|  by
Don Engstrom
Delorme's Street Atlas software faces some stiff competition
from sites that offer free online route planning. Services
like Yahoo
Maps will look up any address in the US and will
also do point to point route planning. What advantage,
if any, does DeLorme offer? Read on to find out...
Installation/Setup: Was completely painless.
The street Atlas application itself takes up roughly
60MB of drive space. The rest of the data is pulled
off the CD. You also have the option of installing the
needed files off the data CD if you don't mind sacrificing
600MB+ of drive space. The Earthmate GPs receiver (which
is slightly smaller than a Palm III) connects to the
serial port. iBook owners and recent PowerBook owners
will need to shell out for a USB to serial adapter.
 Interface:
The Street Atlas interface is relatively clean and intuitive.
You can look up locations by street address, zip code,
place name or area code and phone prefix. Clicking anywhere
on the map will center the map on that location. You
can also use your numeric keypad to "scroll"
in any direction. Dragging a box around any map area
will zoom in on its contents, control dragging will
zoom out. Route planning is simple and offers a variety
of options including quickest, shortest (often but not
always the same) or most scenic route. In addition to
these options you can specify locations you would like
to either stop at or pass through on your way to your
final destination. Street Atlas will calculate your
total distance and travel time as well as those for
each leg of the journey. When used in conjunction with
Earthmate, Street Atlas will provide you with information
on the distance and time to your next turn or junction.
You can also set realistic travel speeds for each type
of road to yield travel time information that better
reflects your driving style. You can create custom maps
which contain notes and basic drawings, handy for marking
the location of your home or business.
The GPs Experience: I'll admit that this was
the aspect of the review that I was looking forward
to the most. The idea of tracking one's location on
a PowerBook is, after all, pretty cool and high tech.
My first venture out with the Earthmate GPs was flawless.
I spent roughly 1 1/2 hours driving around (as a passenger)
eyes fixed on the green arrows that tracked our progress.
As we approached the edge of the map it automatically
repositioned to place us in the center. The Earthmate
informed us not only of our current location but also
direction, elevation and speed of travel. It did lose
our location briefly on two occasions, perhaps as we
traveled too close to power lines. What made the experience
even more impressive was that our test drive took place
during a heavy rainstorm. Our second test was less impressive.
Traveling around the SF Bay Area, the Earthmate receiver
was unable to get a fix on us at all, even when standing
out in the open with a clear view of the sky. Our third
test drive (with a replacement GPs from DeLorme) yielded
mixed results. At first the Earthmate unit tracked our
progress without a hitch but as time passed it fell
farther and farther behind until there was roughly a
5 mile lag between our actual location and our map location.
The Earthmate unit has no power switch nor any indication
of the remaining charge on the 4 AA batteries that power
it. The good news is that Street Atlas supports a variety
of other stand alone GPs devices which may yield better
results. See our list of supported
GPs devices below.
3 satellites are needed for a location fix, 4 are needed
for elevation information.
Conclusions: When it works, the Street Atlas/Earthmate
combination is truly impressive. If this review had
been based entirely on our first test drive we would
have given both products a perfect score. Unfortunately,
our experience was marred by hit and miss performance
from both of the Earthmate units we tested. The Street
Atlas as a stand alone product was simple to use and
sports a variety of look up and routing features that
still make it an attractive proposition. The Mac version
lacks some amenities found on its Windows counterpart,
namely support for DeLorme's Solus
software for the Palm. This software lets you download
street level maps and route directions from Street Atlas
USA 7.0 to your Palm device for even better portable
access. Windows users can also have directions spoken
to them as they drive helping eliminate the need for
a co-pilot.
| Product: Street Atlas USA 6.0 & Earthmate
GPs Receiver |
| Company: DeLorme |
Street Price:
Street Atlas USA 6.0..................... $49.95
Street Atlas plus Earthmate.............$159.95 |
| Hits: Custom door to door route planning,
intuitive interface, GPs tracking very cool when
it works, variety of location lookup options, variety
of route and map print options. |
| Misses: Flaky Earthmate performance, Mac
version lags behind Windows counterpart, basic route
planning services available for free on the web. |
| Street Atlas USA Rating: |
(5 possible) |
| Earthmate GPs Rating: |
(5 possible) |
|
| Requirements:
- PPC (G3/G4 recommended)
- MacOS 8 or newer
- 16MB available RAM
- 50MB hard drive space (minimum)
- CD-ROM Drive |
| Supported GPs
Systems |
| DeLorme Earthmate
DeLorme GpsTripmate
Garmin 30, 45, GPs II, GPs II Plus, GPs III,
GPs III Plus or GPs 12XL
Magellan
Rockwell
Trimble Scoutmaster
A fully compatible NMEA receiver |
|
