Microsoft Streets and Trips
Microsoft Streets and TripsI spent my professional life writing and supporting computer software. In this area I consider myself an expert..
I needed a mapping program, real time mapping. The last time I thought I was going to Yécora, I ended up almost to Agua Prieta and according to my Streets and Trips there was no way to get from Agua Prieta to Yécora. I drove an extra 400 km that day -- and there was a way to get from Agua Prieta to Yécora -- I found it. I say 'way' because no one would call the path I took roads.
I went on the web and found that no software company responds to inquiries on their products. I asked simple questions: Do you support travel in Mexico? They could have said 'No'. The silence was unnerving. I saw a GPS system for $70 at Costco. At that price I was ready to buy but I waited. At another Costco the following week, I saw Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS for $100. I know they support Mexico so the worst I would be out would be a lousy GPS unit. I was correct: I was out a lousy GPS unit. I was also wrong: I have been out a lot of aggravation because the product was obviously never used by the people who wrote it. They must have arm-chair driven from their cubicles if they drove at all. The following is my experience after using the product for all of my driving for a month.
This program is really great for getting directions anywhere in the USA or Canada. It also does a good job on Mexico. It has some good points and bad points. Microsoft obviously sent its 'B' team to work on this one.
Wait a minute: I shall think of some. Oh. If you get the
non-GPS product, it does a really good job of routing. There are
no pros for the GPS version.
The point it picks to zoom from is not intuitive. It is not where the cursor currently points. You have to make a little box and then click the box you have drawn -- otherwise the Zoom point appears to be in the middle of Kansas. You try making a little box at 50 mph going down the highway.
If you have given a city as a route point and you have properly ignored the plethora of choices for preferred locations within that city and throughout the world, you end up with a route point nowhere near where you want to be in that city. This is OK -- except for the plethora of fish and chips and book stores. I could handle a plethora of gas stations but they are not listed.
Now your route point is somewhere in town. You find a way to zoom to your route point (not always easy) and see that the point is 2 miles and many streets fro where you want to go. Click on the point and drag it to where you really want to be. Ha! This is an exercise in random numbers. You may be able to do this. You may not. When I click on a push pin or a route marker and drag it somewhere, I want it to move. Not sometimes. Not only on SUnday mornings. I want it to move, first time, every time.
I do not want to draw a little box that gives me the choice of zooming. If that. I just want to make my stopping point a precise location and not the center of the Chamber of Commerce building at First and Main. Why is this precision required? Because when you ask for directions, the number of steps will be increased by 100 as the program finds the most efficient way to get you where you do not want to be.
This arrow is invisible from any distance
except when your face is 14 inches from the screen. This means
that even if you risk your life in trying
to access the screen, you will never find the cursor to be able to
choose options or whatever. Resetting the cursor in WIndows does
not impact the idiot choice of cursors by Microsoft. You cannot
see a hollow arrow at 50 mph.
The Microsoft solution? Use the "High Contrast" Accessibility
Option in Control Panel. This is an absolutely stupid idea as it
changes your entire desktop to Black and Green when all you wanted to
do
was to have Streets and Trips to use your preferred cursor. This
reminds me of the old adage of throwing the baby out with the bath
water.
For example pick a point, any point. Define a push pin there. Now discover that the point you wanted is actually 5 miles from where you thought it was. Sorry, Charlie. You are stuck. You may not remove the push pin. You may not move it. You have a permanent push pin.
Make sure that you name your push pins uniquely. You can
imagine the problems duplicate names cause this program.
Comments to Microsoft do not get a reply since they only accept mapping errors. Comments on program operation are not accepted. After several comments on multiple releases, they still think the Sonora Highway 3 to El Golfo is highway 40.
Microsoft offers updates on its other programs. You have to buy a new version of Streets and Trips to see what is still missing or still wrong.
Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS gets my vote as the "Words Most Useless Program".
See the above for Pros and Cons on the mapping. The GPS
support (or lack of support) makes the product useless.
I tried the 2005 version. I just heard from a friend who was
making identical complaints about the 2006 version.
The primary reason to have this program is to guide you while
driving -- otherwise you can have the normal version and be
happy.
This is not possible: you cannot use this program while driving.
The following Cons
tell you why. In general you need to constantly interact with the
program. To do this without endangering a tree or your car or
your life for that mater, you
need a software-savvy navigator. Such a navigator is probably
happier with a paper map. It is not possible to use this program
on the open highway without interacting with it. Myself, I drive
alone. The program's erratic behavior makes me angry.
