Review: Microsoft Streets and Trips

One thing I, and I'm sure other S&T users have noticed, is that sometimes the real world and S&T aren't always in accord.

If necessity and/or common sense overrides the routing suggested, a quick press of F3 (reroute from current point) will usually/occasionally/sometimes/maybe (pick one) - stop the "Offroute..." Mantra.

You might also want to check to see if you have the "automatic rerouting" option enabled (Tools menu / Options... menuitem / Navigation tab / Automatically reroute when off route checkbox) if you don't want to hunt for that F3 button, AND can live with the risk of having your route recalculated if/when your GPS location drifts away from your actual.

And Congrats on the new software!

Jonathan

The following is a good discussion to read (and there are others): Opinions on Laptop mounting systems in vehicles

Hi,

Betty & I have been using Streets & Trips and Auto Route for 8 or 9 years to plan trips and navigate all over the US and Europe. We introduced Betty's brother to S & T and he uses it 5 days a week to drive to anywhere from 15 to 20 locations around the LA basin. We are glad to hear that Microsoft is planning to keep it around for awhile.

We haven't read all 18 pages yet so this may already been adressed but does the 2010 S & T still repeat that obnoxious "off route, off route" message over and over again?

John

Hi JohnBetty,

Quick answer: the 'obnoxious "off route, off route" ' issue was fixed for the 2010 version! Just for you.

Larry,

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you awk!!

John

Wellll, maybe not entirely. I know of a few places where an interstate is particularly wide due to separated express and local lanes. The S&T route may be centered on the local lanes because I get continuous "off route" messages in the express lanes until they merge a bit.

Yes, it is better but "off route" ain't dead.

Hmmm,

Well we just ordered it so I guess we'll find out for ourselves.

John

Slightly longer answer: In 2009, when you turned off the automatic re-routing (in the Tools --> Options dialog) and then went off route - you would hear "Off route!" sporaticallyl every 1-2 seconds. This was a really annoying bug. Now with 2010, in the same situation you will hear it every 90 seconds. Much better.

Agree. It is below my annoyance threshold.

That's what we wanted to hear! We can live with it being repeated every minute and a half.

Thanks guys.

John

F7 = Mute (... if needed ...)

It looks that the 2010 version has lost a couple of features that were there in the 2009 versions:

1- It looks that there is no way now to find nearby places around current GPS location: this choice is not available anymore in the combo box to select the center of the search in nearby pane. I have tried to simulate this old S&T 2009 behavior with the new version of S&T Keys 2010, it is giving some kind of good results, but i would prefer to keep the original feature...

Additionnal comment:
After testing more, this is not the case. Nothing has changed for this feature between 2009 and 2010 version. I thought that it was working a different way then it is. So there is no real way to directly search around the current GPS location. The best you can do is to click somewhere on the map with the mouse and use "Point" to search around it, or click on a route segment or a start/stop/end to search around it in the around combo. To simulate the behavior to really search nearby POI around the real current GPS location, i will add a bug correction to S&T Keys 2010 to really do this (simulate), like i was expected it was

2- In the route planner pane, the gps pane button has been removed. Same thing with the route planner button in the gps pane. I used to press these big buttons, so now i should rely on pressing the small buttons in the main toolbar

We installed Streets and Trips 2010 on our laptop yesterday and did some initial road testing. We thought we had clicked off on the automatic re-route option but I guess we didn't click "apply" or "OK" because it was still activated when we did our test run. We got a continues bombardment of "Off Route" and "Re-routing from the current position" messages as we drove along a route on a secondary road.

After going back in and properly turning the "Automatic Re-route" option off everything straightened out and there were no futher problems. As mentioned by Larry the "Off Route" message was repeated about every 90 seconds. End of problem.

John

Hi every one, I am a new guy in this forum. i just have a simple question for you guys that if I have Bluetooth GPS receiver then is that going to work with Microsoft Streets and Trips? And how?

Thank you very much for help

Most Bluetooth GPS receivers work with Microsoft Streets & Trips assuming your computer has Bluetooth capabilities (internal or a dongle). When you Add the Bluetooth GPS device to the computer Bluetooth stack, it will be assigned a COM port. Tell S&T to look at that COM port for its GPS information.

What Bluetooth GPS device do you have?

Terry