Delorme Street Atlas USA Deluxe 2001 and Laptop GPS receiver (serial port)

By Terry Currier

I last reviewed and liked the Delorme map version 6.0 two years ago, so I looked forward to reviewing their latest.

Installation

It comes on two CD set, one for installation and one is the map data. Minimum  installation uses about 100Mb of disk space, for that it will not load points of interest and other things. The typical install is 380Mb, and if you want to use voice navigation it takes 400Mb. They recommend 530Mb, Windows® 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, or Windows NT® 4.0 with service pack 4 or later. They want 48Mb of RAM, but really you should have 64Mb (minimum) for Windows anyway. For the voice you will need sound card, microphone, speakers, and Pentium II 233Mhz or faster processor. In the past version you could load onto your hard drive sections of map data so you would not always need the CD ROM in the drive. I could have installed by state, or even by county area. Now it will only let you install all of the data. Even though it takes about 590Mb, its worth it in my opinion.

Interface

DeLorme includes a tutorial to help you learn it quickly. It is easy to use on its own, with a good clean appearance. Click on a toolbar button and the setup below changes to what you need. Good use of height adjustment arrows to give you more map area when you want it. One place it stepped down however is street information. It used to be if you passed the crosshair (cursor in the program) it would display the street name and even the address. Now to get the address or street name if not displayed you have to right click and then chose info. It then displays the street name and numbering of the spot you clicked on and the length of the street (a little bonus.) I've always liked the way it comes back to the last map you were looking at. Now it ask you if you want to save the last viewed map to be the first to come up, which is the best choice. The program when loading looks at the most recent saved map to load. Zoom capabilities are outstanding. Zoom in/out up to 9 steps, and still magnify up to 200%.

Appearance

In their version 6.0 from two years ago the street names were within the street lines themselves which made it easy to read and reference. Now the names are beside the streets. Its in a larger font so its easier to read, but you don’t have the as many street names on the screen. You can not change any of the toolbar or sidebar setup. I personally have no need for the Longitude and Latitude constantly being displayed. I'm sure some people would like to see street addresses, or business information in the right side panel all the time, rather than the overview map. With the deluxe version you can bring up the drawing tools and easily add a new street. Save it, or print it out just like it came with the program. You can go online to get updated road construction, events, and weather by clicking on the net button. You can have it present the map in any direction, not just North on top.

Find (Search)

In the past their search capabilities left me wanting. If I had it open on Anaheim and I tried to search for an address in Florida it would not find it. You had to have it within the open view for it to find it. If you had the full address including Zip Code it could, but you don’t always have that. In this version they have fixed it so I can search from anywhere and it finds it. Search is easy with a quick find box you just type in the address. It will take you right there and in a box below display the street address and other choices below. For example 800 Main street, Orange, CA takes you there and in the box it will list 1000, 2000, 3000 section of Main street. That way you can quickly switch to another section if what you wanted was not there. You can also search by a business name, if its in the points of interest. For example look up Brea Mall and it finds it. It saves a record of your searches, so you can easily scroll back to one you did in the past.

Marking or pushpins

It comes with a few types of markers for you to flag a location. The drawing tools will also let you add notes. You can not however import an address list and have it mark those off. The have another mapping program that will do that.

Panning

Left click anywhere on the map and it will center on that spot. You can also move the cursor to the side of the map and a arrow appear. You can then move in the direction you are pointed. It has an overview map of the area you are looking at. This way you can be zoomed in looking at where you live in Costa Mesa and quickly click over Irvine. Click on the center piece of the global map and it takes you back to where you last looked at. 

Print

For displaying on the monitor they use a tan background. Which looks great, easy on the eyes and all that. For printing however I wish they would make the background white not use the tan like they do on the display. This takes longer to print out, uses more ink, and its especially bad on a laser printer. A gray background with white lines outlined by black  and the street names,  is what it looks like. Still the printout do look good, especially in color. You can even have it print poster size  maps. Choose to have it print 2x2 and you get it blown up to a four sheet size, what was on only one. The program divides it up into sections and prints each. You then cut and paste the sheets together. You may also choose 3x3 size. There is no print preview feature.

Routing

Could not be much easier. Click on the Route button, type in starting and ending addresses, and tell it to calculate. You can put in interim stops, change a route by telling it to go via another way and it redoes the route for you. You can also right click on the map and tell it to create or end a route at that spot. It will give you the distant, time, an a estimated place for needing fuel (planned rest stop.)

Business

It comes with over 6.2 million miles of routable roads and over four million points of interest. The points of interest being ATMs, gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and more. Right click on a POI and it will give you the type of business it is, phone number, the city, and zip code. You can personalize the selection of POIs. Choose from four categories of Business, Education, Government, and  Religious. From there break it down even further. Business is very extensive. You can have it look for lodging, food, heath, transportation, and more. Restaurants being my favorite things to see. There are 16 choices of restaurants types. You can have it look for American, to Italian, or from Mexican to Thai.

Extras

It works with GPS units giving directional displays with oversized turn arrows. It works with voice commands. You know what was best about this? It actually worked. Granted it only does a limited number of commands, but I have seen others that would not work on fewer commands. If you have a Palm OS, or Windows CE unit you can upload maps to them. For the Palm OS unit you need Solus Basic which you can download for free. It  gives users the ability to upload single maps and route directions to a Palm OS handheld.  Users can go to the DeLorme Web site to access Solus MapMaker®, (http://solus.delorme.com), where they can create routes, zoom in and out, and search by placename, or street and then download a single map with Route Directions.