Customer Reviews

Street Atlas USA 2004 Handheld

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I purchased DeLorme's Street Atlas 2004 Handheld USA for my Sony Clie (NR70V Hi-Res) as I travel extensively cross-country for my job. I was interested in a Palm OS Street navigation software that could give me point-to-point turn-by-turn driving instructions while on the road.

Overall, I found this GPS solution to be "Adequate," but needing a bit more development before it is ready for the road-warrior. Here are the pros and cons that I found while using the software:

Cons: User interface to create and download maps to the Palm is not intuitive and does not follow standards. When I finally figured out how to create a map of my surrounding city and suburbs and get it on my Clie, I was suprised to see that the map file size was 3MB in size. I'm wondering if a cross-country map would even fit on my handheld! The "Find" street/place feature on the Palm does not seem to work right - it is slow and it finds addresses that have nothing to do with what was searched. Geolocating to a found address is also slow taking 2 minutes to locate and position to an address. Creating a point-to-point driving route on the Palm takes almost 10 minutes for a cross-town 10 mile trip (probably not useable to create cross-country routes on the Palm). Product does not support Sony's Hi-Res screen and text/buttons are "choppy." Maps while driving do not show most street names - 1 or 2 streets are shown with names if your lucky. There is no Zoom option on the screen - you have to push the up/down arrow to zoom. In Sony's NR70V model these buttons are not accessible while cradled. Screen Redraws are slow when moving from one grid to another. Next turn instructions are slow to display after your previous turn (5-8 seconds) - this will be a problem if you have turns back-to-back on your route.

Pros: GPS tracking of your vehicle along the map is accurate. Routes can be created on your computer and downloaded to the Palm. DeLorme will most likely release updated versions (free upgrades, I hope!)

Note: Also purchase an accessory cable that charges your Palm and powers the Earthmate GPS device - they run around $50 (Do a search on "Earthmate Data Cable with Auto Charger" to find this item on the internet.

Bought this and was hoping that it would live up to it's name, a Street Atlas to be used on a handheld. Don't believe it. It's just a map viewer.

When I'm out driving and I need to find an address, I need a handheld app that will let me search for it. This won't. That functionality is only on the desktop half of the software, when I'm sitting at home. If I could foresee in advance all the addresses I would need to use when I'm away from home, I could search and save maps and routes in advance. Then sync them with the handheld, and then I could use them. Who uses map software like that?

The worse thing about this lack of functionality is how they hide that from you. It's not clear in the documentation available BEFORE you buy it. Worst of all, it's not really available in the documentation AFTER you buy it. You have to wrestle through a very poorly designed user interface to try to figure out what the software does and doesn't do. Not only is it not functional for me, it took me over an hour of my time and all that money to find that out.

Save your money. If you need a true handheld street atlas, keep looking.

DeLorme makes great looking maps for the PC, but the user interface is horrible. All I've ever used it for is to hook up a GPS to my laptop and let it run. Trying to enter a route or "find" an address just drives you nuts.

Street Atlas USA 2004 Handheld version is no exception, with the additional complication of having to figure out how to save a map so it can be downloaded to your PDA. You first have to save it to your PC, then separately install it using the Palm installer (probably similar for the Pocket PC). There is an extensive set of instructions for how to do this on their web site, and the fact you'll need them is a pretty good indication of the inscruitible interface. Unfortunately, lots of other instructions are needed and not obviously available. Microsoft Streets & Trips is far easier to use on the PC, but will only download maps to Pocket PCs, not Palms.

Once you get a Delmore map on your PDA, it's pretty, but still pretty useless. The resolution is zoomed way out, so you see lots of streets but no street names. Most incredibly, there is no way to zoom the map!, an unacceptable limitation. To figure out where you are, you have to tap various streets or use the find function. Tapping produces a tiny box (unreadable while driving) which spawns a pop-up display of points of interest within the box. Great, but where's the street I'm trying to find?

The find function does a pretty good job of finding a point of interest, although you won't find "hotels", you need to search for "accomodations". But try to find a street address and the program first searches your PDA's entire address book, coming up with the most obscure hits, then begins ticking off the street, and FINALLY the actual address you requested. You can add a waypoint, which will show up in 2 point type, or tap "GOTO" to produce a somewhat higher resolution map that even shows some major street names. Of course, you still cannot zoom in to get more detail.

The product may work with DeLorme's PDA-dedicated GPS, but I could never get it to connect with my EMTAC BlueTooth GPS unit, which works just fine with Mapopolis.

All in all the product produces a much prettier map than Mapopolis, but Mapopolis has a much more streamlined interface (you just insert the disk and click the state, then county(ies), you want to download). Mapopolis doesn't have all the swell points of interest, but once on the PDA, Mapopolis maps are actually useful for orientation and finding your way, which DeLorme's are not. Maybe they'll improve the 2005 version; start with the ability to zoom, for heaven's sake! For now, a good paper map is a better investment.

Most of the other reviewers comments are pretty accurate, However, there is a way to zoom, at least on my Palm m515. It's not intuitive, in fact I only found out after bothering to read thru the online Help text, but you zoom in and out using the Palm's UP and DOWN buttons. At higher resolutions street names do appear on-screen.

I do agree that the user interface could be more intuitive, and that comment applies to both the desktop and palmtop sides of the program. That said, this software certainly beats completely useless programs such as Rand McNally's Street Finder, which came as free software with my Navman GPS unit, and is worth every penny I paid for it.

It works like no other program you have ever used. Get ready to re-learn even something as simple as opening and saving a file. The program is slow. The maps lack detail until you are zoomed in nearly all the way. Printing is not as good as SA7. All in all it is a big step backwards.

Don't Bother.

I unfortunately purchased the Delorme USA 2004 Handheld Street Atlas. I can't believe Delorme would release such a third rate product.

What is good. The maps are ok, some pretty good POI, but I found them to not be placed correctly on the maps, in some cases up to a mile off.

What is bad. Quite a bit. The maps are slow to load, you can't re-calculate a route if you take a wrong turn (which makes the program pretty much completely worthless), Locations can't be saved on the PDA, so you need to re-type them every time you want to make a route, the app does not take advantage of the Clie long screen. Street level detail is lacking when zoomed in at the lowest level - simple things like street names. When traveling, the cursor that indicates your location is usually off - this once again depends on finding the correct zoom level.

Door to Door directions is a bit misleading if you ask me. Searching is horrendous. It does not allow for saved searches, so once again, you need to type stuff over again and again.

I hope the 30 day guarantee still applies. I wish I read these reviews before I bought this.

I have the 2005 version. It is worthless. It will not allow you to route from current GPS position to a point. And...when you try to map a shortest or quickest route, the system freezes after up to 5 minutes of "thinking" the computation. The software is only effective at routing for very short routes. Anything I tried over 10 miles would take at least 5 minutes to compute. And I'm using a newer HP Ipaq with plenty of memory. This software stinks. If you buy a GPS go with some other software.

This is the second mapping software I bought. The first one is Pharos GPS for pocket pc, it was a waste of money, very hard to use and the map disappears on its own. This one is not much better either. I'm returning it.

I have used many Delorme products, (Map-n-Go, Street Atlas, and now Handheld). The above comments about the interface are correct. You have to sync Maps, then Routes. The onboard "compute route" takes FOREVER on my M125, but I'm glad it's available. Beats Rand-McNally, you have to connect to the Net to compute a route with them. SW will give you Lat/Long and speed. If you have a paper map and are lost this is VERY usefull. With a GPS attachment this is very nice SW.

I bought the software to calculate mileages between two points. I operate a trucking business and drive myself. I want to calculate the distance say, between Raleigh, NC and Philadelphia, PA. I have a 1 gig compact flash card I bought to store the map data on. It was hopeless to even think about loading the east coast onto the memory card. I sat there for an hour highlighting the entire east coast(selecting blocks). I had 21,000 blocks selected. The desktop worked all night trying to save this file. I never did get it to work. DeLorme acts like this software is so versatile. The object of using a Handheld computer for mapping is to store mapping info and perform useful functions in the field as they may arise. This software is for someone who would rather save a small map on a pda rather than use the paper one they have or print one and take it along. I am also returning this software. It is a joke and a real dissapointment. I have a few other quotes but they would be inappropriate to post here. I hate to even rate it with one star. -5 stars would be more like it.