Editorial Product Review:

Item Description:
Streets And Trips 2006 is a great trip-planning tool that offers accurate directions for any trip. Explore new areas, and find the services you need along the road. Always know where you make your next turn, and find your way back if you make a wrong turn. With the included GPS receiver, you'll benefit from advanced GPS routing features, including a new distance-based voice prompting GPS trail, rerouting, intelligent zooming, and much more. The receiver is USB-ready -- just plug it in and go! More than 5.4 million miles of newly updated, routable roads and highways throughout the United States and Canada Pocket Streets for the Pocket PC and Smartphone is also included

Amazon.com Item Description:
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 with GPS Locator combines the latest version of Microsoft's enhanced customizable trip planning software, Streets and Trips, with a sleek and stylish Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. Just plug the receiver into the USB port on your laptop, start your car, and you'll always know exactly where you are, where your next turn is, and how far it is to the next gas station or point of interest.

The navigation screen with GPS pane. A blue progress bar counts down to the next maneuver. View larger.

Find all points of interest within a given radius. View larger.

Acquire your location with the Wi-Fi Location Finder. View larger.

Trip Planning with Door-to-Door Convenience
Streets and Trips 2006 is an easy-to-use, hands-free trip planning and guidance solution. Whether you're running errands or planning a cross-country road trip, Streets and Trips 2006 offers customizable maps and information on more than 1.8 million points of interest (POIs), such as restaurants, ATMs, museums, campgrounds and more. Online or off, Streets and Trips 2006 provides updated maps that give you accurate, detailed door to door directions and puts 5.9 million miles of routable roads and highways throughout the US and Canada at your fingertips. While you're driving, verbal turn-by-turn directions let you concentrate on the road while the software guides you. Customizable trip planning features allow you to plan multiple stops, find nearby places to visit, calculate drive time, and more.

Taking advantage of the enhanced trip planning software is easy. With a customizable viewing pane, you can display turn-by-turn directions, including street names, in large type for easy viewing, and large, easy-to-see arrows that indicate the direction of your next turn. The pane displays the distance to your destination in miles or yards, and for a quick 'at-a-glance' view, a thermometer-style bar shows the relative distance you've travelled. To create a route and generate directions, you simply type in the starting and ending locations and click on 'Get Directions.' It's that simple. Your trips can include multiple segments, and you can instruct the software to customize your route by telling it what types of roads you want to travel, how much gas your car has, and the general area where you want to stop to gas up. Streets and Trips 2006 will do the rest, giving you your optimal itinerary, down to the precise gas station. Overall you'll have access to over 1.8 million local POIs such as hotels, restaurants, gas stations and ATMs, and by planning ahead, Streets and Trips 2006 will help you avoid delays with construction updates and other recent changes to your route.

With the GPS receiver plugged into your laptop, you'll always know exactly where you are. The GPS panel shows your current latitude/longitude, direction of travel, current speed, and GPS signal strength. This is also the control panel for arranging and customizing the map display, and you can even create a 'bread crumb' GPS trail, making your return trip a breeze. Voice-prompted directions announce upcoming turns with precise instructions, such as, 'In one point two miles, turn left on Andover Street.' If you drive past your planned exit, the software will tell you immediately that you're off track. A single click will get you back on track. The 'Re-route from Here' feature quickly recalculates directions if you miss a turn.

To find a certain POI, such as restaurants or gas stations, you simply select from 35 POI types to display on the map. You have the option of searching within a certain radius of an address that you choose, your current location, a specific direction within a planned route, or all of the POIs along the entire route. Your results are displayed in a directory-tree listing. When you click on a POI, a balloon box pops up on the map with detailed information, including an address and phone number, and if you right-click on the POI icon, you can add it to your route list.

MSN Virtual Earth and Other Extras
To enhance to your travel experience, Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 offers a link to MSN Virtual Earth, Microsoft's online repository of satellite maps. Let's say you're viewing a map of the theater district in Manhattan. If you want to see a bird's-eye view of it, just click the Virtual Earth icon and a satellite image of the area will load into your browser. Another convenient feature is the 'Night Map Style' which makes reading your routes at night or in other low-light conditions a breeze. The map's background is black, and roads and street names are shown in shades of green for easy viewing. Also included with Streets and Trips 2006 is Pocket Streets for your Pocket PC or Smartphone, which you can load onto your compatible Windows-based Pocket PC or Windows-powered Smartphone for greater travel convenience.

And best of all, once you register your software, you can access a full year of email and toll-free customer support, and you'll also have access to an online knowledge base dedicated to Streets and Trips 2006. So no matter where you're travels are taking you, you can drive with the confidence that you'll have Microsoft's extensive support and software behind you every click of your odometer.




Accessories available:
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Accessories available:

• Microsoft Windows Live OneCare 1.0 [Old Version]
• Compactflash Adapter Allows GPS360
• Bluetooth Dock Allows GPS-360

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Customer Rating: - Streets and Trips w/GPS Locator
This is a great product. We have used it with a laptop on at least 10 trips and it has very good features - voice instruction; lets you see where on the map you are driving; gives restaurants and attractions. I would recommend this for anyone who wants something better than a hand-held gps or someone who doesn't have a nav system built in to their vehicle. I bought my edition on Amazon and paid under $90.00 for it.

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Customer Rating: - Has it's plusses
This has served me well in terms of giving me directions, but it lacks the accuracy required for netstumbling, and Google Earth mapping of data points.

There is a new version out that uses SIRFstar III, and it's supposedly more accurate. Also the 2008 version is supposed to know about traffic in an area.

I'd buy the new version if I ever lost my current unit for any reason.

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Customer Rating: - very nice program ...
Purchased this program for my older laptop PC because it was compatible with Win2000. Program worked right out of the box, no troubles installing. Has very nice features, easy to read on the screen. Now if I just could afford to drive my car anywhere ... :)

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Customer Rating: - It works
It works, it is a tad akward to use and would be much more conveniant if you could upgrade it rather than just buy a new one every few years