DeLorme Street Atlas 2003

[+smillersmiller]

I've used DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2003, mainly on a vacation trip to Chicago last October (2 months ago) with my Pentium 3 850 Mhz laptop, Magellan 315, and serial cable, and thought I'd pass on my experiences. (Standard Disclaimer: your experience may vary.)

 

I've tried to be fair and balanced, but re-reading this, it sounds pretty negative. Just so you know, I'd like to point out that bottom-line, the GPS functionality in DeLorme Street Atlas 2003 is much better than the GPS functionality in Microsoft MapPoint 2002. I had both installed, and while MapPoint 2002 is easier to use, it doesn't integrate as well with the GPS as Street Atlas 2003.

 

Some things that worked well: Enter an address or in many cases a business name or point of interest, and bam Street Atlas finds the item and plots a route. This works amazingly well and will be appreciated by anyone who has spent a long time searching a huge city map for "Abc Street". (D4-H4, it says D4-H4 but there's no Abc here!!!! Where is that @#$% street!) The "radar" feature is neat as well. You can cruise along the Interstate and decide you want some fast food, so have the radar search for and pop up all the fast food restaurants within x miles of your route as you drive along.

 

Unfortunately a few points of interest seemed to be missing, and others required rephrasing the name. I don't remember exactly what off the top of my head, but the Art Institute and Field Museum come to mind. On the plus side, the database seemed to be have just about every hotel.

 

There was two of us so the non-driver was the navigator. It does come with voice directions. The voice directions seem to work very well while driving the open highways, but inside Chicago it seemed the directions usually came too late to be of use.

 

The user interface is rather confusing, and this is coming from someone that can sit down at most software and figure out the main features in a few minutes without a manual. Of course I left the manual at home like a fool. I did manage to figure out the program while on the road, but then I took over the driving in the city and my navigator had a hell of a time with it. I ended up losing my patience more than once. Of course the fact that my navigator didn't think proper spelling was important (idiot!!!) was a big part of that problem.

 

I would strongly recommend learning the software by navigating a trip that you already know the route of (say a drive to visit family for Christmas). If you make a genuine effort of relying on the software to get you there, you'll learn the quirks fast and your knowledge of the route will bail you out if you become totally frustrated and give up.

 

With the Delorme Street Atlas USA 2003 and the maps installed, it takes up about a gigabyte. You can save hard drive space by using the map data off of the CD, but most laptops will consume the battery faster using the CD and the program probably runs faster from the hard drive.

 

These last two points apply regardless of what software you use:

 

For power, we used a 300 watt power inverter that was barely sufficient and cut out while waiting for red lights to change - this despite the laptop power supply being rated at only 75 watts. It would be nice if Consumer Reports or similar would review power inverters to find one that actually works well.

 

In Chicago, we naturally worried about break-ins, so we discreetly hid everything before getting out of the car. I found packing the laptop, power inverter, and GPS away when stopping, then unpacking and plugging everything back together and firing everything up when setting off for the next destination to be a huge hassle. It was enough to make me at least consider the $2,000 navigation package on my next new car (although I still think 2 grand is a bit crazy unless you travel a lot on business or something like that). A less expensive alternative is something like the Garmin StreetPilot.

 

Scott

[Ruprex]

I have DeLorme and have been impressed with it. At this point I don't have a GPSr that will work with it; but I hope to have one that will soon. I've been interested in hearing the pros and cons. Thanks!!!

 

God was my co-pilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.

[+Alan2]

I stopped using SA 2003 and bought Mapsource Metroguide. Metro interfaces naturally with my Garmin and gives enough info, map transfers, routing, POI's etc. Most of all it's simpler and more intuitive! 2003 is just too much!

 

Alan