Street Atlas USA 2003

Rating:
Summary: Don't use this on the road with your GPS
Review: If you plan to use this on the road with a GPS, man this is really bad.
After getting on the road I recieved some really strange messages. Messages with directions that just don't make sense. Gives messages on major turns only if the road name changes. Late messages, for example after entering a ramp on to a freeway being notified that I would be there in a few seconds.
No sense of being off route, keeps on giving directions as if on the plotted route
Thus no automatic rerouting. So if you get off route you have to manually put it "on track"
Bottom line this is really usless with a GPS.

Rating:
Summary: If you buy it make sure you can return for full refund!
Review: If you're one of the lucky ones for whom it works, you are thoroughly enjoying Delorme Street Atlas. I wasn't lucky. I installed Street Atlas 2003 with the Earthmate GPS on a new Toshiba laptop with Win XP Pro. It wouldn't run. Because tech support was already closed I followed all the suggestions in their FAQ's and in the scant instructions I received for $... I emailed support and called them the next day (still no response 2 days later). I was told, "It must be the hardware - call Toshiba." Toshiba tech support consisted of a barely intelligible woman who told me that maybe my (brand new) laptop didn't have enough space on the hard drive to run Street Atlas! But when I ignored her and bought Microsoft Streets & Trips 2003 for $..., it ran fine! Moral, stick with Microsoft.

Rating:
Summary: AVOID
Review: Like other reviewers, I have used other Delorme Street Atlas versions, and except for notorious installation problems, they have always been fairly good, although not as good as Microsoft/Encarta Streets and Trips (and especially the newest one), but the 2003 version of Street Atlas is a disaster. The screen layout is terrible, the menu system had to have been designed designed on another planet. Finding points of interest and putting them on your map is next to impossible. All in all, a terrible product. Mine goes back tomorrow.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly Designed, Sluggish Interface
Review: Poorly Designed, Sluggish Interface

I purchased Street Atlas 2003 due to my disappointment with the point of interest data (and not the interface) of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2002. Unfortunately, the interface with Street Atlas 2003 is so poorly designed, it is almost unusable. While it looks like the point of interest data is in fact better than S&T 2002, the data in S&T 2003 is supposedly better. Street Atlas 2003 has one advantage over S&T in that the GPS has a 3 second update, not the foolish 15 second interval that Microsoft chose.

The specific problems with the interface can only be understood by using the product. However, basic functions such as panning and zooming can be a hassle. When searching for a specific address, it inexplicably scrolls through a list zip codes on a pop-up menu, apparently to show you what it is doing.

The POI data is quite extensive, almost to the extreme with categories and subcategories. However, when searching for a POI, the result is shown on the screen but it is not clear how to get the street address. Even in the menu below, it lists map coordinates and not a street address. Even the maps themselves are not as visually appealing as S&T.

Another problem is that, even on my 1.6 GHz Pentium IV, the program is slow to launch and slow to find addresses, and slow to calculate routes.

In short, the program needs a completely revamped interface.

Rating:
Summary: Forget About It
Review: There are streets on these maps that have not existed in over 50 years if they ever did. Points of Interest are not located in the right place. They need to start over

Rating:
Summary: Incredible detail and directions
Review: This is the most useful software I have ever used - the detailed maps and directions are vital to the frequent traveler. It if far and away a better product than Microsoft Streets & Trips and dont even bother comparing it to online mapping.

Rating:
Summary: Streets missing
Review: This new version lacks some of the usefull tools to mark locations that prior versions have, plus there are streets missing from prior versions. And customer service is none existent.

Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as all that...
Review: This package is really pretty usefull, although it takes getting used to. Many of the special features are hard to find. Using the help and tutorials tabs is important at first. For instance "on map" distances can be measured, but only from the DRAWING tab. I've only had it for a week, and at first I hated it. Now I can start to appreciate some of the power here. Unless you need TOPO this package should meet most demanding mapping needs. If you download the upgrade to Xmap handheld, these maps will work on your palm!

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag for a title with a good history.
Review: This was a tough one. I saw all the awful reviews and wondered, should I even bother with this product? So I bought it, and a few days later I'm still not sure I like it, but it is functional. I find myself using both the new and the old side by side. SA 2003 is both good and bad.

Pluses:

The map data is better. However, it's not perfect. Even the latest data Delorme has still isn't up to where local street maps are. However, there is a "fix." This version of Street Atlas allows you to add the roads. (It's not hard with a GPS log to generate a fairly accurate representation of the road.) So you can fill in the gaps with a little driving around.

The addition of points of interest, restaurants, hospitals, and radio stations directly to the map is neat. The data is mostly accurate and somewhat helpful even if only moderately complete.

There is a lot more functionality in SA 2003. You can have multiple routes, multiple layers of draw objects, multiple waypoint files, (all at once) and it makes usage rather complicated. It's almost like AutoCAD in the layers respect. It's going to send many users into overload - almost guaranteed. If you liked the overall simplicity of the previous versions, you're going to hate this one. There should probably be an hour DVD showing how to make best use to the program included in the packaging.

There are a lot of search options. The ability to find places within a window, city, by name, zip code, lat/lon, etc. is great. Unfortunately, the options combined with the "new" interface makes it a little too cumbersome for most people.

Reliability is good. It hasn't crashed yet.

