Overview
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2004 is an all-in-one mapping solution that let's you plan every mile of your local or long distance trip. It delivers a comprehensive array of maps, points of interest, routes, driving directions and Pocket PC compatibility in one value-priced software package.

Features

• Updated maps of the USA and Canada
  • Get more than 5.4 million miles of routable local, city, state, and highway roads in the United States and Canada - representing the 35,000+ United States ZIP codes and 700,000+ Canadian postal codes.
• Route Planner
  • Route Planner lets you view, add, delete, and rearrange destinations. Route Planner also lets you set fuel costs, driving speed, and preferred routes.
• Find what's nearby
  • Locate more than 550,000 restaurants, 90,700 gas stations, 117,000 ATM locations, 7,950 golf courses, and much more.
• Pocket Streets for your Pocket PC
  • With Microsoft Pocket Streets running on your Pocket PC or Smartphone, you can download maps or export an area from Streets & Trips 2005.

Price
Streets and Trips 2005 goes for $39.95. I could not find any upgrade pricing (for previous owners).

Using Streets and Trips
Streets and Trips is a program that let's you plan trips all over the US and Canada. It accepts various inputs, and creates a map and list of instructions. At a basic level, is can be compared to the web-based mapping tool MapQuest. However, Streets and Trips includes a whole lot more features, with a lot better printing options.

The last version of Streets and Trips I looked at was version 2002. The interface, for the most part, is still the same. There are a few new features, such as the addition of gas stations, but the biggest reason to upgrade to Streets and Trips (S&T) and to get updated maps. S&T includes a function for querying the internet to determine current road constructions to estimate delays and possible road closures. While this data can be updated each time you use the program, the actual maps themselves are not updated. You need to upgrade the software to get the latest maps.

The Streets and Maps interface is relatively intuitive and easy to use. In a matter of minutes, I had a complete trip planned for traveling from California to Florida, including stops, schedule by day, and gas consumption. The one aspect of the interface that I did not like, however, is the way it handles mouse navigation. First of all, unlike your web browser where the frame you move the cursor is the frame that scrolls, S&T scrolls only the "active" frame (or pane) regardless of where the mouse is. This was very counter-intuitive. I would place the mouse over the list of directions, but instead of scrolling through the list, it zoomed in on the map. I have to actually click into the directions list to activate that pane, and then the scroll wheel scrolls that window.

When the Map pane is active, the scroll wheel zooms the map in and out, and this didn't feel right to me. Intuitively I would use the scroll wheel to try and move up and down on the map, and became annoyed when it didn't do what I wanted (and there was no option to change this). To actually scroll the map up and down, you have to click into the map, holding down the mouse button, and then move the mouse up or down. The one advantage of this control is that you can easily move left and right, or even diagonally, so while it may not be as intuitive, this method is more effective.

I like the ability to save the map and instructions into HTML files, but I did stumble on a couple of issues. One is that the "Save as Web Page" dialog showed "Current map view" as selected, but did not let me change the selection to "Selected area map". There is probably a way to enable these selections, but I couldn't see it. So if you are close-up on the map, that's the only portion of the map that shows up on the web page. It would be easier if there was an option do a "best fit" of the full map into the web page. One of the options was "Overview Map", and that made a small tiny graphic of the map at the bottom of the web page that I could not see any purpose for. Other than that, the web page it produced was very nice and makes it easy to share with friends and family.

To fully test the software, I used Streets and Trips to plan a trip from Santa Clara, CA to Yosemite National Park. The software allows you to segment your trip if there are specific places you want to stop along the way, or if there just happens to be a specific road you prefer to travel. There's also a real-time check it performs (if you are connected to the internet) to determine all the roadwork that is in progress that involves your trip. Construction zones are shown in yellow on the map, while the rest of the route is shown in green. I adjusted the schedule such that I wanted to be at the park by 3:00 pm, and it determined what time I would need to leave in the morning to meet that demand. I went into the options for gas consumption to adjust the price per gallon and set the gas mileage of my SUV (which, unfortunately, is far less than the default value). Finally, I scheduled two stops along the way specifying 2 hours between stops. The results were a detailed set of driving directions, showing exact times for turns, road changes, and scheduled stops, as well as a detailed map showing the path I would be taking. The software was smart enough to schedule the stops at actual turn-offs nearest to the 2 hour schedule. In other words, instead of instructing me to pull over on the freeway in the middle of nowhere at exactly 2 hours, it schedule me to take a turnoff at a point that was close to 2 hours.

Besides the map pane, and the driving directions pane, the left side of S&T is a tool pane that allows you to show the Route Planner, Legend and Overview of the map, Find Nearby Places, and GPS Task Pane. The route planner is what I used the most, as it is where you specify the start and stop points, as well as the points in-between. Under More Options, you can specify the driving profile (when to start driving, when to end, etc.), the driving speeds, fuel consumption, costs, and segments (where you can also select "preferred" roads to travel). The Find Nearby Places tool was very helpful, and it now includes more options than before, including the crucial gas stations (something that is critical on long trips). You can pick what types of places to search for along the route, and how close to the route you want to look. You can look for restaurants, even restaurants of a specific food type. You can also look for places such as Airports, ATMs, Campgrounds, Hotels, Gas Stations, Landmarks and much more. This is one of my favorite features of the program. If you double-click a found "place", that place is highlighted on the map with a popup legend that shows the name of the place, address, and phone number. This legend can then be saved with your web page if you desire.

The big test, of course, is matching the directions with the real life experience of taking the trip. Following the driving directions, I was amazed to find that the schedule nearly matched the actual turns, stops and arrival perfectly. Upon arriving to Yosemite National Park, it was very nearly the exact time I had planned to be there. All in all, I was very pleased with the results.

One caveat is that your routes are only as good as your maps, and unlike the road constructions, the maps in S&T are not updated. The only way I could find to update the maps was to upgrade the software, which means that you cannot upgrade but once a year, and there was no upgrade pricing that I could find. I tried using S&T 2002 for a trip I took last year to Shelter Cove, CA, and the directions led us down a deadend street. In fact, trying to follow the roads in the map, we ended up getting lost and having to call for directions. This is not a pleasant feeling in a location far from home that you are not familiar with. The lesson here is not to rely too much on the map accuracy, especially if the maps are 2 years old.

Summary
Streets and Trips 2005 is a great piece of software for planning road trips. It's very intuitive to use, and provides amazingly accurate results, both in trip schedules and detailed overview maps. It includes lots of useful options, such as gas mileage, schedule stops, and real-time road construction checks. It creates map files that can be shared with other PC users. Unfortunately, you won't be able to share these maps with your Macintosh friends, as there is no Mac version of S&T. However, you can provide them a read-only web version of the map and directions. There are some very good features in this software, especially the feature to view places along your route, including hotels, restaurants, and gas stations. I highly recommend Streets and Trips 2005 for any PC user who likes to take road trips.

Pros:

• Accurate trip schedules and maps
• Provides real-time road construction updates
• Displays hotels, restaurants and gas stations in a given area
• Estimates gas costs

Cons:

• Scrolling is non-intuitive and flickering
• Output map files cannot be shared with Mac users
• Not yet a Macintosh version of Streets and Trips
• Maps are only updated when updating to a new version of Streets and Maps

Overall Rating:

4 out of 5 Mice