I have met families where there is no one who volunteers to be
navigator. The driver sets up the route and uses his GPS program
to get to their destination. The concept removes many levels of
trip anxiety. This program increases rather than decreases
anxiety: this program is no asset to the driver. It may be an
asset to a software-savvy navigator.
The first rule in generating the route plan is to start with GPS off! You will never get mapped past your starting point otherwise as every time you set a stopping point, the map jumps back to your current (GPS) location.
The program does not handle refueling or other stops well so you need to correct periodically. If you forget to turn off GPS, you will be quickly reminded: any attempt to see a location other than the current GPS location will result in the screen hopping from where you set it back to the current GPS location -- after letting you see for an instant that where you wanted to be actually exists and that it knows what you really want.
They might at least warn you that pushing the Route Planning buttons with GPS active will just cause frustration. They might deactivate GPS while making changes. They might have done a lot of things.
The selection of the GPS panel is hard enough. Checking and unchecking the GPS selection boxes is very difficult. Do not even try it with a touch pad. Even getting to GPS will cause you to lose 1/4 of your screen to a silly frame with a few check boxes that could have been mail level menu items. When you turn off the GPS frame, another sub-window opens that you have to check to get rid of.
You can tell the program the size of your fuel tank and your miles per gallon and it will figure refueling points. This is great? No. This is useless.
Let's say it says to refuel at every 320 miles. You set a refuel stopping point for yourself at 300 miles. You cannot tell the program that you refueled here. Nada. Zip It could have been a menu item under the 'stop' menu. That would be easy. Nothing is easy about this program.
Now all of your other refueling points still think you refueled in the middle of the desert. The only way to correct this is to erase your original starting point and designate your refuel point as the start of your trip. To get GPS to work properly with route planning you have to do this anyway. Maybe it is just a perversion of mine that I want to be able to keep my original map without having to keep restarting from each stopping point.
When this happens you get a message box on the screen saying that the GPS unit is lost for ten minutes and do you want it to continue searching for it. You get a choice of Yes or No. Neither choice will get you working again. Take either choice to clear the window. Then go back to the GPS Tracking frame and turn off GPS and turn it back on. Then move your car otherwise it just sits there until you move -- if it found the GPS location otherwise you have to repeat the process.
It gets lost when going under an underpass or in the mountains or on a hot day (the unit was obviously not designed for living in California, Arizona, Utah, etc. Standby or Hibernation guarantees that the GPS sensor gets lost.
Oh. And sometimes it just gets lost without telling you.
The little circle and the highway just stop moving. 50 miles
later you realize that the map no longer represents where you
are. My friend with the new version indicates the the new GPS
sensor is no better than the previous one -- it gets lost just as
easily.
Do not ever use this for mapping on your route plan. Where GPS thinks you are when you are traveling and you are updating your map has no bearing on your actual location. Well, it dies: it points to somewhere that you have been. If you are doing some serious traveling, this may be 500 miles away from where you are now. And your map will start hopping because GPS is active while you are planning.
So you are going down the road with your PC on the seat next to you or on the dash (RVs have big dashes. If the program gets lost, the road turns from green to blue and you have to pull over to reset it. Sometimes it will revert to green after a while but do not count on it. You have to pull over to fix it.
The turn is coming up, do you get a warning? No. A beep
or something? No. The program does not talk or warble or
beep or anything. There is not even a color-change warning
to let you know that you must take an action!
Ah. My friend tells me that the new version talks. He
was not very positive about what it said.
This falls into the same stupid category as the invisible cursor. You can tell the program to screen-center the circle and therefore have a good idea where it is since you start looking at the center of the frame. But then when GPS gets lost (as it frequently does) the circle turns a little more pale. Make sure to not drive off the cliff trying to figure out where you are.
Note that there is nothing in my comments would be difficult to
correct -- except add voice. All of this abomination could have
been eliminated with a little forethought.
I like Microsoft, I really do. I think Bill Gates should get more
credit for what he has done for the computer users of the world.
He just missed the boat when it came to this program. That
someone likes it this way is obvious: no serious changes have been made
in 5 years.
I have seen the box. They sent me their email. They make
some great claims. My friends have the same complaints that I do
-- and I did not prompt them. Missing freeway exits is
still a problem. The little scale thing on the bottom is not the
same as having the map rescale as you approach the exit so that you can
see your local environment. The inability to program the cursor
is an act of violence against the customer. The getting lost due
to a poor sensor is an unnecessary aggravation beyond
words. I have not checked to see if they have figured out that
there is no highway 40 going south from San Luis to El Golfo.
I guess Microsoft thinks that selling me a new version every year
with a new (expensive) sensor makes up for not issuing incremental
program updates. I guess if there is no way to hack the program,
Microsoft sees no need for maintenance.