Customer Reviews

DeLorme Earthmate GPS LT-20 2008 U.S.A./Canada Map DVD-ROM (Windows)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have this product, and Amazon is wrong in its description.

I have tried to contact Amazon but they will not listen.

THIS product does NOT come with Street Atlas USA 2008 PLUS; it comes with Street Atlas 2008. The PLUS software has a database of 150 million phone listings (imagine drive through Bethesda MD and your realize you have lost your contacts and need an eye doctor. PLUS software will help you find one with a phone number.)

The software that comes with this product does not have 150 million phone listings.

The software that comes with the more expensive Earthmate GPS BT-20 2008 IS Street Atlas USA 2008 PLUS with the 150 million phone listings.

(Isn't it sad we have to correct Amazon product desciptions by writing a review instead of by contacting someone by email?)

The Earthmate GPS LT-20 comes with USA Street Atlas 2008. The hardware is plug-and-play and works as expected. Cold start-up time is appr. 2 minutes.
Together with the Street Atlas I could recently test the bundle in various major cities, for long distance navigation and down to forest service roads. I was travelling in the greater Boston area and from Seattle to Los Angeles with a stop in San Francisco and then east to Grand Canyon National Park, Page, AR and Las Vegas. The details and functionalities of the software are overwhelming and it took me a few days to figure it out. Route planning works great and is of a big help when planning a trip. Navigation and route optimization worked fine in 90% of all situations, but: Do not change your mind while driving. To get the navigation back on track after leaving a proposed route it sometimes takes minutes or needs a total restart of the routing process. Occasionly the routing algorythm tends to panic although the GPS signal is perfect and has a 3D-fix. In such a situation you find yourself all over sudden besides the road and Street Atlas sends you in loops where there are no roads at all. I had the impression that this effect is a bug. It is reproducable and it seems to be limited to certain geographical areas (Downtown Boston, region north of San Francisco, Grand Canyon National Park, some parts of LA). After missing for example a right turn in a downtown area I did not get an alternative proposal to the next milestone (stop, via or finish point) but instructions on how to return to the originally missed right turn. This is not really helpful.
The optical representation of roads in their hierachy and quality needs to be improved. In National Parks I missed a differentiation between paved and unpaved roads. In cities it's sometimes hardly visible how reality relates to the screen representation.
All in all Earthmate GPS Lt-20 in combination with Street Atlas 2008 was a great help with some limitations.

I bought this unit in anticipation of using it with my laptop on a long road trip. The software loaded fine and worked with the GPS receiver included with it. While using it a few times, however, I've found some serious limitations. First, the user interface is completely unique and requires some getting used to - it's not really bad but I'm the only one in my family that's taken the time to figure it out. Second, the points-of-interest (POIs), like gas stations, restaurants, etc., are very sparse and out-of-date. Third, and perhaps most disturbing, is that the GPS receiver loses lock on the GPS satellite signals in overcast skies. This might not matter if you're cruising along on a highway, but not when your trying to find your next turn. For these reasons, I recommend looking elsewhere for a laptop-based GPS unit.

We purchased the Delorme Earthmate GPS, along with the "Street Atlas" for a long road trip a week ago. The product, with its voice instructions, worked fairly well.

So far, our main observation is that it did not distinguish between, let's say, exit "20-A" and exit "20-B". It instructs you only to make a turn at exit 20.

However, after traveling for about a minute or two in the wrong direction, it will recalculate your route and point you in the correct direction.

Consequently, as you have no doubt discerned with the use of most other equipment/software, good judgment and common-sense is required to use it effectively.

