- Updated street-level maps of the United States and Canada with more than 2.5 million points of interest from America's #1 travel and map software.
- Plan your trip including multiple destinations, rest stops, scenic detours, fuel stops and more-all with no Internet connection required.
- New! See customer ratings and reviews on businesses and take the guesswork out of deciding where to go when online.
- View the quickest routes with one-click trip optimization; add notes for planned stops, reservations, phone numbers, and more.
- Change your plans on the go, with no Internet connection; choose specific roads by dragging and dropping the route.
I also have a Tom-Tom which my wife and I use for short trips and to get directions from point A to point B within the state. Local travel is what the Tom-Tom and Garmin units are designed for. But where S&T beats the small units hands down is when planning long distance trips. There are many congested areas of the country I refuse to drive through (I-95 through the CT-NY-NJ area.) With S&T all I have to do is tell it to avoid this area by dragging the mouse over the map and the planned route is instantly modified. S&T also beats the small units when manually re-routing a trip. All you have to do is click on the route and drag the route marker where you want to go. S&T also provides a much greater overall map view of your trip as you are driving (you can see your progress on the entire trip rather than just a quarter mile ahead of you.) This is great with the kids/grandkids in the back seat watching the progress of the trip and seeing how far they have gone and how far they still have to go.
The little units have their place but my preference for long distance travel planning and GPS tracking is still with S&T. I was planning to upgrade to the 2012 edition but had to wait for 2013. Again, no major software upgrades that I have seen (other than the maps and POIs), but for the price I don't think you can beat it. The upgrade was worth it for the maps alone.
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As seems to be the pattern with new editions of Streets and Trips, there is nothing revolutionary about this upgrade, though it was almost two years in the making. While I find it a useful program, it is still quite limiting in ways I wish would be addressed.I use Streets and Trips almost daily. In addition to maintaining several thousand points, I receive addresses several times a day from people whereby I find their location and give them directions to the closest point in my database. And, like most people, I use Streets and Trips to plan my road trips. What has forced me to upgrade from 2007 is the new map data so I can match newer addresses.
Here is a summary of different features, the good and the bad.
Searches: The address search still needs improvement. When an address does not match anything in their database, the suggested alternatives are often far off. For example, I typed in an address and town containing "Penn Rod Rd." The search returned a Penn Wood Dr and a Penn Roberts Ln in two places across the state from the town I included with the road. Manually scanning the roads around the town I entered in, I found it: "Pennrod Rd." The search is unable to handle many of these petty errors.
Data import: The program allows you to import locations from Excel, Access, or another database. I match by GPS coordinates because the same errors and bad alternative suggestions come up here when I match by addresses, and there is no way to go into the map to find the right info without cancelling the matching procedure. Once the data is in, you have to manually check all the attributes you want to display that did not match their list of predetermined attributes. If there are many sets of data imported and many attributes you want displayed for each point, it is slow going in checking all those boxes to display the data (couldn't they display all by default?). They also force a comma into numerical data. So, for example, each point has a year attached to it. The box shows it as "Year: 1,949". Finally, once the data is imported, to change anything about it, you have to update the datasheet and import it all over again. If some addresses did not match before, you will have to handle those errors all over again, check all the show data boxes again, reassign the icon, etc. I wish there were a way to update changes from the datasheet rather than starting from scratch.
Loading old maps: S&T 2013 does not open any S&T files from 2007 and before. This was unexpected and made a hassle in loading old data. What a short time period to discontinue old file formats of the same extension as presently! The only solution is to reimport all points or download an old trial version of 2008-2011 and convert all your files to 2013 vis-a-vis this bridge. I tried to copy/paste points from 2007 to 2013; the listing appears in the legend, but without points on the map.
Icons: One reason I did not upgrade after 2007 was that the new icons for points were ugly and busy. When I have several thousand points on my map, pretty detailed icons are not a plus. It has been laborious, but using the "print screen" button and MS Paint, I have replicated many of the old icons and imported them into the new layout. With newer editions, though, you can turn points on and off, which is a helpful feature. However, you have to right click and select that option, a pain when I am frequently turning things off and on. ArcMap has the same feature in a tick box next to the legend listing.
Handling: The mouse features have improved. No longer do you have to select between a hand to pan the map and box to zoom in. The former operation is the left mouse button; the latter is the right. In addition, when you right click in the box made with the right mouse key, you can delete all points in (or outside) that area. As well, they have kept another handy feature that allows you to prohibit a route from traveling through the boxed area--helpful when S&T wants to take you on a gated fire road in a national park, for example. Just block out that area for all travel.
Interface: Another reason I did not upgrade from 2007 until now was the interface. The present has improved from 2008-2011 editions, but still not as good as 2007 and prior, which were as straight-forward as I have seen. It is all black and white now, handy when you have the computer on in your car at night, but not so otherwise. I recognized icons in 2007 by color and shape. Just shapes make it harder to commit icon functions to memory. The features you can display are limited to a cluster of four toolbars. I wish I could declutter all the 75% of icons I never use. They have instead added a few more I do not need, but cannot get rid of them since I need several in that toolbar. More flexibility here is desired. The map layout itself is basically unchanged. The map display and scheme is the easiest I know to read, which is a main reason I use S&T over other programs.
