Rating: 
Summary: Good for business, fine for home
Review: This product has proven itself to be very accessible at my office. Importing of data is extremely easy, and the ability to portray the data in a variety of ways is nice. I have used it to plot out office buildings by square footage, and by the number of businesses located in a group of buildings. At home, my wife and I use this program to help us plan routes for road trips, and even trips across town (we're relatively new to the St. Louis area). MapPoint updates construction information to help you avoid potential traffic snarls along your route. We like to use this in conjunction with our Rand McNally Streetfinder map. Sometimes we can find a better route by looking at the Streetfinder map, but MapPoint has yet to get us lost. One project we did as a family was to plot the addresses of all of the places we frequent on a regular basis. Then, we identified a list of homes that we were interested in purchasing. We were able to see which homes were most conveniently located to schools, doctor's offices, favorite stores, work, favorite hangouts (like Dave and Buster's), etc. Being able to do this type of analysis helped us rank the homes in order of best physical location. Kind of dorky, but it was useful nonetheless! The program installed easily on my Windows 2000 computer at work, and on my Windows 98 SE computer at home. I first got to use this at work, and I liked it so much, that I couldn't resist buying a copy for home. It is somewhat pricey, but it is so simple to use, and it has lots of uses, that I found it a good value.
Rating: 
Summary: Could be better
Review: Very flashy but falls short in several areas. You can't define specific villages or cities for display. You can get around it by cobbling together small areas within the town (blocks) but why should you have to? I'd like to be able to say draw me X, Y and Z village. Then draw my county, etc. The maps are in a comic quality making it hard to use for presentation purposes. Really just good for checking out areas, not for real business needs. I miss the more [costly] packages.
Rating:
Summary: Could be better
Review: Very flashy but falls short in several areas. You can't define specific villages or cities for display. You can get around it by cobbling together small areas within the town (blocks) but why should you have to? I'd like to be able to say draw me X, Y and Z village. Then draw my county, etc. The maps are in a comic quality making it hard to use for presentation purposes. Really just good for checking out areas, not for real business needs. I miss the more [costly] packages.
Rating: 
Summary: Obsolete when it hits your door
Review: While the mapping and search capability is awesome, the package is hopelessly obsolete when you get it. Freeways that went in near me three years ago are not reflected. If the files could be updated, I say it's a worthwhile product. In this case, though, it is not.
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