By Merle Nicholson, Tampa PC Users Group
merlenic@tampabay.rr.com

My wife and I enjoy traveling by car. We travel around our state for bicycling sites and canoeing and have family and friends scattered around the U.S. enough that augmenting the experience with travel software has been both practical and enjoyable.

This article is incomplete as a software review. Instead I hope to describe how and why we enjoy it and to help with the selection of products.

We’re actively using two trip planning products at the same time. We use the DeLorme Street Atlas USA Deluxe for actively tracking in the car, and the Microsoft Streets & Trips 2002 for route pre-planning. We have three copies of Streets and Trips 2002; one for each of our personal desktops and one for the traveling notebook. We have one copy of Street Atlas USA on the notebook. The GPS unit is attached to the notebook when in the car.

Automobile trip planning and routing uses software (and hardware) to:

1. Plan a trip in advance or modify a trip enroute.Print maps and “Trip Tickets”.
2. Provide for any detailed street map or highway needs.
3. Track your current position using GPS, or track your current position along a planned route using GPS.
4. Look up any place, address, business or facility and place it on a map or integrate it into a planned route.
5. Find where you are, where you’re going, how to get there and when you’ll get there.

Our interest began in 2000 with yet another product, Rand McNally Deluxe Streetfinder 2000, software that included a GPS unit; and although it was interesting, we found it difficult to use, so we switched to Microsoft Streets and Trips 2000 and discarded the Rand McNally. To be fair, I have not looked at Streetfinder since, so I do not know if that product has been improved or not.

We’ve since upgraded Streets & Trips 2000 twice, to 2001 and 2002. This product has stayed the same through this time with no noticeable changes other than updating the databases. It’s the product that we have the most experience with and use it for our standard of comparison. It’s relatively inexpensive, too. Our first one was $20 with a $20 rebate. With GPS, Streets & Trips places your location accurately on the map as you travel. It does not actively compare your real track or position to the planned route, so there’s no recalculation of how far to get there or when. We have used this software for some major trips including one three week trip of 6300 miles, and we do like the product very much. But I wanted it to track where we were along a route so we’d know how far it is to the next location. So we looked at Street Atlas USA.

I borrowed an unused copy of Street Atlas USA version 7 from a friend, looked at it, mapped ourselves a couple of short trips; compared it to Streets & Trips and removed it because it just did not compare favorably. Although it would track a route, the user interface was very difficult, the graphics were clunky, and it just did not stand up to the quality of Streets & Trips. Then DeLorme came out with Street Atlas USA version 8, and I revived my interest in it. They completely rewrote the user interface, and it bears no resemblance to the previous version. There is also a Deluxe version that I saw in a store that was bundled with a yellow GPS unit in the package for $149. I looked it up on the DeLorme web site and decided I wanted the Deluxe version without the GPS priced $10 more than the standard, searched for anyone that had it, failed to find anyone and then ordered directly from DeLorme. I paid only $10 more than the standard was at CompUSA, so I was happy with the $59 cost. The Deluxe version is 2.0-2.1. It’s the Deluxe version of Street Atlas version 8. Isn’t there a better way, guys?

I’ve begun writing this as we’re traveling. I’m using MS Word, with Street Atlas also running so I can switch between them as needed while my wife is driving. Right now we’re on our way to Chattanooga, then Tampa, having spent a few days in Indianapolis, with a day trip to Chicago. Our total round trip will be about 2450 miles. We just used our software to find a Barnes & Noble Café outside Bowling Green to get a good “café latte” and a scone. We’d never been to Bowling Green, yet we were able to leave the interstate, drive a mile and a half to Barnes & Noble and back with no hesitation or loss of time. Our decision was based simply on a search of candidate cities on our route and my nervous system’s demand for caffeine. We simply could not have done this without software and a computer.

In early 2000 we started traveling with a Compaq Pentium 120MHz notebook and used it on some major trips including a 6300 mile trip in 2001. We had just a few months using a Toshiba Pentium 233 and then purchased our current notebook, a Gateway 1.2GHz Celeron with 256MB memory and a 20G HD ($1,228 shipped to the house). Since there is no Gateway brand car charger available, we also bought a 120 Volt 140 Watt inverter for the car to power the charger cube, and also a power adapter cable for the GPS.

