Review by Michael Meredith

I know, you can get directions for free to get from point A to point B from any number of web sites. But Streets and Trips 2011 will take that multi-stop road trip that you want to take (I’m thinking the North Central US with stops at the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Custer Battlefield and more) and plan the route for you to be as direct (as in fuel saving) or as picturesque (can you say native prairies?) as you want. And as you would expect, the restaurant and hotel database has been fully updated… a must given the effects of the economy for the past 6 years or so.

It’s GPS ready, so you can just interface it with your Garmin or other GPS by exporting your route as a GPX file (okay, it won’t talk to my 8 year old Prius GPS, but the Microsoft people can’t create an interface for a system that wasn’t designed to be interfaced).

And with no internet connection required, you can load the itinerary on your computer, tablet or perhaps even your smartphone (haven’t tried that yet so I’ll differ to the Tech Support people for that) and you’re off to the guided races.