Review by New England Yankee

I had very high hopes for this software, as I wanted to take advantage of it for real estate purposes. Since I am also new to the product, I was also curious about the interface, in that I didn’t have any expectations based on previous versions, unlike others that have posted here.

Suffice it to say that any hopes I had were destroyed almost instantly. This is one of the worst user interfaces I’ve seen in quite a while, certainly in a major product from a major publisher (and I’m a software development exec). Virtually everything is non-standard and few things work as expected: clicks and double clicks, right/left button functionality, drag & drop, highlighting & selecting, map navigation, context menus, zooming, export & import, etc. The iconography is just awful, awful - reminiscent of the software of a decade or more ago. I also found the functionality outside of routing and route planning (both of which are excellent) to be more restrictive than hoped, with particular disappointment in the territory functionality, territory definitions being too limited for my uses. Finally, the map graphics themselves just don’t make the grade. While readable, they don’t display any real quality until quite closely zoomed, looking quite sketchy to that point.

The high point of the software is the routing functionality, as mentioned above. It is powerful, flexible, and has many options I have not seen elsewhere, and which are far beyond anything available in Google Maps, Mapquest, or other web-based mapping software. If this is your primary interest or need, this software is for you, even with the issues mentioned above.

Still, had I to break it down, I’d give MapPoint 2009 5 stars for routing, 4 for Microsoft software integration (Outlook, Excel, Access, etc.), and 1 for everything else. Couple that with its rather steep price and I really can’t give it more than 2 stars overall. Very disappointing.