See also:
Delorme Earthmate GPS LT-20 with Street Atlas 2007

I have all 50 of the DeLorme State map books. They have good topo features and decent references to parks, points of interest, etc. When DeLorme put the maps on a disk with a GPS connection I thought navigating would be a breeze. I cannot tell you how much time I have wasted plotting routes on this software. I used it on a 22,000 mile road trip/photo shoot in 2005. I work in out-of-the-way areas. The database maps (both street and topo)have no detail in national or state parks. They generally do not even show where the visitor centers are located.They do not show the points of interest in the parks. They are just big green blobs on the screen with a line running through showing the basic road that transverses the park land. The maps have absolutely no topo features like the books. That is another software subscription. The Topo map program (which I also bought for the 2005 trip) did not have the trip planning functionality that the road atlas program has and does not provide worthwhile topo features in the public lands. The topo program is almost amatureish in its renderings and if you want to use the split map and see an elevated view, you get very little useful information for planning. Certainly, with national lands and the trails in them being absent from the data bases of both the street and topo products, it offers minimal help to the hiker.
Notwithstanding my dissatisfaction with the 2005 street and topo products, before I embarked on the current journey (I have been on the road 2 1/2 months as I write), I bought the 2008 street map disc (it is not an upgrade, you buy new each time). As with the 2005 version, the GPS periodically tells me that I am off route, as the cursor shows me tracking across farm fields, etc., maybe where the road used to go years ago. Frustrated by all of this, I went back to my Garmin Quest. It also leaves a lot to be desired but it is more reliable. If you get the DeLorme gps, spend at least a day learning the basic functions. There is little intuitive about its operation. Spend another day in your computer setting your waypoints (roads, towns, addresses, etc.)that you may be traveling the next few weeks and run a couple tests to see how well the program maps your route. I often have to go into the route and force the most direct route by adding via/waypoints along the way that simply looking at the map makes clear. If you try to do this while traveling, you will spend more time on your computer than driving. I am on a 6 month journey right now and have simply removed the DeLorme programs from my computer and only rely on the Garmin to get me through or around metropolitan areas. Otherwise the paper DeLorme state atlases and basic state maps guide me. Finally, don't rely on the program to have up to date comprehensive info on lodging, points of interest, etc. All have some, but in the last month none of the programs have guided me to one location where I ended up spending the night. For every one RV park that showed up from the data base, I saw one or two more in the same area that were better. And if you have an "air card" for your laptop, you can use the Google maps and get traffic info along the way.

I bought this because it was the cheapest GPS unit for a laptop that I could find. First off let me talk about the interface. Yes it is hard to learn how to use it, but once you do it is very efficient and quick. The GPS unit works very well once it is locked onto the satellites.

However there are a few problems. The biggest is the route feature. If the turn is sooner than the route said it should have been, the program thinks you have made a wrong turn and will take a while to catch up to where you now are. The other problem is at night the screen is very bright even if I turn down the brightness all the way. I think they should have added a night mode like Streets and Trips does

My wife and I used EarthMate GPS 2008 on a long roadtrip this summer, and we enjoyed it greatly. We had a paper map in the car, and I confess we DID refer to it when we were making what I would call "macro" decisions on where we were headed, i.e. what the day's destination might be. But once we made that decision, we programmed it into this software and let it decide on the route. It was nice knowing how far we had to drive, and how long it would take us. And it warned us early a couple times when we headed out of unfamiliar towns on the wrong road.

It's not perfect, though. A number of maps are FAR from current--try 5 years in some cases. And in one instance, we would have had to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. I wouldn't recommend buying any of the photo overlays DeLorme offers, as they're even further out of date than some of the maps. Other than those items, though, this is a well-thought-out program, and the cheaper pricing on the 2008 version makes it an easy choice for a laptop owner.

Can't beat the price, the product seems to be top notch as far as laptop plug-ins go. However, the learning curve as to how to use the unit as well as navigation within the program is severe....or perhaps it's just me!

The Delorme Earthmate GPS LT20 is an excellent GPS to use with a laptop computer. The user will need to take time to learn the software to use it properly. Works great and the voice prompts are accurate in providing directions to the driver. I put my laptop on the floor and the voice tells me where to turn.

There are a lot of great features in this GPS.........but it either isn't up to date, or the satellites and my GPs and car are 'out of phase'....the
tracking arrows seem to run alongside a road, not on top of it and then the recalculate notice starts...but I like the 3 different zoom maps all showing at the same time. Just make sure you have a back up checking source when using this system, and take the time to learn it to save yourself trouble on the road.