Rating: 
Summary: Same [stuff] as 3 years ago...
Review: Streets & Trips has not changed at all since the 2000 version, which itself was actually a downgrade from the 1999 version. While the street data has presumably been updated with each subsequent release, the interface and features, which are far from perfect, remain completely unchanged.There is very little information on any places, and no hyperlinks are provided to find such information either. Seems like Microsoft is only interested in the internet so far as they can control it and profit from it - not when their customers actually need it. As with every version after 1999, there is no good way to manage your pushpin sets. Tasks as simple as creating a new set of pushpins or moving pushpins from one set to another require a non-intuitive, inefficient, and cumbersome procedure. There is no dedicated screen to help you organize your pushpins. Also, there is no global command to hide or display all pushpins, their labels, or their details. In fact, there is no way at all to hide pushpins other than by deleting them. If you want to hide a pushpin's label, reveal it, or displa its full description, this must be done with each pushpin one by one, in a very slow and cumbersome procedure. Since 1999, Microsoft removed pushpins from the program's "Show or Hide Places" dialog box. If you only have top deal with a few pushpins at a time, then I suppose this isn't a big deal. But if you want to manage groups of pushpins, you're out of luck because this product seems intentionally designed to make this as hard as possible. There is no way to control at what zoom level street names and other details do or do not appear. This means that you frequently find yourself zooming out to get the big picture, only to have to zoom back in again to see the label for the street or place you're looking for. Similarly, too many details are often visible when zooming out, particularly pushpins, creating a horrible visual mess if you're not viewing the map at street level. But there is no way to control this, and as I said before, there is no way to hide all pushpin labels with a single command. As far as directions go, you are better off vioewing the path on the mapo than trying to read the turn by turn directions provided by the program, which can turn the simplest route into a confusing mess. Worse yet, the program overlooks common local names for streets (ie, Main Street) and usually refers to them only by their Federal, State, or County road numbers, even when nobody refers to them by those numbers. Horrible. Pocket Streets is a worthless abomination. I could write volumes about everything that's wrong with this terrible piece of software, and I have - along with thousands of other angry users. Yet Microsoft has completely ignored these complaints and left this program the useless mess that it is. It is just meant to promote the Pocket PC platform - not to actually do what it's advertised to do.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Maps but they ripped out crucial information.
Review: Streets and Trips 2001 through 2003 are great products if you like wonderful looking mapped our dead accuracy for a street finders. However Microsoft has made a huge mistake in my opinion with the trip maker portion of the program. They have ripped out all the extremely valuable infomation about Hotels, Exits, Attractions, etc. You can find hotels no problem but it will not give you any information about it, not even a phone number. The biggest downside for me was the Exits. I was planning a 2000 mile trip and I want to know which exits have gas stations. This is ver important because in places like Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona you can go 50 to 100 miles with out seeing a gas station. If the map does not have this info I could get into serious trouble. It does show the exits you just can't get any information about it.
I have Microsoft Streets and Trip 2000 and it has all of this information. It does an excellent job with its trip maker. Back then I think it was hands down the best mapping progam you could get for a consumer. But after that version they really messed up. The problem with that version now is that it is getting close to three years old. I do not want to rely on a program that is that old for accuracy.
So what is the answer? I found that DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2003 is a very good program. Yes it is slower and the maps are not as pretty (they are pretty nice though). But it has the extremely valuable infomation that MS Streets and Trips took out. This new version of Street Atlas is much, much more accurate than any of the previous version. It is getting close to MS Streets and Trip there too. It also has some extra features that MS Streets and does not have.
As for Microsoft, they use to have a superior product but they lost it. There is another company that is giving us what we need. Maybe Microsoft will realize that and fix their product in the next version.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Functionality Bad Point of Interest and Exit # Data
Review: Streets and Trips is a powerful and fast consumer mapping tool with lots of bells and whistles. I have found it very useful when on business trips where I did not have Internet access. Couple it with a GPS sensor and it is quite a powerful tool for road warriors. One of the more interesting features its ability to find nearby locations (i.e. hotels) - even along a route, which is not entirely apparent to the user. You can actually show every hotel, restaurant, etc x miles in either direction of a route or a single location. It also can calculate trip costs and has construction updates. In terms of performance, it is much, much faster than the Derlorme Street Atlas 2003 or any online map tool. I haven't yet done a head to head comparison with Streets and Trips 2003 because I haven't received it yet. What I don't like...
PROBLEMS:
1) The locations, especially hotels, are often wildly inaccurate - by 30 miles away. It almost appears if the master data set was compiled by hand in China as I can't imagine how the inaccuracies were created (correct phone, street address, and wrong city). There appears to be no quality control with the locations. Moreover, many are dated by at least three years.
