Street Atlas Powered by Mapquest (Jewel Case)

Rating:
Summary: Low end mapping program, but worth the price
Review: For this price, how could you go wrong? The package said it had GPS support, so I figured that this would be an inexpensive way to see if my GPS would talk to the computer and do something practical. In summary, the GPS interface was a flop, but I kind of liked the software anyway.

On the plus side, the user interface isn't bad. The initial screen presents with a colorful map of the continental US. By focusing the crosshair shaped cursor on a locale, one can zoom with the on-screen slider from overview to street level. With my P-366 Toshiba laptop the performance was more than adequate. On a trip to Minneapolis, I found the street layouts to be adequate; however, there is very little street-level detail, such as hotels & landmarks, other than the big-hitters--lakes, airports, parks, etc. Though the mapping engine is by Mapquest, don't expect to get the complete on-line Mapquest.com database on this CD-ROM. The word here is "basic".

Now, the dissapointing news: It didn't work with my Garmin 12. It connected OK, but sat there with the on-screen status message "acquiring" and never did indicate a waypoint on the map, even though the GPS lock was good and the interface was intact. I was not able to resolve this problem...although the software may well work with other GPS/computer configurations. On-line support for this product seems to be unavailable, as neither the Mapquest.com or the Learning Company websites appear to acknowledge this product. Had there been an knowledge base for this product, I may have been able to works the bugs out of the GPS.

Other negatives: When the cursor is set at a given point on the map, an on-screen indication of Latitude/Longitude is displayed. Convenient; however, it is only displayed at 2 decimal points resolution, which is not enough for an accurate GPS waypoint transfer. And although the user can search for a location by entering city, state, zip, etc., there is no provision for searching by Lat/Lon, a must for the GPS-enabled user. Finally, though one can enter "points of interest" and label them with several available symbols and text color combinations, there doesn't appear to be any way to edit the map itself with even a rudimentary drawing feature.

This is not for the user who needs loads of hotel and similar travel information on his CD-ROM. It's definitely rudimentary. If the GPS interface worked, it would be fine for plotting courses & trips...unfortunately this user's experience was not positive on this front. Still, the user interface is nice, the price is right, and I'm now hooked on this type of application and I'm off in search of one that is a bit more refined.

Rating:
Summary: Worst Product Ever
Review: I bought "Street Atlas Powered by Mapquest (Jewel Case)
by Softkey Incorporated" for a birthday. However, the day after the party, the lady called me back to say that it did not work on her computer. She gave it back to me. Since then, we have tried it on four computers and none of them can install the product! Bad product!! Do not buy!!! If you do you will feel sorry.