DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2009
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend When you're driving in the car and you get lost, don't you ever wish you didn't have to deal with a bulky atlas? Or when you're walking around in an unfamiliar city, don't you wish you didn't have to deal with a huge map? Now you don't have to with Street Atlas USA 2009. You can put these maps on your GPS, PDA, PC or even your UMPC. Know where you're going… Product details and pricing info |
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15 Customer Reviews Posted
- Painful to use
- The user interface in the DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2009 is so bad that it hurts to use it! I was pleased with the accuracy of the GPS tracking, though, so I'll give it one gold star for that. But it was just too frustrating to use the DeLorme software that came with the GPS bundle that I bought. With skepticism, but high hopes, I downloaded a 60 day trial of the Microsoft Map Point 2009 to see if it might be easier to use - and is it ever! It had a much more intuitive feel - I was able to make my route in less than a minute after installing the software! The Delorme made it very difficult to do trip planning offline from the GPS as it did not recognize the standard address, city, state nomenclature. Why not??? When I tried this same nomenclature with the Microsoft product, it instantly came up with my location. After a few more minutes of tinkering in the Microsoft software, I had it configured it to calculate trip costs and even tell me when I was getting low on fuel based upon my own preferences (no waiting the gas light!) I am thrilled to have an alternative to the DeLorme product and my next trip will be less stressful now that I have a decent product to use! (I noticed that Microsoft also has a Streets and Trips 2009, which is cheaper than the s/w trial that I downloaded, but with the same programming and interface, minus some business tools). I'll buy that one once my trail has ended. Try this: Microsoft Streets & Trips 2009 instead of the DeLorme version! Go to [...] to find a 60 free trial download if you want to try before you buy like I did. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
- 2008-12-05, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- TERRIBLE FOR A POCKET PC
- What irritates me most is the DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2009 box pictures a PDA (handheld pocket pc) on it; giving one the impression that it's useful for a pocket pc. I have T-Mobile Wing (WM 6.0), brand new; this is the first software I added to it, and it is absolutely unuseable for a pocket pc; a complete waste of time. A few reasons why:
1) Maps need to be "converted" from laptop to handheld; take minutes per map; you need to select what part of the map you want to convert; just selecting two grids (only part of AZ) yield an 11 meg file to be transfered to Pocket PC
2) Locating address (search) takes minutes on Pocket PC; once you do this, it takes several minutes to search for the route; even a simple route just a few miles away! And forget about selecting address from contacts; it takes minutes just for it to open your contacts, and then it doesn't show which contacts have addresses, versus just phone numbers, etc. Then more minutes for a route, which I could not get to display on the device. Also, you need to select which GPS device you are using, I found the default device (a DeLorme) would cause the Street Atlas to close on occassion.
It's really useless for a handleld; I tried to return it but BestBuy would only let me exchange it for the same software, which I did anyway. But I make an issue of letting BestBuy know I feel ripped off and I requested that their buyers do research on what they sell; sure wish I did before I bought this useless software. Oh, BestBuy also said I should see if DeLorme would give me my money back... - 2008-11-05, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Excellent Street Atlas 2009
- My Street Atlas 2009 arrived quickly. and is working great.
It has many features I don't need, but the maps are up to date
and much more helpful than the previous edition I had. - 2008-09-04, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Street Atlas USA 2009
- I've owned previous versions of this product. Most corrections I had submitted WERE NOT included. Also, after contacting Delorme about changes, their attitude isn't proactive. Example was a county that had 911 road changes appr. 7 years ago. I explained that to Delorme and they said I had to have the county contact them...they would not contact the county for the changes. Another problem is Delorme doesn't release updates to existing programs. You must buy a totally new version to receive updates, and as I said above...they don't seem to have them. I'm looking for another company that is more proactive to maintaining updates.
- 2008-08-31, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- DeLorme's Unfinished, Unimpressive Symphony
- DeLorme has a lot to recommend it, and I expected terrific things from the people who created AAA Map'nGo several years ago. But the agglomeration of half-thought-out features found in Street Atlas USA 2009 (SA2009) has left me agog. Every "feature" has something to annoy.
Yes, there's maps of the entire US, Canada and Mexico, but they appear to be significantly out of date. An interchange I know was removed over twelve years ago still shows in its old location. Even with the "show 1-way streets" option (which is bizarrely un-set by default), streets in my city that have been one-way since Prohibition are happily routed the wrong way by SA2009. DeLorme does provide a "draw" function that claims to let you edit such problems, but it doesn't work on limited access highways, and you have to set one-way markers one road segment at a time. Then there's the printed maps. "Strip maps" set for 30-mile intervals use a 5-point font to label everything. Good luck using that on the road even at high noon on a sunny day. For printed mapping, I switched back to MS Streets & Trips 2007 (MSS&T).
One thing SA2009 does a bit better than MSS&T is the handheld application. Before SA2009, I used Microsoft Pocket Streets (MSPS -- no longer available) to download maps to my PDA, but while MSPS was capable of GPS locating, it couldn't show a route. At least SA2009 provides the route display in addition to GPS locating, and I use that ability cautiously. Why cautiously? Well, a test run from my office to my home kept producing SA2009 warnings of "off route" because I refused to break through highway barriers, cross ravines and navigate streams suggested by the SA2009 routing. However, being able to see a mostly-correct route with a display of where I am and how long until the next turn is handy on a road trip (and cheaper than cell based updates). But I always check the route on the Web BEFORE setting out, then apply corrections to SA2009 using "route vias". Although the handheld purports to perform such routing, it's ludicrously slow (between 5 minutes for a few blocks to hours for inter-city routing), and half the time it gives up on some obscure and undocumented error. Still, SA2009 routing can be handy to find a way back to a missed exit (if you can find a place to wait 5 or 10 minutes), but little beyond that.
If DeLorme finished the product that SA2009 seems designed to become, it would be a powerhouse. As it is, it's little more than an occasionally useful, but never dependable toy. With work, you can extend it to become useful, but I don't plan on buying Street Atlas USA 2010. - 2008-08-27, 5 of 5 people found this review helpful, Rated:
