Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005 GPS [Old Version]

Customer Rating:
Summary: works Great
Comment: Works great but not as nice and simple as a GPS like a tom tom.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good product, but...
Comment: Nice product from Microsoft, but it is not intuitive. Icons are not smart at all in identifying the process that they perform when clicked. Map updates are not available, there are just construction updates available. Hope that the PocketPC version of the program have strong search capabilities as the PC version. It doesn't have talk directions, as version 2006, and 2007. Use this product as reference, nothing else.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Value. But with problems
Comment: I bought this unit in the fall of 2005 and have used it extensively till now. I use it on thinkpad 240 subnotebook (old, old unit. Bought in 2000) and even though the laptop has only 200MHz of speed, the software works fine when power is plugged to the car's power outlet.
I have used this software on several trips, including a 2400 mile-long cross-country trip and the tour of Southwest (around 2000 miles.)
First, the pros:
1. It's cheap. If you have an old laptop sitting around then you can have a big screen GPS unit for only $80 (price I paid.)
2. Does a nice job of trip planning. It can organize a trip involving multiple destinations, and route-routing is ok (although once it took me to a washed out, fire road out of the Dealth Valley NP when I indicated I wanted the "shortest" route back home. I found out later that you can set the preferences for route-routing, so not really its fault.)
3. Captures signal quickly, usually under a minute.
4. Gives something to do to your front seat passenger during long trips.

Well, the bads:
1. You really need a copilot for this unit to work. Solo driving with this unit is downright dangerous. There is NO voice direction and NO auto-zooming-in when the car has to get off the freeway or make a turn. It's essentially a 2-D map with little icon --the car-- moving on it. Ah, and there is no auto re-routing.
2. POI (points of interest) is barely adequate. POI is not updated by MS (unlike the road construction info, which does get updated) but POI info on metropolitan areas is still usable. However, during a trip through Navajo reservation in Arizona the program didn't show a single gas station for over 100 miles. Needless to say, there are plenty of gas stations between Flagstaff and Kayenta.
3. At least in my case this GPS has one second delay in displaying the current location. This is no biggie if you're driving slow, but otherwise you are bound to miss that crucial turn.
4. The location indicated by GPS (while stopped) is off by 5~10 yards depending on where you are. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes it's not, so I suspect it could be the map calibration rather than GPS accuracy. But accuracy is also affected by the geographic situation: if you are driving through a downtown with many highrises GPS ceases to be accurate and starts to go around in circle. This happened to me in downtown Chicago.

Overall, the product has many flaws. But sometimes just having the map can help a great deal, and if you are traveling with a passenger then he or she can remedy its many inadequacies. At this price it's a good value if you have an old laptop lying around gathering dust.

Customer Rating:
Summary: GPS device didnt work all the time
Comment: The only complaint I have is that the GPS device did not always work. I installed the software on multiple computers and some computers already had it installed. But on every computer I tried, from laptop to desktop, the GPS device would act funny and only work after about 5 minutes of messing with it. Then, when we went on our road trip to California, I plugged it into my laptop and it only worked about 30% of the time. I'm not sure what happened, maybe just a faulty device, but it caused some frustration. Software program is excellent and accurate, however. I've been using Streets and Trips since about 2002 and i've always been pleased with how they update their software.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic !!!
Comment: Bought this usb GPS just before christmas for my trips to Virginia and DC. Had to weigh it against a similar product from Garmin. But the price, usability track record of Microsoft and user reviews persuaded me towards this MS product. I must say, this is an excellent value for money. Not only does it it give unambiguous directions (voice), other feature like GPS trail help you determine HOW lost you are from the actual route. Also you can recalculate the route from your current position. The voice giudance in one or two instances was a bit slow, but I pretty much got adequate time to make the turns and merges in nearly all instances. Extremely useful during night driving when it becomes difficult to read street names. The maps are very detailed and some cool features like "Nearest Items" (gas statn, railways stn, bus terminals, restaurants, hotes, etc) impressed me very much.


Since this plugs into your laptop, its is best suited for your navigator, although I did make long trip with the laptop on the front seat and just listening to the voice driving directions. But since it does not call out the street names but shows it on display, you would neeed to look at the screen which is ofcourse dangerous. It does say "Wrong Route" when you go ofcourse but you'd need to hit a button to relculate the route from your current position.



All said, for less than $100 this stuff rocks !!!