Laptop GPS World

Yes, $30 is actually very inexpensive price to pay to support future development of Streets & Trips. Look what happened to the European version of the product. Microsoft AutoRoute has been discontinued - not enough copies sold to justify the release of future versions .

R.I.P. Microsoft AutoRoute. Let's hope the same will not happen also to Microsoft Streets & Trips.

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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

Eric Frost and Tao Yue have discussed this construction issue recently at MapForums.com. They talked about Microsoft MapPoint 2009, but even though I haven't tested this myself, I suspect Streets & Trips 2009 is affected by the same issue. Hopefully Microsoft will correct this shortly. Here's the link to the discussion: MapPoint 2009 Construction Data Update

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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

I paid Autoroute 2006 at 15U$, a deal when buying a GPS Deluo... I travel in France the same year and I saw it at 80 Eur... (just the program, no GPS). It was a lot more expensive in Europe... More expensive than the GPS and the program in US... May be to much...?

__________________
Alain
S&T 2008 + GPS Deluo SiRF Star III
Garmin Mobile PC (GPS 20x)+ Garmin 250W
Titanium 32E37DSD 2007
GMC 2500HD Duramax 2005
Full Timer
Base d'opération : Québec (la ville)
Quartiers d'hiver: Mission, Texas

Alain, $15 was an excellent deal! Deluo Electronics is actually one of the stores that offers discounts to members of Laptop GPS World. Streets & Trips is one of their main product lines. Quite often they have special sales that include S&T + a choice of a Deluo GPS receiver.

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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

To update construction data manually, go to the download page and follow the instructions. Note: the instructions are correct for Vista, but are still wrong for XP. Change the "15.0" portion of the path to "16.0" -- that's the version number of S&T 2009.

Auto-update is still broken. If this isn't fixed in two weeks when the product retails, the support calls are going to start rolling in.

Okay, I downloaded and installed the trial version of S&T 2009. First impression was positive except I'm not too crazy about the color scheme and switched to small icons almost immediately. I ran a quick route across country and compared the results to S&T 2007 (my last update). The results were close but not the same even though the route was virtually identical. Couldn't update construction but enough people have pointed out that obvious issue. Then I noticed the old "cursor select" mode was gone, which was a handy way to zoom in on a particular location. Those were two grumbles that start to send me into a "why bother" mode but the clincher was in the "other options" window. S&T 2009 still insists on using "Slower-Average-Faster" instead of numerical MPH speeds. I challenge anyone to drive a trip of any length and make the time S&T says you will see under this method. That's three strikes so if this is a final version, I'll be staying with S&T 2007 as a check to Garmin's City Navigator and MapSource. Everything else in S&T 2009 IMHO is just fluff.

tloewenberg:

I too am not crazy about the color scheme but I'm getting used to it.
I compared past routes with my 2008 version and I am happy with the results. In fact one of the routes, where I had to insert a via in order to make it go the way I thought was best in my 2008 version, I did not have to insert the via in the 2009 version.
Your comment about the (cursor select" mode was gone,) is true. However, they actually made that function easier. In the earler than 2009 versions you had to LEFT click and drag to create the zoom window and then change the POINTER to the PAN pointer in order to drag the window.
In the 2009 version they made that much easier. Now if you want to pan you just LEFT click and drag. If you want to zoom to a selection just RIGHT click and drag to the size of zoom area. To me this is much easier.
In addition, I have found some other improvements that I personally appreciate.
Hope this is helpful to you.
Regards,
Mike Flannigan

tloewenberg:
I forgot to address your comment on the speed settings. I too missed the mph settings. However, I did get used to setting the four choices to where I felt I normally drove on that type of road.
I'm not sure if this made the driving time as accurate or not, in Streets. However, since I use MapSource to use with my Garmin GPS, I feel it doesn't matter since I'm using the routing from there.
Regards,
Mike Flannign

Thanks Mike for providing the zoom select information. Since taking your direction, I agree that it's much easier to use. Pretty obvious, I didn't use enough time searching through the Help menus. As I mentioned, I use MapSource as well to build routes for my GPS. However, we usually use S&T for preliminary routing as well as cases where we want to print routing. Because of the speed "inconvenience" we find ourselves relying on past experience more than S&T when it comes to time. Fortunately, it puts in a target area for overnight planning. Regardless, thanks for the assistance, the zoom select was my main gripe.
Terry Loewenberg

Hi Terry, and to the forum!

It's not that easy to discover the new way of using the old feature. S&T Team wrote an article about it way back in July. I should have linked it from our S&T Tips & Tricks long ago. I just corrected my oversight, the link is now included (tip # 025). And as Mike says, the feature is now much easier to use (users just need to discover the feature first ).

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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

I downloaded 2009 last week, prior to doing truck run to Ventura, CA. Had been using 2008.
Liked new maps, but still have the same crash problem. When you have multiple stops and go into route planner and change time at stop, after initial setting, the program will crash if you go and change setting to different time. This happened at least 5 times out to CA and 3 times back to TX.
Other than that, the maps seem upto date for the most part. Missing some truck stops but most were on map.
Only other complaint is it is not TRUCK friendly!! There is no way to choose routes that allow commerical trucks to travel. Also had this problem with 2008 while traveling on Long Island, NY ... 2008 wanted me to take parkways and beltways, big no-no.
Anyone also using CoPilot 11?

Hi fishn4funtx,

to Laptop GPS World.

I wonder if the crash is reproducible. Have you heard of other users experiencing the same, or has it happened to you on another laptop, too? I'll try to reproduce it.

Yes, we have a furum dedicated to users of ALK CoPilot Laptop and ALK CoPilot Truck. Check out the discussions of the new version 11: ALK CoPilot

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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

I added the following to the review on page 1:

I overlooked these three items when I was originally working on the review. But they deserve to be there, so I just edited the first post of this thread.

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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

The location sensor has been moved to the status bar

Attached Images

Status Bar.JPG (12.6 KB, 65 views)

__________________
This post is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.

Gladwin, thanks very much . I edited it in the review as follows:

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

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