Various problems with Microsoft Streets and Trips

I currently use Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 and have used 2006 with GPS.

A couple problems that I have seen:

0) Cannot get the TALK software to work. WXP with Office 2007. S&T 2007 will not install the Talk software from S&T CD... S&T will install, but no voice directions... Poor integration and I cannot find an update to fix it.

1) After driving for 3-4 hours and using the recalculate directions button, a thread in S&T will start using 100% CPU and cause updates to be very erratic. It can take 1-2 minutes to get Task Manager up so you can kill S&T.

On long trips (12-24 hours), this will happen 2-3 times or more.

2) Also when recalculating directions, the software will direct you to take a turn around in the restricted (Police, fire, etc.) cross-over between divided highways. I have had this occur 10-12 times in the last couple years. This is a BIG NO NO, of course.... This has happened in NY, PA and other Midwestern locations.

3) It would be VERY helpful to have the GPS mini-screen that shows number of satellites along with speed, lat/log/height in the driving full screen mode.

4) A hook into using the an address book (outlook bi-directional) so you can easily add locations when creating a new map.

5) The construction update is either useless, does not work or widely outdated. In the many miles I have driven is misses a LOT of highway construction work.

6) I wish they would enlarge the database of sites of interest - there are too many holes when driving. Ship using DVD.

I would rate the software a 6 on a 10 scale...

mark

Welcome to the forum.

When you have problems, it is often very useful to know where the problems come from. If you have the inclination, you can then take steps to get them corrected.

0. If setup is failing, I assume you've tried to install the Text-to-Speech engine manually from the CD? See first comment at: http://text2go.wordpress.com/2007/09...th-windows-xp/ for how to do so. Note that you can launch MSIs with various options, such as verbose logging, to help figure out problems.

1. Have you contacted tech support? Don't get on the phone with them since there's likely no easy solution, but be sure to file an incident so that you "stand up and be counted" -- the more people who call in, the higher priority a bug gets. The more technically-inclined can produce a process dump to help in debugging. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241215

2. This may be a software problem or a map problem. Either the software is not recognizing the restriction, or the map does not have the restriction marked. Do a Tools --> Send Map Feedback.

3. Help --> About, "Please send comments and suggestions to." Don't get your hopes up, but again, this is one of those "Stand up and be counted" things. Reviewers tend to have more influence than ordinary users.

4. You seem to be describing Outlook to S&T data transfer, which already exists (Data --> Import, Outlook Contacts). Don't you mean the other way around, i.e. get locations from an existing S&T map into Outlook? I don't think this is typical workflow, but perhaps you can explain better how it'd go.

5. Marvin knows a bunch about data freshness lags in S&T, maybe he can answer this one.

6. It's already shipped on DVD. The real question is, which POI database is licensed for S&T? I know some people use the Live Search feature to get POIs out of Virtual Earth, which in some cases is better. Of course this requires Internet access so it's a no-go for offline scenarios.

Thank you.

As I think about it, here are a couple more.

-2) There seems to be a 1-2 second lag time that makes it easy to miss a turn when there are many streets in an urban area. TomTom and other complete units do not show the lag nearly as bad.

-1) The GPS arrow will disappear some times when the "automatic" zoom is in tight because you are close to a way point.



MS Office 2007 already has T2S in it and installed. S&T will not work with it...



No. If I logged every problem with MS, that would be my full-time job. :-( I believe this is a problem with Create GPS trail. This is not a new problem (i.e. it is known) and I expect it will not be fixed for a couple more years.



It has occurred too many times. I did the feedback on a couple of them and years later they were still not fixed.



Done this and have not seen any changes... ;-) I understand what you are saying but I believe the biggest way to affect change is to get enough people saying, "I have that problem also!", in a public forum so they finally have no choice but to do something.



I want a seemless communications - not import or export. What happens when Outlook address book gets updated and 3 months later you need to use S&T to get to the site. S&T is outdated and you go to the wrong one...

If Quickbooks, ACT, Stamps.com, etc. can do it, then why can't S&T?

Just sharing a data point from personal experience. There are MAJOR problems with it. Drive through Chicago and see how bad it is... These construction projects are not new...


I guess I should have looked. My real point is the set of data points need to be increased a lot.

Example: Toll road Plazas, payment gates should be listed so people know where they are and that they are coming up. There are many more. I think the MS product manager needs to take a cross country drive using S&T with GPS and see how bad it can be when you are not familiar to a place.


mark

Ultimately, a lot of your problems come from the fact that S&T is not young anymore at version 15. Streets and Trips needs both a facelift (a la Office 2007) and a low-level replumbing (like the new network and audio stack in Vista).