We decided to buy a new notebook to have hard drive space enough to load the entire product CD so that the CD does not have to be in the drive when searching the databases. Both earlier notebooks had very limited disk space. The new one, with 20G, still has 13G left after loading the full databases of both products, along with XP Home and MS Works. Our new machine is very fast for these purposes. Please note that the Pentium 120 was useable for running Streets and Trips in case you can find a used one for a couple of bucks. Ours was free because the previous owner did not want to spend $250 for a new battery. We simply used the car outlet, and shut the notebook down more often, after removing the outlet from the car’s ignition switch.

A few words of caution about notebooks. Many now do not have serial and parallel ports. The one we ordered from Gateway would not have had a serial port for our GPS if we hadn’t decided to order it at the Gateway store and told the salesman we needed one. The same model Gateway online has no serial port. We would have had to get a much more expensive model, or purchase a new GPS for USB, a very rare item. As it was, the unit also did not have a keyboard/mouse port, but we were prepared for that.

The GPS, as purchased, pulled its power from the keyboard connector. Fortunately, Rand McNally still sells the GPS and an accessory power cable. Our setup is actually better now because the GPS needs a few minutes to acquire satellites when first powered up, so we leave it plugged into the lighter socket all the time when traveling, except overnight. Many other GPS units are on the market that are suitable for attaching to PCs. Besides the Rand McNally unit, DeLorme sells one bundled with a copy of Street Atlas. The advantage of these two units is price. They don’t have any controls or display. They’re intended to sit on the dash while you’re driving and have no other purpose. Most other GPS models have computer interfaces, and both Streets and Trips and Street Atlas handle several protocols, even some that are specific to particular models. My GPS has one output protocol “NMEA 2”, and both software products have “NMEA 2” in the communications setup. I also own a Garmin GPS for our sailing and canoeing. It has two output settings, one being NMEA 2. I don’t use this GPS in the car because the Rand NcNally unit is less conspicuous and has an external power cable.

The only place in the car that allows reception from the satellites is on the dash, underneath the sloping windshield. I have it in a small gray felt drawstring sack to make it look less like an electronic device and as a shield from the sun. GPS signals are very weak, so the signal is interrupted by anything overhead and even tall trees to the sides. This has not proven to be a problem but once, when we were looking for a planned turn under the Elevated in Chicago.

I’ve rewired the cigarette lighter sockets in both our cars, bypassing the ignition switch;,and in the case of our van, directly to the battery, with multiple outlet adapters. All this is not totally necessary, but bypassing the switch we feel is worth the work, and I used heavier wire while I was at it. We leave the system powered up while we’re in a restaurant on the road, most times just closing the lid, which immediately turns the screen off (I think.. how do you tell?). The notebook’s power settings will also power the screen, processor and hard drive down even while it’s on external power, which in this case is our car battery.

My wife and I stop frequently while traveling, if only stopping for five minutes, usually to trade off driving. We’ve found we rarely get fatigued even for a ten hour drive. The notebook sits in the lap of whoever is the passenger at the time. There is room on the floor of the van to put it when there’s nothing going on or when leaving the car. The windows are tinted and we use an insulated screen on the windshield and usually drop a towel over it and also take it inside motel rooms.

We use Street Atlas to track our route using GPS tracking. The navigator/passenger uses the software to anticipate events coming up, turns, stops, track how far it is to some event (a turn or a planned stop or traffic merging from another highway is information the driver needs). We use it to locate motels and restaurants in advance. We use it to look up and call hours in advance for hotel reservations, for instance, using our cell phones.

The route is shown on the screen as a map. You zoom in and out showing various levels of details on the map, right down to the corner where you turn, or zooming out to show a whole state if you wish. Street Atlas also has voice announcements warning you of upcoming turns at intervals as you approach. While somewhat useful, the voice announcements are no substitute for a navigator/passenger. When you zoom in, locations of stores, restaurants, exits, services and hotels are shown.