Minuses:

The interface is awful. (I'm still on the fence as to how awful it is. Half of me hates it and the other half is starting to tolerate it.) It's non-standard and somewhat non-intuitive. You should read all the help files TWICE before realistically trying to use the program, especially if you've used a previous version of Street Atlas. Whoever wrote the UI forgot the cardinal rule of Windows programming, a familiar interface improves the user experience.

I've read the reviews about it being slow. It's not as fast as previous versions, but it's far from being arduously slow. Be sure to copy the data files to the hard drive. (Stick Data CD in and run setup from that CD.) It improves speed. The killer is the GPS. Do not turn on the GPS for tracking or real time locating unless you're not doing anything else with the computer - my 1.2 Ghz Athlon w/ 512 MB of RAM was maxxed out (100% CPU utilization) trying this task. (Unclick every check box in the GPS Options dialog area.) You will likely be disappointed if this is your primary mapping program in your car if nothing else, due to the excess CPU utilization, it may feel very sluggish. However, in normal home usage, locating places and scrolling through maps without GPS, CPU usage rarely topped 50% and usually stayed below 10%. Once you have a route and everything else setup where you won't be interacting with the computer, then you can initialize and run the GPS and not be too annoyed. (Just don't try to make changes at this point.) I'm not exactly sure why this occurs, but careful use of accepting GPS data seems to solve most problems.

I did not test the microphone portion where you can ask it where you are. So I cannot "speak" to how well that works.

Verdict: The program has an awful, "new" interface, good information with lots of flexibility, and is fine speed-wise as long as you're not using it for real-time mapping with a GPS while typing a letter. And if you're a technophobe - you're going to hate it because it's non-standard and there will be somewhat of a learning curve. If you're planning to be sitting in your car with your laptop and GPS, you may be happier with something less CPU intensive and simpler, like an older version of Street Atlas. However, if you're the adventuresome type whose not afraid of screwy non-standard interfaces - check out SA 2003. It offers a lot.

Rating:
Summary: SA2003?
Review: We have been users of Street Atlas since SA2, and find that overall, versions up through SA9 perform efficiently, effectively and with a high value of user functionality. However, for us, SA2003 does not meet our expectations, nor does it perform with the same speed and ease of use that SA9 does.

The performance is degraded substantially from SA9. While SA9 is very quick to zoom in/out, pan, ascertain routes etc, SA2003 is very noticeably slower. In fact, it takes many seconds to zoom in/out. Opening up SA9 on all four machines took (roughly) 25% of the time it took to open up SA2003. For instance, on the Toshiba Satellite 1.7Ghz machine, SA9 took 4 seconds to open up a map file with a magnification of 11. That same machine took 14 seconds to open up SA2003, centered in the same area, with the same magnification.

I cannot find what the value of the 'Magnify' function. If we use the 'Zoom' feature, why add a 'Magnify' function? This seems redundant.

Although my screens are typically 1400x1000 (and 1024x768 up to 1600x1200), I would like more real estate for the SA screen. Why can't I move or remove the right hand menu bar? I have no need to see the world map to pan, lat/long, compass nor magnification features.

Additionally, I didn't notice any "F" key equivalents in SA2003 that was associated with certain functions on SA9. For instance, F4 (Phone), F5 (zip) and F6 (place) on SA9 does nothing on SA2003. And, F7 (Locate by address), F9 (Map legend), F10 (draw objects), F11 (route) and F12 (Initializes GPS) on SA9 does not appear to have any function in SA2003.

Is there a way to revert the user interface on SA2003 back to the interface displayed in SA9? I find that it is very hard to navigate around the menus on the bottom of the display. In fact, there does not appear to be a 'file'/'open' function. Apparently the designers have through to use their own proprietary interface which does not in the least match up with standard Windows interface.

The new colors in SA2003 are extremely hard to read. For instance, when mouse-over a particular street, either the default or mobile colors produce a near-unreadable street value in the lower left-hand corner. They were very readable in SA9.

The forestry color (green) in SA9 does not appear in SA2003. Is there a way to 'turn on' the coloring again? Specifically, National Forests in SA9 was colored green. SA2003 does not color, nor in any other way, mark the boundaries of the national Forest. The same holds true for city zones.

The low definition and detail of roads on higher magnifications on SA2003 make it near-impossible to use at these higher levels of scan. In other words, on SA9, a zoom-value (for example) of 11 produces much more screen and street data on SA9 than the same zoom-value on SA2003. And yes, the screen resolutions are identical (same area of coverage on both programs).

Did you know that for screen resolutions of 800x600, 1024x768 and 1400x1050, the Microsoft Office Bar (top right corner) [Screen] OVERWRITES the "HELP" button on SA2003? Only after many days of program experimentation, and shrinking the program window, did I find that there are other options in the "HELP" button (IE FAQ) besides F1 (basic help). I realize that the office bar is not in vogue these days, but honestly, why author a program to 'cover' a historical program option (office bar)? Does that mean that people who continue to use the 'on-top' version of the office bar must now be mandated to switch to an 'active desktop' for their quick icon selections, or turn off the always-on-top feature of the office bar?

I'm not sure why the total package was changed - perhaps it would have been very beneficial to conduct a market survey as to what the users wanted. In my situation, I would have *REALLY* preferred options to revert several key components back to SA9 functionality.

Once again, we're really disappointed, and wish that we did not have to return the product. However, to us, given the fact that Delorme is the leader in mapping software, and that we are fully satisfied with SA9, we will continue to use the earlier version of that product.