Rating: 
Summary: Just the worst
Review: I owned a previous version of this software, switched to Microsoft Streets & Trips 2001. When it came time to update Streets & Trips, I looked at the competitors, Delorme included. After a side-by-side comparison, it seemed like Street Atlas USA 2003 was the way to go. Boy, was I wrong.The user interface is absolutely horrible, to the point of being nearly unusable. Nothing is intuitive. I keep finding myself going for the non-existant menu items in the non-existant menubar at the top of the window. The graphics are ugly. One thing about the Microsoft product is that the maps are generally accurate and look nice. Delorme's maps are little better than stick drawings. Road names are sparse and usually not aligned well with the associated road. The map data is innacurate. A 2-year-old version of Streets and Trips finds my house correctly while Street Atlas USA 2003 with its "Extensively Updated Data" places my house several blocks down the street and misplaces established resorts and landmarks. This product is a waste of money and time. Go for Microsoft Streets and Trips 2003.
Rating: 
Summary: Made it worse!
Review: I would not recommend Street Atlas USA 2003, even though in the past, I have been a big fan of Street Atlas. No longer with the Deluxe versions now being the only option for 2003 and forward. Let me explain. First of all they took what was in my opinion one of the best interfaces of any product I have used and made it one of the worst. Common windows menu's are a thing of the past. Even the graphical represenation of streets is of lower quality then the Street Atlas version 8 I had used in the past, which i will now be going back to. The past version was just a joy to use, the new one makes you wonder what their software engineers were thinking. If your a fan of the older Street Atlas versions (windows interfaced) I think you will be very disappointed with the new lower pane navigation method. I will be taking advantage of my Delorme 30 day money back guarantee and re-installing my Street Atlas 8. I also believe Street Atlas 9 is the last version of the software with the windows interface. What a shame!
Rating:
Summary: Worst ... Upgrade ... Ever
Review: I'm a long-time user of Street Atlas (5, 6, & 7), and was tempted to upgrade to 2003 by some of the new features (e.g., road editing) and other improvements. I use Delorme's Earthmate GPS. The road editing feature in 2003 does work as promised, and 2003 is much, much faster at initializing the GPS than is version 7, particularly in a moving vehicle. Beyond that, I find little to like. I've used 2003 regularly for several months now, hoping I might get used to quirky interface, but I've come to the conclusion that it is just a horribly designed program. Version 7 certainly was not perfect, but this is a major step backwards in usability. Program interaction is just not well thought out, it is difficult to discover how to perform certain tasks (just one example: disabling voice navigation requires clicking Route, Advanced, Route Prefs), and the new features that allows you to mix multiple routes and different drawing layers is maddening. Don't buy this program. If you just want mapping, go with Trips and Streets. If you want GPS support, try to find a used copy of Street Atlas 9, 8, or 7. (You can't have mine -- I'm reinstalling it.)
Rating:
Summary: Worst ... Upgrade ... Ever
Review: I'm a long-time user of Street Atlas (5, 6, & 7), and was tempted to upgrade to 2003 by some of the new features (e.g., road editing) and other improvements. I use Delorme's Earthmate GPS. The road editing feature in 2003 does work as promised, and 2003 is much, much faster at initializing the GPS than is version 7, particularly in a moving vehicle. Beyond that, I find little to like. I've used 2003 regularly for several months now, hoping I might get used to quirky interface, but I've come to the conclusion that it is just a horribly designed program. Version 7 certainly was not perfect, but this is a major step backwards in usability. Program interaction is just not well thought out, it is difficult to discover how to perform certain tasks (just one example: disabling voice navigation requires clicking Route, Advanced, Route Prefs), and the new features that allows you to mix multiple routes and different drawing layers is maddening. Don't buy this program. If you just want mapping, go with Trips and Streets. If you want GPS support, try to find a used copy of Street Atlas 9, 8, or 7. (You can't have mine -- I'm reinstalling it.)
Rating:
Summary: Worst ... Upgrade ... Ever
Review: I'm a long-time user of Street Atlas (5, 6, & 7), and was tempted to upgrade to 2003 by some of the new features (e.g., road editing) and other improvements. I use Delorme's Earthmate GPS. The road editing feature in 2003 does work as promised, and 2003 is much, much faster at initializing the GPS than is version 7, particularly in a moving vehicle. Beyond that, I find little to like. I've used 2003 regularly for several months now, hoping I might get used to quirky interface, but I've come to the conclusion that it is just a horribly designed program. Version 7 certainly was not perfect, but this is a major step backwards in usability. Program interaction is just not well thought out, it is difficult to discover how to perform certain tasks (just one example: disabling voice navigation requires clicking Route, Advanced, Route Prefs), and the new features that allows you to mix multiple routes and different drawing layers is maddening. Don't buy this program. If you just want mapping, go with Trips and Streets. If you want GPS support, try to find a used copy of Street Atlas 9, 8, or 7. (You can't have mine -- I'm reinstalling it.)