Take the map display as an example. It looked really fresh and spiffy back in 1998, when "Streets" and "Trip Planner" were two separate programs that hadn't yet been &'d together. Now, it just looks clunky, and really is overdue for some of the rendering improvements done to the MapPoint engine for Virtual Earth: antialiasing, placename "glow", less garish color palette.

Many of the little annoyances you experience are also caused indirectly by S&T's bit-by-bit development history. GPS was bolted onto the existing path functionality, hence the long-standing issues with slowdown when GPS trails are on (a "scribble" typically only has a few points, but GPS delivers many more points).

Then navigation was bolted onto that. The map is very blinky when redrawn quickly (just drag the map around to watch!), so a substantial delay was put in to allow the map could remain stable for a few seconds. This delay would then reduces the GPS data that causes trail overflow. In turn, this delay causes navigational turns to be missed (I've had it happen to me too). And because the map engine hasn't been overhauled, the "perspective view" is a hack (doesn't look like a true perspective view at all -- looks like an isometric view with a slanted canvas).

Then there are all the nifty features that we want but haven't gotten -- like a COM addin for Outlook integration. Let's face it, we mapping software users are in the minority, especially with online maps and single-function GPS devices. I get the impression that S&T sells well enough to justify minor improvements every year along with the data update, but not enough to justify major development effort to radically change the application. You mention TomTom, et al. These have been written from the ground up to be navigation solutions. Until and unless Streets and Trips receives a major overhaul of strategic areas, major changes are unlikely. (Even something novel like Connected Services looks Windows 95-ish because those pushpins and colors are the only way to render the traffic and price information on the map.)

Your points are well taken and on target... I am on the look for a better package. I do not care who makes it, just that it works.

Thank you for your taking the time to respond.

mark

Hi budam,

Just a couple of points, in addition to what taoyue already answered:

Re: 100% CPU - If you use the "Create GPS Trail" feature, please turn this feature off to avoid excessive CPU.

Re: "Construction Update" feature - S&T Team blog explains:

For more details read http://streetsandtrips.spaces.live.c...D203!230.entry

I appreciate your sharing the S&T comments.

mark

Mark, sorry we are of no real help. No GPS navigation software program is perfect (far from it), and a product which may be good for one user may be useless for another .

Here's a link to List of laptop GPS navigation software programs and reviews

I completed an 8,500 mile trip from WA to NC and return last month. I observed all the same problems and discovered most of the (I don't think Fixes is the correct term) solutions. All in all the program was good, especially after I hooked my USB speakers up to the laptop. I also broke the trip down into single day segments so the entire file wasn't in memory all the time. This helped a lot.
Microsoft really does need to do some work on the program. It may not make them a ton of money, but I don't think it is a good as they could produce. Maybe if some of their upper managemant used it for a while the motivation to update would appear.
S&T Keys was great. Small program, huge benefit. Get it Microsoft.

Hi gaffrig,

Welcome to Laptop GPS World.

To brake down the trip to single day segments is an excellent suggestion. Actually I think it is a must. It's nice to plan the whole trip on one map, and then save it. When the time comes to actually drive, just keep one day segment, and remove the rest. The laptop, no matter how fast it is, will thank you for it.

gaffrig, you are most welcome to share more of your fixes/solutions.

The industry terms are "fix" and "workaround." The latter is what you call a solution. A fix is something that the publisher supplies that makes the problem go away completely. A workaround is something that the publisher doesn't do, but tells you to do, to get around or hide the problem.

As I've said elsewhere on this board, S&T is simply not a very big earner for Microsoft, especially in comparison to other Microsoft products. It gets a commensurate (i.e. small) amount of resources and attention.

Marvin,

Are you talking about breaking the route down into single-day segments? If so, that's a puzzler for me. I have a Garmin iQue 3600, which is a Palm-based PDA with integrated GPS. I have planned and executed complete routes from here to the west coast and back; routes that are more than 3000 miles, overall. The iQue is relatively underpowered by current standards (I bought it over four years ago, and it was about middle of the road at the time).

I don't have any performance problems with the entire route loaded on my iQue. It's difficult for me to comprehend that a multi-day route file should add enough load to a laptop -- the slowest of which would put my iQue to shame for power -- that it affects the routing performance.

I have found other advantages to breaking the routing up into day segments, but they have absolutely nothing to do with performance.

It sounds like Garmin's new laptop bundle will have easy pickings in competing with S&T.

...ken...

Maybe, but at $146 for the Garmin laptop bundle when the S&T + GPS bundle sells for $50?! (Prices from Amazon.)