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Rand McNally StreetFinder & TripMaker Deluxe

Rand McNally StreetFinder & TripMaker Deluxe

List Price: $49.99
Your Price: $31.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Old and simplistic
Review: There are many things not to like about this app. The interface reminds one of Win 3.1 apps and quickly becomes frustrating when you want to do anything other than find a street.
You want continuous zoom or pan? Forget it. You can only position and zoom at preset intervals which are too large for detailed work and there is no mouse interface, its either keys or a tiny menu impossible to work with.
You want to know the name of a small city? Forget it. You can see the streets but not its name.

The maps are also very old. For example, Madison WI maps are at least 10 years out of date.
You cannot plan a precise trip. For that you have to switch to their TripMaker, but alas, the trip you create in TripMaker cannot be read into StreetFinder. Problem is, TripMaker has only the larger roads and freeways, so its useless to plan trips within cites or on small county roads, and StreetFinder does not allow for multi-waypoint trip. So both are useless for side trips unless you want to go from places like NY to SF. But we all know that for that you just get on 80 and go West.
So, save your money and buy a map. Better yet, use several of the on-line maps. They're free and give you almost everything this doesn't. In all fairness, there a few good things there, but they're not worth the frustration the other things will cause.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ugly maps & doesn't run on Windows XP properly!
Review: This is one of the worst pieces of software I've seen for a long time. The box shows a pretty map of Yellowstone, but I haven't actually figured out a way to get that map style. All I can get is a range of ugly, plain maps.

The software also doesn't really function well on Windows XP. Many of the multimedia features just crash. The GPS support doesn't seem to be complete either - at least it doesn't recognize my NavMan device.

Final gripe - the walking directions feature is a joke. What it amounts to is that you can draw a line on the map! Big deal, I can do that on a paper map.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Tripmaker is bugridden
Review: TripMaker is so buggy that I would be reluctant to buy any Rand McNally product again. I bought it very cheaply at Costco -- I do not care about the money -- it is the lack of quality that bothers me.
There were several error messages during the install process, and the program hangs whenever I try to input a date. In addition, its routing and street level detail is primitive, to be kind.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Yet another ugly mapping program
Review: What is wrong with these people? Three million travelers have Powerbooks and they can't be bothered to compile this program for any other operating system but Windows? Now that the Mac OS and Linux are Unix based, this is a simple process and I can't believe this company doesn't want this business.
I tried this program on a PC - it doesn't work correctly on XP (crashed) and I think it is one of the ugliest interfaces I have seen. I didn't try the GPS feature. I do appreciate the Palm additions and the newer, more current map information, but it doesn't make me want to recommend it.


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