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I've been a fan of Delorme Street Atlas since the early versions. I was very happy with the previous version, it did everything I wanted, was easy to use, and was fast. I bought Street Atlas 2003 mainly to get the newest map information. It was a huge disappointment - it's slow, you can't select certain states to save on your hard drive (it's all or nothing), I don't care for the map display (you have to zoom way in to see street names), you can no longer select certain areas to avoid, and worst of all the automatic routing often gives nonsense reslults (I've found that the program thinks that some interstate off-ramps are local roads and will go out of it's way to route around them - the results are sometimes just plain goofy).
Rating:
Summary: Don't use this on the road with your GPS
Review: I've been using street atlas since 6.0 and I liked it very much. Recently I bought the new USB version of earthmate, which is bundled with street atlas 2003 USA. I want to say this is worst map software I've used, even worse than MS streets and trips (which has lots of error on intersections). The only two good things of SA 2003 are great GPS support with voice prompt, which delorme does well since earlier SA versions, and the new editing tool that let you add routable roads (really doesn't matter it's routable or not since you don't want to create routes with this product anyway!) Now the bad things: 1, it can never get a route right. I've played with it for a week now and it just can't do it. _Always_ gives longer routes than it should be. Often let you go through a quite neighborhood instead of a nearby freeway, even the freeway is shorter and quicker. No, it's not I set the preference wrong... typically, if I add a via point to help it, it would correct the error and get the right route (why do I need the program then!) In some places, connectors between freeways are treated as local road and it does its best to avoid them! One example is where I-95 and I-64 splits at Richmond, VA. 2, the display sucks. At zoom level 12, where it's already street level, no single road name is shown. And when street names are shown, if there's a state or county number for the road, it's always the number gets shown, rather than the street name, while in real world no one care about or even know the state road number at all. The display also looks very ugly comparing to SA8.0 or MS streets and trips. 3, all local roads are treated same, no matter it's a major 6-lane parkway or a 2-lane quite neighborhood drive with plenty of stop signs... 4, you can't run the program on an English windows system with non-English language set as default or non-Unicode language (and of course can't run on non-English version of windows). 5, the user interface is much worse than earlier versions. The window for directions can only show several lines, unless you cut the map window to half. Some setting changes can't be updated correctly. Guess I have to buy MS from now on...
Rating:
Summary: the worst map software?
Review: I've been using street atlas since 6.0 and I liked it very much. Recently I bought the new USB version of earthmate, which is bundled with street atlas 2003 USA. I want to say this is worst map software I've used, even worse than MS streets and trips (which has lots of error on intersections). The only two good things of SA 2003 are great GPS support with voice prompt, which delorme does well since earlier SA versions, and the new editing tool that let you add routable roads (really doesn't matter it's routable or not since you don't want to create routes with this product anyway!) Now the bad things: 1, it can never get a route right. I've played with it for a week now and it just can't do it. _Always_ gives longer routes than it should be. Often let you go through a quite neighborhood instead of a nearby freeway, even the freeway is shorter and quicker. No, it's not I set the preference wrong... typically, if I add a via point to help it, it would correct the error and get the right route (why do I need the program then!) In some places, connectors between freeways are treated as local road and it does its best to avoid them! One example is where I-95 and I-64 splits at Richmond, VA. 2, the display sucks. At zoom level 12, where it's already street level, no single road name is shown. And when street names are shown, if there's a state or county number for the road, it's always the number gets shown, rather than the street name, while in real world no one care about or even know the state road number at all. The display also looks very ugly comparing to SA8.0 or MS streets and trips. 3, all local roads are treated same, no matter it's a major 6-lane parkway or a 2-lane quite neighborhood drive with plenty of stop signs... 4, you can't run the program on an English windows system with non-English language set as default or non-Unicode language (and of course can't run on non-English version of windows). 5, the user interface is much worse than earlier versions. The window for directions can only show several lines, unless you cut the map window to half. Some setting changes can't be updated correctly. Guess I have to buy MS from now on...
