You can even input your miles per gallon and get an estimated gas mileage report, with suggested stops (and gas stations) listed for you. We also like the annotation tools that let you mark up maps with arrows, text, pushpins, and other symbols try that with online mapping sites. Fortunately, there's an option for Send Map Feedback, where you can request that additional information be added to Streets & Trips unfortunately, you'll have to wait until next year's release and purchase the new software to see if it's been added. In one test case, several restaurants within our direct line of sight were not identified by Streets & Trips. Here, too, while Streets & Trips boasts of having more than 1.8 million points of interest, much more than the online sites, these lists are not complete. Simply use the Find Nearby Places tool to display lists of restaurants, motels, or other places of interest within a radius you define. With Streets & Trips, however, the latest road-construction warnings are easy to download online sites don't offer that specific information.Īs with the online sites, you can locate various places of interest. In one test case, a trip from San Francisco to Monterey, Streets & Trips and Yahoo both recommended Highway 101 (with construction delays) down the Peninsula, while only MapQuest suggested I-280 and Highway 85 around the congested San Jose metropolitan area as a timesaving shortcut. Utilizing a database of 5.4 million miles of local, city, and highway roads across the United States and Canada, Streets & Trips produces better detailed maps than Web-based route-finding products, although its printouts and driving directions are no better. We installed the entire software package in about 10 minutes without incident.Īs a route-planning tool, Streets & Trips is very good. You'll save 450MB of disk space by running Streets & Trips from the CD, but that'll make the software as slow as a Yugo up a 9 percent grade. Setup for Streets & Trips 2005 by default installs 1GB of data, including program files and maps, on your hard drive.

If you're constantly on the go, Streets & Trips makes sense otherwise, the Web-based services should be more than enough for most. Where Streets & Trips really delivers, however, is in its up-to-date construction information, personal map customization, and ability to export the data to Pocket PC-enabled PDAs and smart phones. But online map-producing services hold their own against Streets & Trips 2005 in terms of directions, places of interest, and accuracy.

It's a fun toy for families planning their own vacations or business travelers faced with the daunting prospect of navigating unknown city streets. Streets & Trips 2005 is handy software for planning long-distance trips or for use when driving with a passenger.

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