Cheap Microsoft Streets & Trips 2003 (Software) (Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000) Price

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Customer Reviews of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2003

Of course the software mislocated my house, left me in limbo trying to find a Microsoft workshop in Madison, had no idea how to get from Farmington, NM to Chaco Canyon, and was clueless about the relative efficiency of lesser paved roads in unpopulated places. All our interstate travel proceded as predicted, but our rural progress in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states was usually much faster than the software suggested. Not surprisingly, commerce is rather better supported than scenery. National and state park maps seem generally poor, and information on topography disappears as you zoom in before you reach a resolution where it could be really useful.

Promise of "all new map content" got me to upgrade to the 2003 version. So was it worth it? Yes and no. It can find my house now, and some others that were previously mislocated. It finds a plausible route from Farmington to Chaco Canyon, and even beyond to points south. But it still does not connect two-track roads between Utah and Nevada, and shows inexplicable disconnections on forest roads in Lower Michigan. Such gaps seem trivial, but unless you stay on the good highways, they prevent you from using Streets and Trips to document your travel and may even mislead a trusting person into going far out of the way to avoid a non-problem. If you go into the boondocks, you'd better have something like the DeLorme state road atlases.

The Streets and Trips of my dreams would understand that you can average 60 on many minor roads out west, would show the topography critical to travel decisions in inclement weather, and would allow you to repair map errors or obsolescence well enough to display your travel over unsupported routes.

Streets & Trips -- good, but still far from perfect in 2003
As a frequent traveler, one of the main reasons for updating my venerable 2000 version (which I thought would be outdated by now) was the changeover some 2 years ago of Florida interstate exits from sequential progression to the more intuitive mileage marker numbering system. Surprise! Florida exits remain numbered in S&T-2003 exactly as they were in S&T-2000; for instance, the I-95 intersection with US-1 (now exit 339 in South Jacksonville) still is shown as I-95 exit 98 - which, these days, would have placed me nearly 250 miles farther South -- in Palm Beach, to be sure.

Little new of practical value has been added in the intervening 3 years, other than more Microsoft (MS) bells & whistles and, admittedly, handsomer screens. But where the rubber really hits the road - updating maps and fixing erroneous cartography - precious little seems to have changed for the better. The 5-page instruction booklet barely gets you started and, as far as installation goes, is entirely silent (perhaps wisely so); instead, in usual MS fashion, it refers you to the Help section which, again in usual MS fashion, is shallow and virtually useless unless you happen to know the relevant keyword; the website, likewise, doesn't go into sufficient detail. For instance, the handy labels attached to pushpins to mark a location of interest can obscure a point of interest. If only one could rotate the marker to point to a different quadrant the annoyance would be resolved effortlessly; that minor irritation seems not to have been addressed as yet - perhaps I haven't discovered the proper 'Help' buzzwords. Need phone help for an irritation like that? Sure, but MS will charge you for what should have been included in the software price.

Quibbles and warts aside, this still is the best mapping software package around - meaning that others are worse yet. The price, with the inevitable rebate is modest, installation (WIN-98SE) was painless, and the legible screen presentation quite attractive. Maps print beautifully on a color printer and can be emailed, and for black and white you can select gray-scale or fax mode for perfectly fine readability. The route mapping over major roads generally is reliable (but I wouldn't count too heavily on the printed directions), less so in cities where cartography may not have been updated for recent one-way streets or new suburbs; if you travel where major roads or exits have changed over the past years, I'd take an AAA map along, just to be sure. Clearly, updating every year is overkill; every 3 to 4 years should suffice unless MS forgets the glitz and digs into the basics of accuracy and currency of maps. S&T-2003 rates better than a 3-star average, and has the potential for a 4-star product in years to come.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
I was blown away at how many times this program is just plan wrong with directions. For me, about 25% of my destinations did not exist in this program, but it gave incorrect destinations. The directions are also overly detailed and confusing to read. I will stick with yahoo maps.