Street Atlas USA Handheld Edition

Rating:
Summary: A total waste of money
Review: A convoluted, overly restrictive, confusing, useless mess. The search for a decent handheld map program continues.

Rating:
Summary: PC app: poor, PDA app:fair
Review: I have to agree with the previous reviews. The PC app is difficult to use, does not employ a standard UI, and makes bulk loading of map data to the PDA normal memory, much less extended memory, as tedious as you can get. I would throw the app out, and start from scratch. On the PDA side, there is no overview map that i could find. You could only access maps by name which is not WYSIWYG at all. It does scroll fast and the maps look great, however. I'm suprised at the total lack of basic necessary features. Delorme could learn a great deal just by looking at Garmin's Mapsource applications and their very well designed cartographic GPS units. Until they address the ability to quilt together map sections, provide bulk downloading, and many other features, i'd wait on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Not User Friendly
Review: I have used the regular PC Versions of Street Atlas for years and love it. This software for a PDA need to be pulled from the market by Delorm before it gives all their software a bad name. They are trying to load too much secondary travel info into the PDA and not what is really needed. Which is easy to use maps or areas that can be easly loaded and navigated. Something like their Street Atlas for PC's Ver. 01. Who needs the names of hotels, places of interest, and eating establishments on a PDA. All you want to do is find out where you are and where you are going.

Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: I liked the PC version, but the handheld version is expensive, hard to use and not that much value. When compared to MS Streets and Maps it is not even in the same league. The Bluetooth feature is problematic and the tech support is poor. In both versions there seems to be a bug that introduces a position error of about 200 feet. This seems to be problem for both the hand held and PC editions. If this keeps up I expect DeLorme to be out of business within 2 years. Too bad---It has the potential to be world class.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of info but hard to get to
Review: The handheld app is apparently aimed mainly at GPS users, and I can't comment on that part. I bought it as a simple roadmap and location-searching tool. It does have an amazing database, covering every square inch of the U.S. and containing many thousands of "points of interest" including businesses with phone numbers.

As others have noted, if you want to put an entire metropolitan area on your PDA, it pretty much has to go on the memory card, which slows performance to a crawl. The search function is powerful, but there are a few gotchas. Any match of three or more letters is displayed, so if you search on "Eagle" you also get "Seagull", and a search on a name that contains a common string can result in hundreds of hits (but they are sorted by best match). You can search for any address in your address book just by entering the name associated with the entry; but unless the address is in your book in the expected form (e.g. 123 12 St, not 123-12th St.), the app won't find it. It also doesn't seem to know much about house numbers, and generally won't resolve the address to the correct position on the street.

The maps are pretty good, but there's no support for hi-res. Street names are displayed only sporadically, so it's difficult to orient yourself without touching the map for more information (displayed at the bottom of the clunky interface).

I don't regret buying the app if only because it does give me a handy "pocket yellow pages" for my area, but it's certainly no substitute for a paper map. For better-labeled maps that look better on the hi-res Clie screen, Mapopolis is an alternative; but the one "enhanced" Mapopolis map I have purchased contains very few points of interest, not even labels for most parks and malls, and has a few other problems of its own.

Rating:
Summary: Good Mapping Data, Bad Software
Review: The maps themselves are very good. Very good detail and lots of points of interests are displayed. They're easier to read than another programs I tried. But, the software that powers them needs alot of work. On your PC, you pick which section of the map you want to put on your PDA. If you want a routeable, detailed map of any area, you can only save areas of 6x6 miles. I wanted several hundred square miles of maps. I had to block in that whole section, one 6x6 square at a time. I drive a truck around Central Indiana. So, I have around 50 map blocks on my PDA. To put them on my flash card, I had to move them all one block at a time. Just moving the files would cause my Palm M125 to Lock up about 1 out of every 10 times a file was moved. Keep your paperclip ready. I finally have all the maps I need for a days work saved on flash. Now the program runs slow. And I mean SLOW!!! When you do a street name search, it scans the whole database for States that are included. Then Citys, then Zipcodes. I could have pulled out my paper map, looked it up, and have been halfway there before it was able to narrow down the search. You're welcome to hit search as soon as you get the name typed in. But, then it will search the whole database for that street. And that will take twice as long. Go to all that trouble and sometimes you'll get no match at all. That happened to me and I went to the map where I thought that street might be. And there it was. Molly Ln was right there on my screen. But, when I tried to search again. It still got no matches. Another thing I don't like is that you can't search addresses. (501 Main) only street names (Main). You have to figure out for yourself where on Main 501 is. If you can find Main when you're looking at the map. The Name doesn't always appear. The street labels a attached to a single point if you scroll past that point, you don't know which streets you are looking at. Tap on the street and it will tell you the name. That helps only slightly, when you're looking at grid of streets, most with no name. To counteract this, I found that doing a route from a known place to the unknown steet is easier to follow. But, wait! FATAL ALERT Any time any map is on the flash card, and I did a route. It would lock up. Once the card was removed and a map was in main memory, it routed just fine.
If you keep your mapping area small and off the memory card the software is pretty good. If you are a power map user, look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: This program is awesome!!! You install the software on your PC and choose how much you want to sync to your PDA. You can sync detailed maps or just highways and interstates. My wife works at a flower shop and sometimes delivers. Type in the address and it will take you their.
Syncing the the maps can be a little difficult the first time but I didn't even need to look at the instructions. I highly recomend this product.

Rating:
Summary: If you are computer literate at all you'll love it.
Review: This program is awesome!!! You install the software on your PC and choose how much you want to sync to your PDA. You can sync detailed maps or just highways and interstates. My wife works at a flower shop and sometimes delivers. Type in the address and it will take you their.
Syncing the the maps can be a little difficult the first time but I didn't even need to look at the instructions. I highly recomend this product.

Rating:
Summary: Looking for a PDA map program???? Keep looking.
Review: Xmap version 1.3 keeps causing 'Fatal Errors' and 'Memory Chunk' errors on my m125 running PalmOS 4.0.1. Delorme states this may happen with routes but I'm only using it to see their 'Sample' map that came with the product. I loaded their downloadable fixed version 1.4 but it has the same result.
I live in the Dallas, Texas area and would like a map of Dallas and Fort Worth. Unfortunately, the program locks up my computer every time I try to create a map of that area. I then followed the procedure Delorme recommends to prevent so called 'other background software' from halting their product. Guess what? That procedure made no difference. The program usually locks up at more than 50% of creating the map. Once it got all the way to 84% before it halted. At that time, the file was well over 9 MB!!! I'm not sure I need THAT much data. I just want the streets. Rand McNally's Streetfinder does this same area in about 2MB but it has MAJOR DEFECTS also and I definitely don't recommend it (see my other review).
I have been using Mapopolis with some maps I downloaded a couple of years ago, but the price now is a little prohibitive since I need maps for spur of the moment travel somewhat infrequently and don't always have time or access to the web to download them. I can't afford to download maps for all places I MIGHT go. Mapopolis works perfectly, even with memory cards, and I recommend it if you can afford the maps. I guess I will continue to use my laptop until something better comes along. I write software. It is a shame I don't know more about map databases so I could develop my own program and tell these guys where to go.