Hear, Hear! In regards to what Loren has to say I second the motion!

MS Streets & Trips is a JOY to work with compared to Delorme (or the Rand
McNally offering as well).  As a solo driver myself, I don't find the GPS
handy right now, but I'm sorely tempted to build a laptop pedestal sometime
in the future to make it more useable.  I sure could have used one on my
trip to Sevierville, TN and back to SoCal earlier this year.

Again, like Loren stated, the stand-alone GPS systems are great for the
Metro Areas, but when boondocking or really "out there", they are about as
useless as spit on a gnat's a**.

Delorme is just too picky when using the search functions and is no where as
forgiving as MS Streets & Trips.  Actually, this is one of the few Bill
Gates products that actually works for me outside of Excel & Word.  Don't
get me wrong, I've used Delorme print Atlases and like their detail and in
fact I carry one in the Westy along with the Truck Driver's Atlas by Rand
McNally as backup.  Never know when you're gonna have to stealth camp for
the night at a truck stop in an area you don't know about.
--
Jim Thompson
84 Westfalia 2.1 "Ole Putt"
73 K Ghia Coupe "Denise"
72 411 Station Wagon "Pug"
oldvolkshome@gmail.com
http://www.oldvolkshome.com
**********************************
On 8/30/06, Loren Busch <starwagen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> RE: GPS Software
> I have no experience with Garmin software but have spent quite a bit of
> time
> with both Microsoft Streets & Trips and Delorme software on my laptop.
> Without going into a lot of details Street& Trips beats the Delorme
> software
> hands down.  Major issues are the incredibly bad user interface in the
> Delorme and the far greater amount of detail avaiable in Street & Trips.
> BTW, I'm using the Delorme GPS reciever with both.  With Streets & Trips
> the
> Delorme serial emulator is required for the receiver to work with Streets
> &
> Trips.  If doing it over again or starting from scratch I'd just buy
> Streets
> & Trips with the receiver in the box.
>
> Another point.  Use of a laptop is great IF you have a navigator, someone
> in
> the right hand seat.  But not very practical for a solo driver.  Because
> of
> this I've spent a couple of hours at the local electronics store playing
> with the stand alone automobile GPS systems.  What I found was great for
> use
> in the city, very poor coverage once off the beaten path.  I used two
> remote
> places I'm familiar with, one in Washington and a ghost town in Arizona
> for
> a test.  Only with expensive upgrade mapping software did any of the
> current
> crop of GPS units find either one.
>
> One good test of the software is to use the search feature and find out
> how
> well it works.  I've found that Streets & Trips does a great job of
> finding
> things even when misspelled or the description is incomplete or formatted
> differently from what is in it's database.  Delorme can't find anything
> unless you specify what you are looking for exactly as it is stored in the
> software.  And the database of campgrounds, public and private, is far,
> far
> larger in Streets & Trips.