Hello, everybody, and greetings from Tel Aviv.

I am planning a trip to Romania and Moldova in about a couple of weeks, and first obtained Mappoint 2009 Europe ( it does not contain Eastern Europe, but what the heck. Still, if anyone knows where I can find maps for it, I'll be very grateful...) I wanted to buy a package of the Point with GPS receiver, but in my part of the world it can only be obtained with Street Atlas, so I decided what the hell, and did just that.

Two surprises: the Street Atlas has a terrible learning curve. I mean, I'm not a newbie to map software, and has been using Autoroute and Streets and Trips for years now, but this is the first time I was unable to get the program to find an address for me. It keeps telling me to use the Mapfile tab for street-level search, and I confess it really stumps me as what the #^%$ that means!!

The second problem is more serious: the Mappoint does not recognize my LT-40. I KNOW it works, because I managed to pin-point my home with the Street Atlas. But Mappoint insists that the receiver should be connected to a COM port, and no other ports are available, and the receiver is not connected to the COM port, thus no GPS is found. Whaaa? Who uses COM ports anymore? Or am I missing something?

Please help!!
Mark

Hi Mark,

Greetings to Israel, and welcome to Laptop GPS World.

Microsoft MapPoint 2009 Europe may not have road map of Moldova, and it may not have sufficiently good enough road coverage of Romania for your needs, but it would not be technically correct to state that it doesn't contain Eastern Europe. From what I see, MapPoint 2009 Europe does have a decent street-level detail for Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, etc.

DeLorme GPS receiver LT-40 works with non-DeLorme software. It just requires the installation of a software driver. Follow the "DeLorme" link in the following post: Streets & Trips / AutoRoute / MapPoint Compatible GPS Receivers.

Thanks, Marvin!

Actually, the Point has a quite decent coverage of Romania, because while technically it is Eastern Europe, it is now a member of the EU, and so is a recognized country... So are other EU members. Other Europen countries are only recognized on the "Here be dragons" level...LOL

BTW, if it seems that the Point does not show enough road detail in Romania, it is because there aren't any more. Roads, I mean, not details...

And yes, the DeLorme serial emulator cleared the recognition problem quite nicely. Thank you!!
Just one more question: how DO I make the Street Atlas zoom in to street level? It simply starts showing a mainly blank space below certain zoom level, with a few town names strewn here and there. And that level is right below the main roads level, so no details. What do I do? I realize this is shameful question, but I'm getting quite exasperated...

Thanks again!

LOL, that's a good one! But I see many towns which are not connected with roads. That makes me believe only major cities have street-level coverage in the 2009 version of Microsoft Mappoint Europe. Let's see what 2010 version brings.

That's what you will get if you are zooming into an area without street-level coverage. DeLorme Street Atlas 2009 only comes with detail map data for USA and Canada (and a little bit of Mexico).

And there are areas of Canada that are somewhat lacking, too. I've contacted DeLorme a couple of times and they admit that nothing else gets the same focus as the continental US (folks in Alaska scream at them, too).

...ken...