Thread: Software Review: Streeets and Trips 2006

Good review. I recently purchased M$ Streets & Trips also and I agree with most of what you have to say. I think you forgot to mention one con though (or i missed it). If you decide to take an emergency pit stop (gas, etc.) the voice navigation annoyingly lets you know that your off route in like 60 second intervals.

Other than that though this software is awesome IMO if you have a nice sized screen to use it on. I used it on my laptop and it was still a little hard to see while driving.

About iGuidance as compared to S&T's, it really depends on what you want to use them for and your preferences. I prefer the simplicity, large graphics, and unclutterd gui of iGuidance in day to day activities. But in long haul trips Streets and trips wins hands down. The number of configurable options such as being able to enter gas mileage so that S&T automatically calculates gas stops and schedules them on the route is simply amazing for those summer trips. (Dont be like me "Its okay wife, we'll make it to the next exit, huhhh, whats that noise) . But the same thing that makes S&T's great for longer drives makes it unusable for me for trying to figure out where the nearest ABC Company is in my city. Streets & Trips is layed out similiar to their office products meaning theres many menus to go thru sometimes to find simple things.

Originally Posted by wei2cool

Have you tried iGuidance 2.1? How does it compare?

personally I prefer S&T 2006 over iGuidance.

I felt that S&T gave me more control over the routes I wanted to take, while iGuidance seemed to not be able to comprehend what I was doing when I was taking a known shortcut...

for instance, if you have a square of roads:


___________________
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
____________________

say I'm coming up this way ^ (well damn the autoformatting on this forum! - that second line of | should be spaced out quite a bit...lol)

it would tell me to take a left, then a right then another right, instead of going straight....wtf?

S&T didn't have that problem for me.

I also thought that it was quicker to recalculate the routes as well when you go off route and change it a bit....I also prefer the trip planner in S&T, I have yet to find anything remotely like that in iGuidance, to the point where you can select the towns you want to travel through if you don't want to take major highways or byways for your trips.

Originally Posted by Tourettes

- Does S&T recognise one-way streets, so you're not sent down the wrong ways?

Yes.

Great review, I have been interested in an update for Destinator w/Map Monkey. I might try this out.

Brent

My addition to this.
Con: 1) When traveling cross country I have found that the software will crash every 200 miles or so. This would most often happen just as its getting to a point where the voice will talk. Could just be a memory thing too as I only had 512mb in the computer I did this with.
2) Will sometimes tell you to take a shortcut down a dirt road, that is seasonal, with a sign that says impassible when wet(and its raining), and then to top it off the road has another sign saying Road closed. (only happened once on a 1400 mile trip.)

avengerki, im pretty sure you can also make it so you dont have to go down certain roads :P

i.e. the sketchy dirt road