Review by Michelle Rayburn

When I had the opportunity to review this software, I jumped at the chance. I travel a lot for speaking (driving myself), and my GPS maps are out of date. This promised the possibility of being able to add files to the GPS, plus some other features that looked promising. However, as I’ve played around with it, I’m a little disappointed with the results. I’ll start with the positives though. I should note, this is a new install, not an upgrade from a previous version.

What I liked: I installed this on my Windows 7 computer without hitches. This software communicates with the internet to give up to date reports of construction. This is something that most online free programs and normal GPS don’t do. It’s easy to customize a route, add stops, drag the route to a different road and set up a whole itinerary. The database recognized most locations by description and filled in the address, which was helpful. I liked the ability to calculate gas cost based on the MPG of my vehicle and the average cost of gas. A big benefit is the ability to plan a trip and come back to the file to make changes as the planning continues. Using a free online program doesn’t carry this benefit. Also, it works on a laptop when you don’t have Wifi, since it’s installed on the computer. Big bonus if you’re in the car trying to modify your route and you have your computer along.

What I didn’t like: While the product does not promise to work with all GPS, it didn’t work with my Garmin. I have the ability to add GPX files, but they wouldn’t open on the machine. The program did not recognize my Garmin when it was plugged in, and the manually transferred files didn’t work. Also, the software has a button to click to transfer the map to a cell phone. This didn’t work for me either, since I’d have to have Microsoft Outlook for this to work. Seems that if I’m running and Microsoft computer with the latest Windows and Windows Live Mail, this ought to work. But it’s set up to work only with the cadillac of e-mail programs. When I tried printing, sometimes just the map would print. There wasn’t an option that I could find to fix this. When I hit print, it just went to the printer with no in between step where I could choose settings. Some landmarks that I would expect to be in the maps aren’t. For example, I searched for a county park near me and the name of the park, nor the lake showed anything.

All in all, I don’t think I’d purchase this in the future. Although it has some good features, I can get most of what I got from it on Google maps or Mapquest for free. If the uploading to my GPS and the sending to my cell phone would work, I’d reconsider my opinion of the program. I guess I just expected a little more from it.