Microsoft Streets & Trips 2004
Software Review by Gerhard R. FischerMicrosoft’s Streets & Trips software has quite a large number of helpful, travel related features. The most often used ones are probably route planning and locating a given street address, while others include real time GPS support, Pocket Streets, and the importing of contacts from MS Outlook and Excel. A small leaflet-like manual is included with the software.
As one would hope in the case of a Microsoft product, the software installed without problems on my computer, a Windows ME machine, and mercifully did not require any activation.
Being familiar with earlier versions of Streets & Trips I had no problem in trying out some of the features and had lots of fun planning the routes for imaginary trips from Florida to a variety of destinations. The results consisted of a detailed listing of all roads to be used, including directions and length of travel on a given road, as well as a detailed map from origin to destination. If desired, about 30 categories of nearby places of interest within a desired radius can be included in the final report. The available places of interest range from airports, to landmarks, gas stations, and zoos. Many different types of restaurants are also included for listing.
Personal driving preference options can be applied to the trip, including the number of hours of daily driving, driving speeds on various types of roads and highways, and the cars fuel consumption and fuel costs.
Highway construction information can be updated via the internet in order to bring the trip planning up to date.
Finding a given address is also easily accomplished and the results are surprisingly accurate, as I found when I tried this feature on some addresses well known to me.
Unfortunately I was not able to test Pocket Streets or the GPS support because I am lacking the corresponding hardware.
All in all, Trips and Streets is easy to use and flexible enough to tailor the final report for the individual user. If I had to suggest an improvement, I would certainly wish to be able to permanently store one or more personal driving options for present or future use.
Microsoft Streets & Trips 2004
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
425-635-7222
$29.98 after $10.00 refund