Review: Microsoft Streets and Trips

truck friendly version would be great for us truck drivers

Ah yes, "off route, recalculating...". I know it well.

Calculating and recalculating a route takes a lot of computer power. As you have noticed, some personal navigation devices have stronger processors in them than others. And some manufacturers have more efficient program code to recalc a little faster.

I can compare the off-route recalculation time in Streets&Trips to Garmin's Mobile PC on the same computer and to a couple of Garmin personal navigation devices. In both cases, Streets&Trips comes off just fine. That's on a 1.75GHz Acer laptop and on a 1.6GHz Acer netbook for the comparison to Garmin's Mobile PC. I think Mobile PC is actually a bit faster but Streets&Trips is fast enough that it doesn't seem like an issue.

I prefer Garmin's method of turn warnings but that's probably mainly personal preference. Streets&Trips gives you enough time that it shouldn't be an issue.

I've got Streets&Trips, Street Atlas, iGuidance, Mobile PC, Navmii and Odyssey Navigator all installed on my netbook and they all work fine for these functions. How you react to it in each of them will be more a matter of personal preference than anything, I think.

I hope that helps.

...ken...

I just received S&T 2010 today and started playing with it, there is one thing I couldn't get going.... the usb gps.
I own a Garmin 60csx and there is no way to make it work, I mean send a route or a way point to it.
The documentation is less than clear.

What's the difference(s) from AutoRoute 2002 (which came with my PC). I also use it on my GPS/PDA. I'd be interested to compare with 2010.

Mike.

We don't have Streets and Trips here in the UK. However I am often asked about it. It would be great to win a copy.

If you want to use it in the UK you would need Microsoft Autoroute. That's just Streets&Trips with maps of Europe instead of North America.

I think Marvin has the possibility of winning either one so if you're feeling lucky you better decide which one you want.

...ken...

We used S&T last year when we were in the USA and Canada. It made travel so easy.

We will be going back for 3 months in Sep 2010 so a copy of S&T 2010 would be very useful.

However, as I said in my AR2010 post neither MS US nor Amazon US will sell a copy to someone from Oz so my only chance of getting a copy before I arrive, which I want to do so I can pre-plan the route, is to win one here.


Andrew Watson
Perth, Western Australia

Andrew, here's some good news if you don't win. You can get MS Streets&Trips from Amazon.ca. Here's the link to their "Rest Of The World" shipping rates page. As you can see from the list, Australia is considered "Rest of the World".

Amazon.ca: Help*>*Shipping & Returns*>*Shipping Rates*>*International Shipping Rates*>*Rest of the World Shipping Rates

...ken...

Will really appreciate:

1) Truck-friendly version or relevant plug-in
2) Multi-lingual interface: possibility to change language of directions, voice language etc.

Ken, unfortunately Amazon has restrictions on sale of computer software outside the country. I tested the link above by attempting to place an order of S&T at Amazon.ca to be shipped to an Australian mailing address. Unfortunatelly, the following was the message I received: I'm afraid that is the policy of other Amazon stores, too (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, etc). Several Canadians have already mentioned on this forum they were unable to order S&T2010 from Amazon.com. And I just placed a test order of AutoRoute 2010 at Amazon.co.uk to test again an Australian address. I only ended up with a list of European countries into which Amazon.co.uk ships software:

Have not had a new copy of Streets and Trips since 2006. Would be interesting to see the new version. Please enter me in the drawing. Thanks!

Thanks for the correction, Marvin. I didn't test. I forgot about the restriction on software sales.

...ken...

Street with GPS just in time for the holidays. Nice, very nice.

MS UK has a download only option that doesn't seem to care where you are logging in from. I did put in my sister's UK address though. It let me get all the way through to the enter credit card details screen. Presumably, it would have taken my money and let me download.

Ditto MS US. I'd use a US friend's address.

I know where I'll be buying - MS US.

MS UK - Autoroute 2010: GBP 44.99 = USD 73.13 = AUD 80.22

MS US - Autoroute 2007: USD 39.95 = GBP 24.60 = AUD 43.87 (assuming the price doesn't go up for AR 2010)

RIPOFF is too mild a word to describe the price difference.




Andrew Watson

Andrew, I think the price difference reflects the extra costs. There are multiple languages supported in both text and audio. That's far from trivial to do. And it's a whole bunch more costly to acquire the map data in some jurisdictions in Europe than in North America. You can get pretty much all you need for Canada for free, both topo and road. I'm not so sure all of the countries in Europe are so accomodating.

...ken...