Legend: I manage many categories of points. I have longed for the ability to customize the category listing order. In 2007, I could get around the lack of this feature by doing a slight name change to a data set, and then it would bump it to the top of the list (where I could then change the name back to the original). So, I changed the names of the data sets by order in which I wanted them. This "feature" has been removed, and I can find no way to order the list of icons short of importing/creating them in the order you want.
Map data: I am assuming it is as updated as their data provider can get. In addition, I do not know when it happened between 2007 and 2013, but there are much more detailed road maps in Mexico. In addition, I have had problems with strange directions given in rural areas of southern Ontario, and these seem to have ceased. Urban areas in countries outside USA and Canada are also now indicated with a shape area, not just a dot as in prior editions.
This program is still useful, especially when something like ArcGIS is too complex and costly for what I am doing. Its limitations are a continual nuisance, though, and the features I looking for are certainly not grand enough to merit a greater cost for a program like this.
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While I have been a big fan of Streets and Trips over the past decade, Microsoft failed 64 bit users with a flawed DVD. The online free trial download followed by an activation works.**************
The benefits to using software versus ad-supported online maps are many. In particular, the user has more control over how the information is displayed. Moreover, maps can be saved and annotated. Yet, with Google Maps getting better by the day, Microsoft has really let its user base down.
Frequent users of Google Maps notice that it provides driving, public transportation, walking and bicycling directions. Streets and Trips 2013 *still* only has driving directions. What Microsoft needs to do is offer more sophisticated real-time data inputs such as those from public transit and traffic congestion sources. It surprises me that Microsoft has not made a bigger investment in this software. The product is not much different from the previous six versions. It is especially irritating as users had to wait so long for the nonexistent 2012 version to come out only to here nothing from Microsoft until the 2013 was released July 2012.
Despite the lack of investment, the benefits of standalone map software warrant purchasing Streets and Trips 2013. However, given the power of online alternatives, users may find themselves using both Google Maps and Streets and Trips 2013.
Pros
Ability to annotate and save maps
Rapid pan and zoom
No Internet access require
Powerful search nearby locations
No advertisements
Cons
No bicycle, walking or public transit directions
Little connectivity with third-party data sources
No traffic
Problems installing from DVD for 64 Bit users
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I have used Microsoft Streets an Trips since version 1. My company is a Microsoft Partner; I am a Microsoft Certified Application Developer. So I know what I am doing with a computer. This time Microsoft has produced a product that can't open older S&T map versions. After S&T recognizes the need to upgrade a previous map file, it displays the error: "Failed to open document." Other people are having this problem, but there is no support article from Microsoft. It is the year 2012, and by now Microsoft should be able to produce a consumer software product that just works. Besides that, there is no compelling feature in this version that warrants upgrading. Save your money.Save 50% off
This review is for the non-GPS version of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013. In the past, I have been using Streets&Trips 2006 and 2009. I also have two portable GPS devices as my guidance while I am on the road. The purpose of having the Streets&Trips Software is mainly for trip planning. In trip planning, I prefer to use MS Streets&Trips than the on-line based maps (Google map, bing map...etc) for following reasons:1. Speed: I have high-speed internet connection (13Mbps down/6Mbps up), but the speed of MS Streets&Trips is still far faster than any internet-based map service. I like the instantaneous response in zooming in/out, and quick panning movement.
2. Control: I can save my map with directions and locations as a file. Every planned trip becomes a single map file that can be easily reviewed at later time. Just double click the file when I am ready to use it. This is especially useful when I am on a multi-day trip. At night, I just open the map file to review tomorrow's trip.
3. Off-line: No need to worry about the weak and slow wireless connection from the hotel.
4. Point-of-Interest: The MS Streets&Trips shows point-of-interest with clear icons. That makes trip planning life much easier. I can easily see how many hotels/restaurants are around my destinations.
5. Multiple Destinations: MS Streets&Trips is especially good if you have more than 3 stops on a trip. You can organize your stops in the order you want and the program will generate detailed directions from one stop to next stop.
6. Printing: With the on-line map (either Google map, bing map, or yahoo map), you are not able to control the print out boundary. With MS Streets&Trips, I can zoom in/out the map to get exact print out.
7. Add Comment: I can easily add comments to the map for easy referencing purpose.
I don't run into any installation issue when installing it to my Window 7 64-bit PC. However, I agree with other reviewers that MS Streets&Trips 2013 does not seem to be much different from MS Streets&Trips 2009. Unfortunately, MS Streets&Trips 2009 can not be run on 64-bit PC. So, I need the MS Streets&Trips to be run on 64-bit PC.
In summary, GPS is very helpful while you are on the road, but GPS is not good for trip planning. On-line map is convenient but can not be tailored to fit each person's need. The MS Streets&Trips is definitely a great software in trip planning. I highly recommend it.
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