Rating: Summary: Street Atlas USA 9.0 - Don't get your hopes up. Review: This is an OK product. I've used Map-N-Go for several years and Street Atlas basically is road travel software with street level capability. I just bought it, and tried it. If you are using it for city to city funtions, it will do fine. If you are using it primarily for street to street, it might raise your blood pressure. I tried it for my city, Seattle. I mapped from the airport to my house. It referenced a street for departing the airport that was not apparent at the airport. Then it directed me to take a road off of the highway exit that did not exist. I ran Yahoo map with the same stuff. It gave a flawless performance, using the same signs/postings that are at the airport and it gave the proper street to exit to my home. The next day we used it to map about 8 houses on our house hunting list to look at. Several times it referenced street names that were not posted or not commonly used. Bottom line, if I had been given a trial first, no question that this software funtions poorly on the street level. Your mileage may vary.
Rating: Summary: Street Atlas USA 9.0 - Don't get your hopes up. Review: This is an OK product. I've used Map-N-Go for several years and Street Atlas basically is road travel software with street level capability. I just bought it, and tried it. If you are using it for city to city funtions, it will do fine. If you are using it primarily for street to street, it might raise your blood pressure. I tried it for my city, Seattle. I mapped from the airport to my house. It referenced a street for departing the airport that was not apparent at the airport. Then it directed me to take a road off of the highway exit that did not exist. I ran Yahoo map with the same stuff. It gave a flawless performance, using the same signs/postings that are at the airport and it gave the proper street to exit to my home. The next day we used it to map about 8 houses on our house hunting list to look at. Several times it referenced street names that were not posted or not commonly used. Bottom line, if I had been given a trial first, no question that this software funtions poorly on the street level. Your mileage may vary.
Rating: Summary: Worthless Review: This software was the most user unfriendly impotent waste of time I have ever encountered. It is almost impossible to begin of end a route at a specific street address. It has to be first in the software's list of places, such as flower shops and tourist traps (who have paid to advertise, no doubt.) It never semms to find an address more specific than a block. It also has no provision for automatically putting stops along a route in an optimized order.I'd reccoment Microsoft's product. It PAINS me to admit it, but it is more useful. It seems that DeLorme engineers think that the world revolves around where they think you might want to shop. I couldn't get it to stop trying to find business whose names most closely resembled the address for which I was looking. Lest one believe me computer impaired, I assure I am not. I was programming in COBOL when these engineers where in diapers. I have a hard time restraining the profanity which is foremost on my tongue when offering a description of this electronic tripe.
Rating: Summary: Worthless Review: This software was the most user unfriendly impotent waste of time I have ever encountered. It is almost impossible to begin of end a route at a specific street address. It has to be first in the software's list of places, such as flower shops and tourist traps (who have paid to advertise, no doubt.) It never semms to find an address more specific than a block. It also has no provision for automatically putting stops along a route in an optimized order. I'd reccoment Microsoft's product. It PAINS me to admit it, but it is more useful. It seems that DeLorme engineers think that the world revolves around where they think you might want to shop. I couldn't get it to stop trying to find business whose names most closely resembled the address for which I was looking. Lest one believe me computer impaired, I assure I am not. I was programming in COBOL when these engineers where in diapers. I have a hard time restraining the profanity which is foremost on my tongue when offering a description of this electronic tripe.
Rating: Summary: The Last Gasp of a Once-Great Company Review: Version 9.0 is still the best mapping software I have used, and I have tried many. Yes, it is now dated, and it's maps are dated, it being 2003 as I write this. I notice a bad review just above mine that mentions tabbed interface which is the later (and IMHO inferior) SA 200x versions, someone posted that review under v9 by mistake. This version is not MAXIMUM CAPABILITY, it is clean simple and trim, like mapping software should be. It does a limited number of things, but figuring out how to do the basics is largely intuitive to a Windows user. It doesn't have the atrocious tabbed interface Delorme adopted later. V9 has many good things: 1) FAST and efficient! I run my V9 on an old ThinkPad 560X (Pentium 233MMX) and it runs just great! Try that with newer mapping software. I like that I can leave my cheapo laptop in the trunk and not worry if it gets stolen after all it only cost me a hundred bucks off EBay. 2) SIMPLE Using the classic Windows interface it's easy to operate. It may not have the new features of 2004 like voice commands or radar serch but then again it's not bloatware. It does the limited set of things it does, very well. 3) Back-on-track! I love this feature if I overshoot the exit it will recalc and tell me how to recover. 4) Map extraction You can run the map extractor and install only the states you need if you don't have enough space for the whole US. Nice! My 560X doesn't even have a CD-ROM so I installed the states I needed over the network and never have to refer to CD's again. 5) Voice navigation Okay, voice is not the best and not changeable, but it does give me audible cue I need to exit soon or whatever 6) Quick keys. There are quick keys like page-up/page-down to zoom and arrow keys to recenter that are easy to find in the dark on most keyboards or in my case a slimline IBM numeric keypad. Yes it has some issues and I have a wishlist of items I wish it had like select the voice to use, etc. but still the best out there! I just wish Delorme would sell map updates for this veteran. Ah well... Unfortunately Delorme has become fixated on it's new tabbed product and discontinued this excellent product. Avoid SA 2003 and 2004. Find a copy of V9 on Ebay or in the bargain bin and use it for a few more years until something better comes along.
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