Delorme’s Street Atlas 1994-2009
Sharon
Wichman NEW PCUG president
I have been a great fan of Delorme’s map
programs since almost the beginning of my computer experience. My first Delorme
program was Map’n’Go. It’s copyrighted 1994 and doesn’t say a version. Along
with it came a big, 15 ½” Atlas & Gazetteer of North America. The Map’n’Go
program had every road in it that I knew of and was a very detailed map that
plotted anywhere you wanted to go. It even gave you interesting things to
see along the way with detailed descriptions of the places. The cost was about
$60.
In 1995 I bought Delorme’s Phone Search USA
2.0. It had listings for over 80 million businesses and residences and worked
with their Street Atlas 3.0 program, which I also bought. It did a search for
ANYONE in the whole United States that was in the phone book. It gave me not
only your phone # and address but plotted a route right to your house.
Scary, isn’t it? They were both fantastic
programs. Phone search came with 5 disks, one for each part of the United
State. You could do a reverse search also by typing in the phone number and it
would tell you who it was, for purposes of a number on your phone bill that you
don’t recognize. It would tell you who it is.
I followed up again in 1996 with Map’n’Go 2.0
and the upgraded to Phone Search USA 2.0. In 1997 they came up with Street
Atlas so I bought Street Atlas 5.0 and Map’n’Go 3.0 which now made a great map
program even greater by joining with AAA. You could print out their maps in
AAA’s trip maps format. They really had everything in the program including the
AAA ratings on all the Hotel/Motels and their phone number and address.
Everything you needed in a map program. The difference between Map’n’Go and
Street Atlas at that time is that Street Atlas wasn’t routable. Only Map’n’Go
could be set to plot a route from one place to the other. Street Atlas was only
used to find certain places by zooming down close to the street to find
different buildings or addresses and phone numbers. With Map’n’Go you could
plot your route then use Street Atlas to zoom down closer to see the route and
find businesses like restaurants, hotels/motels & other businesses. It
would give you their address & phone # along your route. So much so, that you no longer needed Phone
Search, unless you still needed to look up phone numbers on your phone bill.
By 2002 Delorme came out with Street Atlas 2003
USA that integrated all three programs, Street Atlas, Map’n’Go & Phone
Search, together. Now we no longer needed Map’n’Go or Phone Search.
Street Atlas was now routable and you could zoom down so close to the streets
that you can see where every turn and connection and building, along with the
address & phone #.
And so far, up till this time, Delorme made a
great program. As far as I could see, the map was accurate. It took us all
around up north to see the waterfalls and even had them marked for us. I
thought it worked great.
The first time I suspected something was wrong
was when I did a route for my daughter, son-in-law, and his parents to go pick
up their older son in Oregon. When they finally got there they called me and
hollered about the route. That couldn’t have been the best route to take. It
took them around cliffs and gorges. They bought a map and plotted a faster way
home, one without cliffs that dropped straight down into a large ravine.
Well, I just chalked it up to the program not knowing the type of roads too
well. But there were several more incidents.
Routes that could have taken less time had you
taking different routes. And yes, I had the preferences in Street Atlas set for
which roads we preferred. One time I plotted the route to Milwaukee Zoo and it
took us straight down 45. 45 is closer to us then 41. NEVER go to Milwaukee Zoo
down 45, if you want to get there the same day. It zig zagged us through the
middle of the tall buildings in Fond Du Lac. Not a pretty sight. If you know 45
you know what I mean.
After Appleton/Grand Chute finished the new
roads and rerouted and renamed some roads, I figured I should upgrade my Street
Atlas. When in 2005 they offered me Street Atlas 2006 USA with a USB GPS that
connects to my laptop all for only $99 I jumped at the chance.
But then, when I got the program, I realized
NONE of the new roads except 15 was on it. And they even have 15 screwed up.
They have a zig zag in the middle of 15 on the map that isn’t there. No new 45
to Waupaca, no renaming of 45 south to 76. They still have 96 and 10 together
and 441/10 still stops at 76 which use to be 45. Which on their map still is
45.
There were several other discrepancies also.
Ok, so I figured maybe since they just finished all the roads maybe they didn’t
get them in the new program. I sent a route update to Delorme, several of them
but I never heard back from them at all.
I figured they got the message and will fix it
in the next upgrade. So, at the end of 2006 I ordered Street Atlas 2007 USA.
Guess what, you can order Aerial Data of certain areas in the USA and Canada,
like Niagara Falls or The Grand Canyon, The Fox River Mall or over your own
house so you can zoom in and see an aerial view. Not real time.
They give you $40 worth of the aerial view
free. There is also some other really great additions to the program.
Unfortunately, with 2007, they still haven’t updated the maps.
The map still has the old roads, the old names
and no new roads. If they don’t update our roads on the map, how can I trust
the other roads throughout the USA, not to mention Canada?
As for the installation part of it, that was a
snap. No problems in installing or using the program. I love the navigational
GPS part of the program. It’s has voice commands and vocally tells you where
and when your next turn is. Can be either male or female voice commands. It
also hunts up McDonald’s restaurants for you in the area, or any other place of
businesses, like the most well known businesses but not all of them. I think it
may have something to do with businesses that pay to be on the map
Everytime you purchase the next version after
the first initial buy, it only costs you $29.95. But don’t forget to register
the program so you get the free updates and other bug fixes. It doesn’t take a
huge computer to run this program either. I am running Windows XP and my
processor is only a 900mhz Pentium with 320megs of RAM on my desktop PC. It
runs great, it doesn’t feel slow to me. I use the program and GPS on my laptop
that is a 1.8ghz processor with 512 megs of RAM. And it doesn’t seem any
different. But I’m not sure what would happen if you have slower than a 900 mhz
processor, it probably will be slower.
Ok, while I was typing up this review I started
up Street Atlas and it came up with an update available message. So I updated
it. I thought maybe it would fix some of our roads on the map. I don’t see any
changes to the map, at least not to our roads.
I think I’m going to have to rip out the maps
from our phone book, highlight the discrepancies and snail mail them to their
mailing address. Maybe they will get the point. I’ll keep you advised.
Updated for Street
Atlas Plus 2009
As you saw at the last presentation, I now have
Street Atlas Plus 2009. They finally updated our roads. It took
them 5 years to do it but at least they got it right. Better late then never. I
did come across a few things, like the map shows that S continues down 76
toward Greenville instead of were it actually turns off towards New London. Tom
Ekvall sent me an email telling me that he just bought Delorme Street Atlas
2009 plus with Bluetooth GPS. He said he also found several discrepancies just
around his houses in Oshkosh and Oconomowoc. He said the first four addresses he mapped
were all wrong. Way off. Two more he tried out were also wrong. So
like Tom and I said, how can you trust the rest of the map throughout the
United States, if they don’t have them right in our area? At least now you can
go onto their website and submit a data revision. It’s under Technical Support.
Delorme has several different versions including
some that come with a GPS which is the one I got. The one that Tom got is the
GPS that connects to his laptop wirelessly using the Bluetooth Technology that
his laptop is equipped with. There are
also versions without the GPS. You can
order them all at www.delorme.com. BTW, If
you do see a discrepancy on the map. First, try looking on a paper map to see
if maps have the same discrepancies and then submit it to them on their website
under the Technical Support heading. The following are all the different
versions and their prices.
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Both of these have Bluetooth capability.
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