Description:
Microsoft MapPoint 2001 is a capable mapping program aimed squarely at the business user; whether you want to get driving directions or create business reports using marketing and demographic data based on geography, this package can help. The core functionality of this North American edition of MapPoint features extensive geographical and demographics data for the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It's easy to look up any address, ZIP code, or business name--we found the searching options to be quite flexible. MapPoint doesn't disappoint when it comes to working with demographics data, either--it includes population data from 1980, 1999, and 2004, along with a variety of geographic, household, and income information. A data-mapping wizard lets you generate a variety of map styles (using shaded areas, shaded or sized circles, or "pushpins" to mark data), so it's easy to identify regions with prospective customers. (You could, for instance, plot ZIP codes with a high proportion of households making more than $100,000 a year.) The flip side of plotting the supplied data in MapPoint is plotting your own business data, easier to do with the program's hooks to Excel (both importing and exporting) and its ability to use GPS data. MapPoint will plot existing addresses of customers or sales to generate reports with maps. And, since it's integrated into Microsoft Office, we had no trouble creating a Word document that includes a map. (You can also use this tool within PowerPointfor presentations.) There are plenty of mapping packages that make more use of multimedia for planning trips and the like. But MapPoint 2001 has a few features that can benefit the home user, though this is clearly not the product's focus. In testing, we received extremely detailed driving directions for a short trip. While it's doubtful that real travel is ever this precise, MapPoint did a good job showing us the way with its route planner. In all, there's little doubt that this package's mapping capabilities will fit the needs of small to medium businesses. For organizations that have struggled with using geographical data, MapPoint 2001 puts mapping into reach. --Rich Dragan
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