Back in Town; Mapping Programs

I am back in town once more, having returned last night and finally slept if still not fully recovered. The week was lovely, the wedding was gorgeous, and there was an unexpected but extremely enjoyable highlight of Music at the end of it all. Namely, singing. So my friend is now happily married, and I have returned, what's more, recovered from all the usual end-of-trips things such as too little sleep, long drives, another round of goodbyes, 'oops I forgot...'s, and first days back at work, as well as minor but nowhere near complete car cleaning.

This trip was also my test run for the Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 mapping program, this being my first real trip since receiving the software at Christmas. Overall, it's good. It beats mapquest easily, sending me on no wrong turns or fruitless paths wereas mapquest gave me two wrong turns and a wrongly named road just trying to get to my hotel within the city. It's detailed, perhaps too detailed if you're used to directions that only give the turns - this tells you each road split and with side of it to take, and other similar details that are not wrong yet can be confusing if you're expecting an actual turn somewhere. However, the directions were all accurate and the details did not prove problematic for me once I figured out that it was giving them. If you're someone who is very worried about getting lost, the details might be very useful; on the other hand, if you're very worried but going to panic at seeing directions such as "take local roads for --- feet" or a simple "take ramp on right" without further explanation this might not be the program to go with. Still, I only had these directions twice, and in each case they turned out to be completely accurate and needed no more explanation. I would rank it about equal to AAA, the difference being in the detail. I like AAA and always, until this trip, used their directions. If the details will confuse you, use AAA instead.

The good thing about this program, something I was completely unable to make use of due to certain broken pieces of my car, is the fact that you don't need to be online to use it and can keep it in the car to get directions to any particular place you want to go at the moment. This would have been very useful had my car's cigarette lighter been fixed in time. It comes with a list of where restraunts are all over the US as well as other major landmarks and certain minor landmarks within cities. Unlike AAA, it does leave out some fairly major tourist points, and may not be quite as useful for planning a whole trip instead of just getting driving directions. Also, a good majority of the landmarks involve car dealerships. Not somewhere I generally travel too.. but potentially useful if you need help finding the right road to turn on in a city.

I do like the option to enter a departing time and schedule stops, and the fact that any directions show the time between each new direction as well as the number of miles. I also like the ability to calculate total gas expenses as long as you enter a gas price - it won't find these by itself or change the price by refueling location.

While it comes with complete maps of other countries, I attempted looking up directions to/from various points in Europe to others, and also various points in Asia to/from each other, and the program was unable to give me any driving directions or landmarks. While I won't go through and check every single country, it does give directions for Canada and Mexico.