2) The exit numbers are often inaccurate, which can cause a huge problem if you are on a business trip
3) The GPS update is once every 15 seconds
4) There is no data update feature via the web. There is a construction update, but that is it.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Buy Streets and Trips
Review: The software is highly inaccurate and therefore, unreliable. We have traveled in many states and have yet to have the software produce accurate information. Save yourself a lot of grief and buy a road atlas and city maps when you arrive at your destination. Furthermore, it does not allow you to name selected roads on the maps as you can in "Road Trips Door to Door". Possibly because they don't have the names in their database.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Work Very Well
Review: The very first route I planned with Microsoft Streets and Trips was from an address in Rochester, NY to an address in Sterling, Va. The software took me east through Syracuse, on a 446 mile, 7 hour and 48 minute route. I *knew* it was better to go directly south, so I coached the software by telling it to add stops in Corning, NY and Harrisburg, PA. Sure enough, now it found a 370 mile, 7 hour and 12 minute route. Further experiments show that the software's "shortest" and "quickest" routes are often longer and slower than the routes you can force it to plot by adding well-chosen stops. But of course if you know what route you want to force, you don't really need the software. I'm switching back to Delorme's Street Atlas. I've been using Version 6.0, where the interface is truly awful but at least you get the right routes. I'm hoping that in the current version 9.0, they've improved the interface and the underlying mapping algorithms are still as good as they've always been.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Time Saver
Review: This is a great time saver. I use it almost every day for my lunch break. I usually have several errand to run during lunch (not to mention eating lunch itself). I lay them out on Streets & Trips, select Optimize and get directions. It calculates very quickly. Even long trips (2400 and 4000 miles!) are calculated quickly. The trip printouts (a wide variety) are bettern than the Trip-Ticks from AAA (we have been a member for 15+ years and the Trip-Ticks recently have gotten much worse). In fact, we took both on our 500-mile vacation trip this summer and ended up using Streets & Trips and tossing the Trip-Ticks. I tried other packages, but still like Streets & Trips the best.
Rating:
Summary: Don't get burned by this product
Review: This product is a Microsoft joke at my expense. To label 2 year old maps as 2002 is ludicrous. If your're ok with maps from 1999 and still want to put this junk on a laptop you'll need 800+ Megs of space. Interface is slow & clumsy. If you have faith in Microsoft products this product will cut it in half - at your expense. Anyone who gives this product more than a zero should really click over to ALtavista and try MapQuest's mapping to see what a quality product is...
Rating:
Summary: From Point 'A' to Point 'B' Easier
Review: This product is well worth the purchase. I used to to help me find a way to go to the mountains to camp. It told me what route to take, where to turn, where there was construction on the highway and at what times, as well as certain points of interest along the way. Highly recommended. Microsoft has proven once again that they are a leader in software development. I've seen some other related applications like Rand McNally, but none seem to come close to this one. This program is by far the best program to help plan and execute a route! HIGHLY recommened if you are a traveller.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointed with application and map data
Review: This program has some very bad data for my hometown and neighborhood. I'd be very afraid to use this program to get me someplace I didn't know, which, of course, is one of the reasons for using it. For my hometown, it had the following problems:
1. missing streets
2. distorted and misplaced streets
3. dirt roads and service roads marked as regular roads
4. data on stores and restaurants was sometimes off by up to a mile All of the above problems were found on roads that are at least five years old. A simple test of planning a route from my house to work took me down a dirt road! This is one of the very few dirt roads in town. While trying to get it to go on paved roads, it came up with some very bizarre routes. It didn't seem to know that this one major road crosses a freeway. It kept coming up with routes that would have you get on the freeway, get off at the next exit, and then double back on a surface street. Arghhh!!!! All of the major on-line mapping sites did a perfect job on this test. I didn't find this program to have any significant advantages over on-line mapping sites, other than speed. I didn't find the drag-n-drop feature to be very useful. All it seems to do is add stops along the route. I did like the ability to draw a square on the map and tell it to avoid routing that area. This might be useful when trying to get around some of the crazy routes it comes up with. It has seemingly no integration with Office, which would have been a significant advantage over on-line sites. ...
Rating:
Summary: bad directions... stick to internet route planners
Review: This software came bundled with my new computer. I had used sites like yahoo! maps for quite some time to plot trips, but decided to go with microsoft on my latest weekend road trip. While it's ability to show you what hotels and restaurants are in a given area can be handy, it's driving directions were horrible compared to those that can be found free on the internet. During this driving trip (5.5 hours each way), there were many inexcusable errors. It's 'quickest' routes seem to be often far from the actual quickest routes - and the program will change it's mind, routing you completely different ways going to and from a location. One of the highways was given a name that doesn't exist in reality (SR followed by three digits), as opposed to its real name (Highway 74). Worst of all, it gave me a wrong exit number (actually I wasn't supposed to take an exit at all), which would have sent me south, instead of north. These kinds of erros are inexcusable, and will give you more headaches and stress on the road. After using this product for only one trip, I've decided to stick to the more reliable internet sites. My advice: don't spend your money on this.
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