Laptop GPS World

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 voice: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right"

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 does not pronounce street names, even though some users wish for such functionality. The current 2008 version of Streets & Trips tells users to turn right or left in a number of feet or meters, but the street name is not yet a part of the voice direction prompt. Will this feature make it into Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009?

I use Streets and Trips almost every day for GPS navigation, as do thousands of other users across USA and Canada. A (very) strange thing happened about three weeks ago. I heard my Streets & Trips 2008 say the following words: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". I couldn't believe my ears , so I had to press the space bar on my keyboard to repeat the voice instruction. My Streets and Trips 2008 still insisted: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". However, after I made my turn onto the street, I never heard a street name pronounced ever again. Yet, I've wanted to return one day to the same exact location to try to reproduce the voice direction prompt which miraculously included a street name.


This morning, three weeks after the above "incident", I'm again at the very same location. I'm very glad to announce that yes, the "issue" is reproducible. I still hear: "In 50 meters take Rexdale Boulevard right". Note that it is not the exact "reading" of the text that appears in the Driving Guidance pane.

If anyone around the Toronto area wishes to experiment with this, the exact location is the parking lot of Sears, Rexdale Blvd & Islington Ave, as shown on the above screenshot. My exact latitude and longitude coordinates are 43.71270 North and 79.55868 West, but I suspect it may not be too critical at which part of the parking lot you are, because today I'm not exactly at the same spot where I was three weeks ago.

I'm not sure what causes the street name to be a part of the voice prompt, and I can only speculate that the feature has already been built into Streets & Trips, but perhaps because the programmers were not yet happy with the performance of this new feature, they decided not to enable it for the 2008 version. It's only a speculation, and most speculations are not correct. Yet, I suspect there is a good chance street names may be a part of voice direction prompts in Streets & Trips 2009. But that's still many months from now. It's still only February, and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009 will likely appear in stores in the fall of 2008.

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Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

I wonder if one of the developers hails from Toronto and decided to leave in an Easter Egg when the feature got postponed.

Easter Egg, LOL, perhaps . I just want to add one more observation: After I posted the above posting (on my mobile PC), I still drove around the parking lot to test it a bit more. It worked as described no matter where I was on the large parking lot. As long as my Streets & Trips 2008 wanted me to get onto Rexdale Blvd, the program would pronounce the street name. However, when I was on the parking lot closer to Islington Avenue, the program would route me to Islington Ave without saying "Islington Avenue".

Strange things are happening in Toronto, indeed. If someone from around here would be so kind and go to that area to test it on another computer, it would be greatly appreciated.

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Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

I wouldn't be surprised if there is an hidden value in the registry that can be modified to do this. Just like it is with turnbeep. I took a look, but it's hard to say which it could be if possible.

To make sure it wasn't an issue specific to my computer, I'm now again "on scene" testing it with another Streets & Trips installation. Before it was S&T 08 running on Windows Vista, and this time around it is S&T 08 running on a Windows XP computer. It still reads the street name just fine , as long as I'm driving around this mysterious parking lot .

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Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

I'm sure people will be wondering why they see you driving around the same place 50 times a day

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Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics