Customer Reviews

Microsoft AutoRoute Europe 2006 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The bad news first: This program is not nearly as completely developed as its USA analog. It is, unfortunately, a work in progress. I wish it wasn't so but Microsoft has got a long way to go before AutoRoute Europe achieves the functionality and usefulness of Streets and Trips. First of all there are all sorts of streets and roads indicated that have no names whatsoever and no GPS coordinates. Map details are sadly lacking compared to Streets and Trips. Points of Interest are VERY significantly reduced compared to Streets and Trips. I had a difficult time rerouting trips. With Streets and Trips you can place new way points anywhere there is a road. With AutoRoute this is true of most major roads but not true of many of the unnamed roads.

I got the impression that MS trotted this program out before it was fully implemented. And to tell you the truth, I'm glad they did. Despite its deficiencies it is still a quite good program, though it remains a work in progress. Ordinarily, when traveling through Europe I use Atlas' such as Euro Atlas with a 1:300,000 scale. IMO, this is the ideal scale necessary for European travel. With AutoRoute you can achieve a scale of approximately 1:2000 just as you can with Streets and Trips. The Euro Atlas still remains indispensable because the mapping details and scenic routs are more easily recognizable. AutoRoute is enormously useful, but don't get rid of your excellent road Atlas just yet.

The GPS functionality is essentially the same as that in Streets and Trips though not nearly so well implemented. This program offers a truly affordable GPS guidance system for nearly all consumers while traveling through Europe. If you find yourself traveling to points unknown I cannot imagine a better solution for getting around than this product in conjunction with your notebook computer.

Instantaneous panning, zooming in and zooming out, outstanding routing software, and a plethora of other features makes AutoRoute extremely user friendly.

One problem I had, and hopefully this will help others who might encounter the same problem: Downloading the software into your computer does NOT automatically load the drivers for the GPS locater device! This must be done separately with the Setup disk when you first attach the locater device. Should you fail to put the Setup disk in and let your computer find the driver automatically ON THAT DISK, then your program will not recognize the locater! I wasted quite a bit of time trying to figure out what was wrong. If you don't add the drivers manually your device manager will automatically load drivers that will not be recognized by the program! I had to go into my Device Manager and uninstall the drivers that were added and then manually install the MS drivers for the GPS locater. Not an insurmountable problem, but it does require a bit of experience with computers.

The included driver software turns your USB port into a pseudo-serial communication port enabling the software to recognize the locater (only serial ports are recognized by the software). The software will not recognize the locater UNLESS it is attached to a serial (or in this case pseudo-serial) communications port. So be careful and follow the installation instructions closely. The locater is made by Pharos GPS and if you have any installation problems go to their web site for further instructions.

One other sad deficiency. No Eastern European countries are included with the software!! I realize that this is MS's first effort at this software, but major road in Eastern Europe should have been included. I'm sure future versions will include Eastern Europe as well as improving on the other deficiencies. While this ain't no Streets & Trips it is a great start and I look forward to future versions.

If this program were being compared to Streets & Trips I would give it a 3 star rating, but since it is not a fully implemented program and because of the tremendous aid that it can provide I am going to give it a 4 star. I recommend this product with the caveats above, however be aware of the minor software and driver glitches I've described above. All in all, I think you will be VERY pleased.

I purchased this product to plan my trip to Europe, as well as to use it there along with my notebook and GPS receiver.
I was an user of Streets and Trips (the US/Canada version) of this product and the European version is just as good. I used Autoroute 2006 mostly in Germany and in the Netherlands. It was capable of guiding me all the way from Stuttgart to the hotel door in Amsterdaam. There are some add-ons one can find in the internet that makes a bit easier to zoom in/out or to force a route recalculation (like the S&T, Autoroute does not have automatic recalculation once you missed an exit). The Function keys are programed to perform actions and one can quickly change things without major disruption. The add-on is just a program running in the background, provided free of charge (ARKEYS.EXE). The voice direction is good, but the best feature is the progression bar that gives the driver a sense of how close he/she is to the next direction change. I do recommend this product to anyone that has a GPS "mouse" receiver (or bluetooth), a notebook computer and the need for GPS navigation.

MS did a typically technically masterful job of e-orientation in about a third of its Autoroute 2006 release. Being an enthusiastic (and unlost) user of MS Steets and Trips here in North America, and having lived and driven a long time in Europe, I looked forward to Autoroutes with anticipation.

HOWEVER. On my Autoroute 2006 s/w, I can find lost corners from France to Flensburg, Germany- but one needs to hit the shoeleather or find local Michelin maps when crossing into much of what once was behind the Iron Curtain. Roads, streets, and even terrain blank out to pastel background with lots of named dots to connect by braille.
I think the Soviets must have taken Eastern Europe's roads with them when turning out the lights and departing. OR -is it a last, spiffy effort at Cold War 'dezinformatsy'a'? Surely, roads remain where much Slavic language is heard.

Curiousest of all is the strange nighttime depictment of places (and dots), glowing like an old radar screen seeing, but whose young operators did not understand those incoming Pearl Harbor swarms. I had a nostalgic memory of my long-gone Apple IIC's little CRT's two colors...

Great Try #1, guys. I hope the 2007 revision will allow me to motor in the mind from Krakow to Lvov or from Riga to St. Petersburg, etc., etc., etc, upon other than imagined macadam abounding with synaptic potholes.

From Düsseldorf to Dieppe or from Bochum to Bizerte? Ya got it covered!

Especially, buy this product if it comes bundled with an SUV.

Steve Myers in PA

Bought this product just before going to Europe in June. Don't know how we would have managed without it. We traveled by car to some fairly out of the way places, and used the software on our laptop with our GPS to find our way. Also used it to navigate on foot in cities, and to find hotels. There are some areas that have limited street information, which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5, but overall a great product. One suggestion - set your route options so that the system chooses main roads and limited access roads for you unless you don't mind traveling on some small winding roads with room for only one car. Breathtaking scenery, but a little worrisome when the road turns into a dirt path. If you are going to Europe - buy this product.

We just returned from a trip to France where we had a rental car for 10 days and covered about 2000km.

We used this software on a laptop with an earthmate USB GPS receiver ( you will need the driver from the DeLorme site to make it appear as a serial device to make it work with this software )

The driving directions were very bad, for example it would have you on an autoroute for 60 miles, and the next direction would be "at exit so-and-so continue on the A61" which is the road you are already on. A bit confusing.

It also gave us incorrect directions at several roundabouts, saying "Take the 3 exit off of the roundabout" and it should have been the 2nd exit or the 4th, and you don't know this until you are off course, then you need to turn around or reroute from the current position.

Also it would tell you that the next roundabut was 17 miles away and to take the 2nd exit, but there were 5 roudabouts in between that weren't mentioned, in these cases you were just treating the roundabouts as intersections and going through them, but that should be included in the driving directions.

Also it refers to all routes by number D376, E9 and so on, unfortuntely the normal map based navigation in France is done by knowing the City or "direction" you want, with a map it's easy to determine this. Almost without exception at roundabouts the route numbers ( except autoroutes ) are not given. This combined with it being confused about exits on the roundabouts, makes it very hard to depend on.

Another problem we had was in the autoroutes around Toulouse, it would not give correct ( or at least useful ) information about which direction to go. there was one point where the autoroute split into 2, and you had to know before hitting toll booth ( 2 sets of booths, about 20 booths total, one set was the right one, but it wasn't clear if it was the left or the right set ) and we made a wrong turn, rerouted, was given a similar situation, which we guessed wrong again on, did this 3 times, thinking it would get better. We switched to looking at a AAA map to determine the City we wanted to go toward and that worked fine. Didn't make us miss our flight, but if we hadn't figured extra time it could have.

The interface is clumsy and hard to figure out, I was talking my wife through things at 6:00am to catch a flight, in the dark, on an autoroute and it was not as simple as it should be.

I would go Tom-Tom next time, but that is much more expensive, for less money a good detailed Michelin guide served us very well on previous trips and wished for it many times during the trip.

All things considered, I would not suggest it, it did route OK, but the directions were not very good.

Other than determining approximate travel time and general routes between locations ( which you can do on line ) I would stay away from it.

The program is nearly the same as Streets and Trips for the US. It's generally good but does not include many of the streets in towns in Ireland where I used it. Excellent for going town to town but real deficiencies in the towns when looking for specific addresses.

AutoRoute Europe 2006 is a very good, GPS based routing software for the laptop. It is a fraction of the price of equivalent routing software for Europe. The laptop version does everything one would expect ranging from address searches, GPS location and routing from point A to point B. It is a very good product.

However, Microsoft continues to not understand the power in modern PDAs. The worst applications on my PDA are all from Microsoft and this one joins the group. Whereas the laptop version understands "Europe" as a whole, the PDA version can only "see" a city at a time -- and only those cities you individually download. The PDA version has no routing capability. You can search to locations by address and find them on the map and you can use a GPS to locate where you are, but it will not "route" and give directions on how to get there. The data and resolution on the PDA version is very limited.

If you are buying this product for your laptop, then I highly recommend it. For your PDA, this is mostly just a set of city maps with the ability of the GPS to tell you where you are. This is no where near the capability of other GPS routing packages. They cost significantly more, but they also do a LOT more!

I rode shotgun with a business partner holding his laptop while he drove from Italy to Austria. Boss said plane ticket is $2000 cheaper if flying to an airport 346 km away. I loved this thing so much, I purchased it for my first solo trip to Europe. So, after some fiddling around here in the states with the GPS sensor (Ill explain later), this thing does the following.

1) Plan a trip, and it has all maps in many European Union countries, and good coverage in Italy and Austria. I haven't tested it in other countries, but France, Spain, Germany etc. all look good. If you cross into Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, etc. you will appear to have no roads, but you can still draw GPS trails and tell direction.

2) After clicking "route planner", you plug in "marco polo airport, italy" and "villach, austria" in the field.

3) Click on "get directions. This thing is way smarter than mapquest, and can handle your preference of high speed toll roads and arterial highways.

4) It draws a green line, which is your route. Your car is shown as a directional arrow, ON THE GREEN LINE! If the red arrow happens to fall off the green line, you turn back on! simple? You bet.

5) It will talk to you if you like that sort of thing, but for a guy who was not born with ANY sense of direction and a bad memory, this thing makes ME the expert in all situations. I can go into someones back yard, and show them a shortcut home! In the states, I understand the roads on here are DRIVEN, making it accurate.

THe screen is HUGE (laptop), and I can see it while I am driving. I can bring it in to work, bring it into the hotel, and plan a trip. Try that with the self contained one.

Now for the limitations.

THe GPS sensor some times takes some fooling around. Particularly when you hibernate, and come back from hibernation on the PC, it may take a scan for the GPS sensor, and in some cases unplug the USB sensor. I have rebooted one time.

As with ALL GPS sensors, if the buildings are tall, or there are dense boulevard trees, or if you are driving thrugh the alps through tunnels, the GPS sensor will lose contact, and reappear when you see a satellite. There are lots of satellites, but sometimes I think the sensor can only see one, or two, and If I remember right, I think you need 2 to correctly determine position, and 3 to correctly determine position and altitude?

Thats it. I love this thing. The 2006 Version will load on Pocket PC, and I hear all you need is a CF, or SD, or BLuetooth GPS sensor, then you can walk around Venice and know where you are going, which is a great test.

Id give it a 4.5, because I would love the GPS sensor to be more robust, but it could be Windblows XP causing problem.

I love this thing.

AutoRoute Europe has the same functionality, look, and feel as Microsoft Streets and Trips which I have used with good results for several years. AutoRoute also works with the GPS sensor I purchsed previously with Streets and Trips. I have already used AutoRoute to plan some of our summer European vacation and it works exactly as expected. The fact that AutoRoute and Streets and Trips use the same icon leads to a little confusion on the tool bar, but maps that are saved from the respective programs do open the proper program when they are double-clicked. The only thing that would be better would be for AutoRoute Europe and Streets and Trips to be seemlessly integrated into a single product.

Its a good start, but its not Garmin. I bought this for a Dell X30 with a GPS Module, but I sold the Dell and the software and bought a Garmin IQue M3 and a SD card for Italy and Greece. Wow! What a vacation..... Could Not have done it without the Garmin.