Street Atlas USA 2003

This was a tough one. I saw all the awful reviews and wondered, should I even bother with this product? So I bought it, and a few days later I'm still not sure I like it, but it is functional. I find myself using both the new and the old side by side. SA 2003 is both good and bad.Pluses:The map data is better. However, it's not perfect. Even the latest data Delorme has still isn't up to where local street maps are. However, there is a "fix." This version of Street Atlas allows you to add the roads. (It's not hard with a GPS log to generate a fairly accurate representation of the road.) So you can fill in the gaps with a little driving around.The addition of points of interest, restaurants, hospitals, and radio stations directly to the map is neat. The data is mostly accurate and somewhat helpful even if only moderately complete.There is a lot more functionality in SA 2003. You can have multiple routes, multiple layers of draw objects, multiple waypoint files, (all at once) and it makes usage rather complicated. It's almost like AutoCAD in the layers respect. It's going to send many users into overload - almost guaranteed. If you liked the overall simplicity of the previous versions, you're going to hate this one. There should probably be an hour DVD showing how to make best use to the program included in the packaging.There are a lot of search options. The ability to find places within a window, city, by name, zip code, lat/lon, etc. is great. Unfortunately, the options combined with the "new" interface makes it a little too cumbersome for most people.Reliability is good. It hasn't crashed yet.Minuses:The interface is awful. (I'm still on the fence as to how awful it is. Half of me hates it and the other half is starting to tolerate it.) It's non-standard and somewhat non-intuitive. You should read all the help files TWICE before realistically trying to use the program, especially if you've used a previous version of Street Atlas. Whoever wrote the UI forgot the cardinal rule of Windows programming, a familiar interface improves the user experience.I've read the reviews about it being slow. It's not as fast as previous versions, but it's far from being arduously slow. Be sure to copy the data files to the hard drive. (Stick Data CD in and run setup from that CD.) It improves speed. The killer is the GPS. Do not turn on the GPS for tracking or real time locating unless you're not doing anything else with the computer - my 1.2 Ghz Athlon w/ 512 MB of RAM was maxxed out (100% CPU utilization) trying this task. (Unclick every check box in the GPS Options dialog area.) You will likely be disappointed if this is your primary mapping program in your car if nothing else, due to the excess CPU utilization, it may feel very sluggish. However, in normal home usage, locating places and scrolling through maps without GPS, CPU usage rarely topped 50% and usually stayed below 10%. Once you have a route and everything else setup where you won't be interacting with the computer, then you can initialize and run the GPS and not be too annoyed. (Just don't try to make changes at this point.) I'm not exactly sure why this occurs, but careful use of accepting GPS data seems to solve most problems.I did not test the microphone portion where you can ask it where you are. So I cannot "speak" to how well that works.Verdict: The program has an awful, "new" interface, good information with lots of flexibility, and is fine speed-wise as long as you're not using it for real-time mapping with a GPS while typing a letter. And if you're a technophobe - you're going to hate it because it's non-standard and there will be somewhat of a learning curve. If you're planning to be sitting in your car with your laptop and GPS, you may be happier with something less CPU intensive and simpler, like an older version of Street Atlas. However, if you're the adventuresome type whose not afraid of screwy non-standard interfaces - check out SA 2003. It offers a lot.

I can sympathize with the comments about the interface being non-intuitive. Stuff like creating a new route: there's the name field and a new button -- which do you do first? (Click new then "rename" the route.) Then there areas where all this new power they've given the user is not fully developed (for instance, what draw layer is this mapnote on? can't "correct" a built-in street name, some created roads don't seem to be routable, and all created roads are the same type [side street, I believe]). But overall, I think it's a great product.Locally, while they still don't have all our side streets, they have added some and improved the geographic accuracy of others. And not withstanding the comments above, I love the flexibility to have multiple routes and drawing layers associated with one or more map files. (Editing road options, adding roads, etc., would be very difficult with the old everything-in-one-file method if you had more than 1 or 2 map files to update.)I also have not seen any CPU problems with the GPS enabled. My laptop is only 850 MHz, and I can let Street Atlas do its tracking while watching a DVD (without any special hardware) at the same time without any impact on the playback or any excessive CPU usage. I've also used it on even slower hardware (400 MHz), although without much GPS tracking, and haven't noticed any sluggishness. My GPS is a Garmin eTrex, so possibly the disappointing performance is limited to "dumber" GPSes -- I'm not sure how much smarts DeLorme's Earthmate receiver has built-in.I'm sure there are simpler street mapping programs out there, but if you're looking for a powerful and extendible program -- and don't mind learning your way around a few holes in the interface -- Street Atlas USA 2003 should be high on your list of choices.