We plan our trip at home on one of our desktop machines using Streets and Trips, sometimes a month in advance, and discuss it for a while, look up scenic locations along the way, plug those stops in with an anticipated length of stay, and use the Internet to research the stops. A good example is this trip we’re on. We discovered that we could fit in three hours at Mammoth Cave if we left Chattanooga by 8:00 AM and we could still get to Indianapolis by supper without making our host in Indianapolis wait. It was worth the small amount of work.

With the software, you plug in the Start and End locations, using addresses or place names, then any stops along the way. You have a profile entered that determines the times of day that you start and end. You also can set it so that you do rest stops, say every two hours for 15 minutes. There are profiles that determine how fast you drive on all the various types of roads and set some criteria of a road type preference, so that in our case we may prefer to go a longer distance and stay on interstates. Also, if you put in an average cost of gasoline and your car’s miles per gallon, it will estimate your gasoline cost. The software calculates your route, supplies maps, puts a route on the screen and displays or prints written driving instructions.

After the route is planned and before leaving, we take the time to put Start, Stops and End, and Vias into Street Atlas and make any time of day adjustments. This really takes just a few minutes. So far we have not regretted the use of two software packages.

I’ll try to describe the difference between the two. We like and use both, but it probably is because of our own preferences. And I’ll admit that as we use Street Atlas and become more familiar with it, our use of Streets and Trips may diminish.

Streets & Trips is a Microsoft product that looks like a Microsoft product. It has all the standard menus and easy to use buttons. It has better graphics than Street Atlas, and produces better presentations if you’re printing maps. It is much easier to learn to use, especially if you’re a regular computer user and familiar with the operations of Windows. There are a few things that need improving, like the starting and stopping of GPS tracking is buried in the cascading menus instead of being on an exposed button. They’ve forgotten that you can be operating this in a moving car using a cheesy touch (touchy) pad. Also, it samples the GPS location only every 15 seconds. At 60 MPH, that’s 1,320 feet between samples, and sometimes we were confused about which turn to take.

Streets and Trips does have GPS tracking, but it does not interact with a planned route. It leaves all the ETA calculations up to the user to work out in his or her head. And that’s all right, I don’t have a real problem with that, but it prompted me to look elsewhere. It has a very large database to search, and it rarely has disappointed me.

Street Atlas USA is harder to use and to learn to use, but it offers more features. The user interface is not “Windows-like”. Everything is on tabs at the bottom. It’s really a clever, unique way to pack a large amount of information in a small space, but it is unlike any other program you’ve used.

The first couple of times I used it on short trips I thought I would discard it and revert back to Streets and Trips, but I’m glad I persevered. It took this one really long trip of 2450 miles to come to the realization that it would do everything that Streets and Trips will do but only after a good many hours of practice. The database search and information it supplies are equally as good as Streets and Trips, just selected and presented differently. In addition, it tracks the progress of your trip against the planned trip, and gives you a continuous re-estimate of your ETA for the next stops and destination. It announces upcoming turns and will announce on demand (press F5). It even tells you when you’re “off route”. It also has voice recognition for a large set of commands, like “next turn” being the same as pressing F5. I have not used the voice recognition feature.

One thing that annoys me is when your route backtracks. Say you plan to leave the interstate, go a mile down the road with some turns and return to the interstate the same way. It (understandably) doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going, and announces the turns as if you’re doing both at once, doing double announcements. We’ve learned to hot-key the sound off as the solution. Sometimes it selects a route that doesn’t make sense where it may leave the interstate, go down a road for a while and return back onto the interstate. It’s usually easy to fix by adding a “Via” to force the route. So after it plans the route, you need to review it closely and correct for this. After having coped with it a couple of times, it isn’t too big a deal. It is more difficult to add Start, Stops and End. You cannot convert a Stop to an End for instance. You must delete it and recreate it. Streets & Trips does a much better job on this.

They have announced a new release of this product, for $35 for registered owners. Added is the ability to split the screen so that you can track your position at two levels of details, and for that reason alone, I’ll upgrade it.

To conclude, if my needs were more casual, and I did not value continuous GPS comparison to a planned route, I would use Streets & Trips, otherwise I’d use Street Atlas USA. My own solution is to use both. You can run both at the same time, but do not attempt to have the GPS tracking on both. u