I picked up the Delorme Earthmate/Street Atlas package (
http://delorme.com/earthmatelt20/default.asp ) and used it on a recent
trial trip. There is no way I'd want to be peering at a laptop screen,
sometimes completely washed out by sunlight, while driving. I plugged an
FM transmitter (like http://tinyurl.com/apu4j ) into the laptop's
headphone jack, set it to an unused frequency, and let Microsoft Mary (I
call her the "Iron Lady") speak to me from the car's radio. (I'd have
preferred the voice of "Mother," the ship's computer from _Alien_, but
you get who you get. )

Aside from picking a route that I'd never have taken due to traffic,
Delorme did a fine job of guiding me home. If you know of roads better
not taken, then you can manually make changes to the route the software
selects. Or just ignore the directions and watch the software work out a
new way to get to where you want to go.

I am in the U.S., and it appears that the maps are detailed enough for
road trips here.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
83.5 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
KG6RCR

On 6/1/2005 1:40 PM Robert Rountree wrote:

> I'm  looking to pull the trigger on a GPS for my laptop... I'm down to 2
> choices.
> the Delorme or the Microsoft Streets... I'm in Canada and I'm being
> told by
> an ebay-dealer that the Microsoft streets covers CDN best... I have a new
> HDwidescreen laptop with decent sound.. Delorme speaks... MS doesn't
> speak... is that really a much used feature?... which feature do you use
> most? I would use it in the van, in a boat, and maybe even try it in a
> small
> plane.. real planes use different software for fields and approaches, but
> you could still follow roads, and get a corrected actual ground speed....
> who has used one or the other in their CDN travels?
>
> RR
>
> Think I'll do BusFusion
> http://members.aol.com/BusFusion/bfhome.htm
>
> ... could they use a really bad, mandolin/ukulele player?
>