Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009 will speak street names

You know, Larry, I was planning to skip this release, but you just changed my mind. GPS trails was a longstanding bug. I'm excited.

And it's even better to see more than one Microsoft employee posting. Given the recent participation in the S&T user community, any chance of:

(1) Getting a bug reporting DB set up on Microsoft Connect? Real-world usage is the best way to turn up bugs.

(2) Committing to frequent interaction with the user community in the future. Frequent doesn't necessarily mean regular -- at crunch time, people may have to disappear for a month. But it'd be nice if we knew someone would always come back after crunch time is up.

Re: Mappoint. I should point out that the demo link and pricing are for Mappoint 2006. 2009 is, of course, not yet released, but should be broadly similar if you extrapolate. The pricing is not a new thing -- the boxed Mappoint product was never intended for broad consumer usage.

Hi Toayue,

Hehe..since we have now released (aka finished) the 2009 product we may actually have some time for some forum interaction. :-D For those directly on the product team we have a very limited amount of time available during the coding phase of the product cycle to post and answer questions but we'll try to improve.

Regarding Microsoft Connect....I'll look into it.

Thanks for your support and interest in the product.

Hi Larry,

to Laptop GPS World.

It's great to see both, you and Chris, here. As Tao said to Chris earlier: "Bring your friends" (the more the merrier ).

Thanks for the good news about the GPS trail bug, Larry!

Hello! Another member of the S&T team here

In addition to the GPS trail bug that Larry mentioned, we have fixed a number of other longstanding bugs as well as implemented a number of subtle features which we feel makes the whole user experience a lot better.

Whenever I have to start up S&T2008 to investigate previous year's behaviour, I always find myself amazed at how much better/easier S&T2009 is to use.

Not sure if this has already been highlighted but we also added integration with Entertainment Online to download their discount coupons into S&T2009. I've personally saved over $100 using these coupons throughout the development cycle

Hi Juan Cooldude

to Laptop GPS World.

How will it work? Users will perform a search for a nearby restaurant in Streets & Trips 2009, and then a simple right-click will give them the option to get a discount coupon for the restaurant (if a discound coupon exists)?

We added a new Coupons" pane that allows you to specify what types of coupons you're interested in (restaurants, movies, etc) and invoke a search based on your current map view.

Similar to Find Nearby but for Coupons.

Wow, that's actually not bad. I just went to http://entertainment.com to see if they cover even my area (Canada). Yes, they do . Just enter your postal code, or ZIP code, to preview what discount coupons are available.

I personally have never been a person to look for discount coupons for restaurants, etc. But if Streets & Trips 2009 is going to make this as easy as you are describing, I'm sure many people will use this feature. Acually, this feature alone will atract people to buy S&T 2009 as it will pay for itself :-).

Hmm, but will the coupons need to be printed? Most people don't take printers with them on their trips .

Yes, to use these coupons in store you have to print them out from S&T 2009.

Coupons can be printed upto 3 months before you plan to use them. That is, the 'Valid from' date can be set to a date 3 months forward from today. And every coupon comes with a 2 week validity period. You have to Print the coupons that you need while you plan for your trip.

Note - The Validity from and the Validity period is set by Entertainment.com

Gladwin, I'm not the type of a person who plans long in advance which restaurant I will go to. Hypothetically, if I buy an inexpensive mobile printer (and this new S&T 2009 feature would likely make it worth while), would I be able to just search for a restaurant, print a discount coupon with the validity for the same day, and just go to that restaurant 10 minutes later? Would this be possible?

Yes it is possible. You can buy an inexpensive mobile printer and print the coupons while you are on the move and use it immediately, Provided you are connected to the Internet to Print the coupon.

Note - To Print entertainment.com coupons from S&T 2009, you must be connected to the Internet

Yes, I'm constantly connected to the Internet when on the move, but I think even for those w/out mobile Internet plan, it is usually easy to locate a publicly available WiFi hot-spot to access the Internet. At least in urban areas it should be no problem.

Nice feature .

By the way, the following is of interest to Canadians. There was an issue in Streets & Trips 2008 related to searching for some addresses in Canada. This is another issue that has been corrected in the new Streets and Trips 2009. Read more in the following thread: S&T 2008 - Data for many "avenues" missing. Close to the bottom of the page (post #12) Gladwin shares with us the good news.

Like I mentioned above, we fixed a number of bugs and polished up a lot of the "loose ends" in the app.

Not as visible as rewriting the rendering engine but I feel the combined fixes/tweaks that we made will be definitely something frequent users will appreciate.

Whow,

Very good news. I am glad to see some S&T 2008 real annoyance have been solved.

1- One of them was the auto-rerouting feature of S&T 2008. I can simply not live with this feature. I don't like any feature that the computer takes control of the human without any approval (specially for driving, which could be critical). For me, S&T2008 was a no go because of this non configurable feature. I am glad to hear S&T2009 solves that annoyance.

2- The second annoyance of S&T2008 was the registration unstable feature. Some users complain that they loose access to the product one find day without any reason. I can not go on travelling and take the risk that it's stop working without any reason. Personnaly, i don't like the idea on any product i have paid money for to be someday unusable because of registration annoyance or lack of support from the provider for any reason... When i am buying a toaster, i have it for life, and needs no one to continue using it the year later for any reason .

Will S&T 2009 include some improvement regarding this annoyance (here are some idea):
a-) once registered, the license can be transfered (uninstalled/reinstalled) on another computer or on the same computer (if computer upgrade happens) without needing microsoft support. Some other products have this feature.
b-) if a license issue happens, the software reverts to a 60 days expire mode, so the user is not attacked by any license issue while travelling on the road (like for summer holidays) and keeps plenty of time to repair when returning at home. Repair could simply means reinstalling the software and the license (which could be backup externally?) without microsoft support...

These good news can may be makes me try the new S&T2009 version once available, and keeps me from switching to another product brand...

I just with S & T would add a "TRUE" drivers screen with large, easy to read text, oversized buttons, etc.

Right now I use CoPilot 9, simply because there isn't much else. Delorme made steps in the right direction, but in order to add a new stop, see the directions, etc, forget using a 7" screen.

I've used S & T's as a "backup" for my system as long as I can remember. It's perfect for planning my trips, calculating the route, etc, but as far as using it while I'm driving, forget it.

Also, this one would be for a bit down the road, but NavTeq now has true oversize vehicle data available. It's called "NavTeq Transport". As a truck driver, I would GLADLY pay for a true truck addon that would route me correctly for the size of my truck.

I now have an ASUS R300 and find it easy to set up a trip with a number of VIA points, skip the next VIA point if it is not needed, move VIA points around, and select an instruction and say AVOID to avoid using that street if I want to force a different route. All of that is available at a touch of the finger or a pen tip on the screen. I also just downloaded, from ASUS, the new maps and poi data moving my data from 7-2007 to 1-2008. This is TeleAtlas maps and InfoUSA POI data [and InfoCanada, as both are covered]. The download was FREE! So while it may be hard to use a Tom-Tom I found it easy with the ASUS.

When I save the track and export it I also find it eaxy to drop the file into Street Atlas and, by hovering the place marker over each second's point, get the time at that point and the speed I was travelling at.

My question re S&T 2009 is 'Is it going to be possible to drop a gpx file onto S&T and get the route travelled automatically', as it is using the Delorme Street Atlas product? That is precisely what I am doing now to analyse my trips after the fact. I have not been able to discover any improvement in S&T relative to gpx files or file import to tracks from any of the various GPS devices, much less my R300!

RsH