directions if
it can just go "dead" in the middle of the way!
2. It does not work on Windows with languages other than English as the
default setting! This will slash a great number of users, I believe,
because a lot of people here are not native English speaker. The default
language for my Windows 2000 is Chinese. The Find tab just didn't work.
I have a PC whose default setting is French because I was learning French
on it. I tried that PC and the Find tab didn't work either. I have to
convert my laptop back to "pure English". I've never heard of softwares like
this. Maybe they are still using controls or database engines from the last
century. Plain lazy.
3. The map is far from good looking. Two main problems are: at a higher level
most road names are gone, sometimes you can not even see the name for a major
high way - very inconvenient; the point of interest icon is only a small pity
gray dot until you zoom in almost to the last level. In this regard, Micosoft
Streets & Trips is much much better.
4. It is hard to use! You really need to go through the user's guide to be confident
using it. Sometimes you have to use tricks. For example when I created a route
from Davis, CA to a place in Sacramento, the route is supposed to simply follow
Business 80 mostly, which has a 90 degree turn from east to north at the center
of Sacramento. However, at the turn the software told me to come off 80, take
34th street, then turn on to Stockton, and go on to 80 again! I almost pulled my
hair off. Now I found the trick: you can specify your road preference as: prefer
limited-access roads; avoid local roads; avoid major connections. Then the software
will "smartly" follow 80. Don't say there's too much artificial intelligence
required - Microsoft software did the route effortlessly without me telling it to
keep on the same high way.
5. The text to speech and speech recognition engines are old and probably outdated technology
from Microsoft around 1998. The synthetic voice is not very pleasant to listen to.
In a noisy car you really need a good headset as well as speaking loud to make your voice
recognized.
6. Seems the map data is mostly accurate but not as accurate as Microsoft Streets & Trips.
Mostly my GPS icon is on the road fine but some roads it is really off. Never happened
with Microsoft software yet.
Conclusion: If you are shopping for a nice mapping software and you are not a GPS
maniac, just wait for a deal and buy Microsoft Streets & Trips 2004 (the two major
improvements for 2004 over 2003 is: 2004 displays one way; 2004 updates GPS data
every second. Although maybe a Microsoft trick not to provide them in 2003, these
are very important features). With a simple serial GPS (~$100) you are in pretty
good shape and will not feel terrified while lost.
However if you want to find every Walmart or Fry's in a new place and want to hear
machine voice reminding you the turns, get Street Atlas 2004 TOO. Only getting
Street Atlas will drive you nuts. Buy both MS stuff and this can give you a robust
backup when Street Atlas refuses to work.
And finally, once you hit the road, rely mostly on the road signs and your own brain.
Don't get yourself killed just because your computer has made a mistake.
John Q Adams