Rating:
Summary: Disk hog with interface confusion
Review: I've used Delorme's Street Atlas for over 10 years -- updating every year or so. I bought 2003 and was first surprised by the confusing interface and then alarmed at what a disk hog it was (800k+!!!!). The previous version of SA would allow you to load onto the HD the state/county that you needed. Great for a traveling laptop. Now, it appears, the entire US must be downloaded -- what a waste. 1 star is too generous a rating! Allen
Rating:
Summary: Not For Planning Vacations
Review: If you are looking for door-to-door routing software that doesn't require you to be online, then Street Atlas 2003 (SA2003) is for you. It handles routing quickly and accurately and the road database is extensive. But, if you are looking for travel planning software to plan a vacation or to replace AAA Map'n'Go (the vacation planner that Delorme has discontinued), then you will be very disappointed. SA2003 adopted the non-standard user interface that Delorme already uses with TopoUSA. While it does eliminate dialog boxes appearing over the map display, it takes quite a while to find your way around and seems limited in scope. The navigation bar at the right of the screen takes more screen area than it needs to. To route door-to-door, you can enter a starting point either by entering an address or by clicking on the map. You can enter stops along the way and designate the final destination. The calculated route can be printed out as turn-by-turn written directions and various maps, including strip maps and turn-by-turn maps. Only major highways are shown in color, making the maps harder to follow than Map'n'Go's. The turn-by-turn maps result in lot of duplication because many intersections, particularly Interstate interchanges, are treated as a series of separate turns so you get four or five identical turn-by-turn maps each with directions for a tiny portion of the intersection. If you want to plan a vacation, SA2003 fails miserably compared to the discontinued Map'n'Go. Delorme's Map'n'Go contained essentially the entire AAA Tourbook database of tourist attractions and accommodations, each with several paragraphs of detailed information, including address, phone, description, hours of operation, how long to allow for the visit, admission or rates and AAA ratings. Planning a vacation was a breeze and the program quickly calculated routes and provided excellent directions and maps. Though routing was from the nearest major street, instead of door-to-door, that was fine for vacation planning. You could ask Map'n'Go to show you all points-of-interest along a route and in seconds you would have a complete list, including a narrated slide show to watch. Not so with SA2003 which, sometimes after many minutes of processing, provides only the phone number (but no address) of each point-of-interest. Where Map'n'Go nicely displayed accommodations and points-of-interest on the map, SA2003, because there are so many points, only shows tiny dots at all but the most zoomed-in maps. I used to use Map'n'Go to filter the lodging symbols to show only lodging at a certain price and AAA rating to quickly find the best price for a given quality level. With no lodging detail, you simply can't do this with SA2003. Other Map'n'Go features missing from SA2003 are routing for Canada and Mexico and downloadable road construction and weather information. Unfortunately, SA2003 makes up for less points-of-interest quality with more quantity - over 4 million. Unless you want to know of every bar, nail salon, ATM, dance studio, car dealer, etc., you will find SA2003 to contain far too many points-of-interest, all with no detailed information for travel planning. You can limit searches to certain categories, but even that results in an overload. Searching for "Amusement and Recreation" within a 10 mile radius of San Francisco resulted in over 1,500 places, including every karate studio, night club, video arcade, bowling center, etc. For me, over 80% of the results were useless. You can further limit searches by using keywords, but even then you end up with excessive quantity with no detailed information. Unfortunately, I found many points-of-interest categorized wrong. For instance, the leasing office of an office building was listed as an amusement. No matter how you intend to use SA2003, you will find its most glaring weakness is the time it takes to search for points-of-interest, particularly along a route. I set up a 1,500-mile route from San Francisco to Astoria, Oregon and searched for points-of-interest within 2 miles of the route. The search took twenty-five minutes! The majority of the resulting 2,284 points-of-interest were of no use to the vacation planner. Every along-the-route search test I tried took 15 to 30 minutes to run. Checking System Monitor showed the CPU running slammed at 100%. This was on an 800MHz PC with 256MB of RAM. I tried the same tests on a 733MHz PC with 384MB of RAM with similar results. These excessive search times make SA2003 extremely frustrating and impractical to use. Worse yet, if you don't print out the results or save them to a separate text file, you lose them when you exit SA2003. Delorme could greatly enhance SA2003 for the vacation planner by changing the install program to allow the user to install only those point-of-interest categories that they want. For instance, I would only install accommodations, tourist attractions and a few others. That would result in a substantially smaller database, which (I hope) would greatly speed up searches. Delorme could further enhance SA2003 by making a special travel planning database available that contained the type of detailed AAA information that was available in Map'n'Go. I do not use mapping software with a GPS so I did not check this feature with SA2003, though it did look comprehensive. If Map'n'Go was still available, I would immediately return SA2003 and buy the latest Map'n'Go. For now, I will continue to use my 2001 version of Map'n'Go 7 for vacation planning and just use SA2003 to verify the routing. If another company comes up with a decent vacation planning package, I would drop Delorme as quickly as they dropped Map'n'Go! I hope a better solution comes along before the information in Map'n'Go becomes too outdated.
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