Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 W/GPS

Does S&T have an import function?

If so, I imagine it could handle this data pretty easily. The files are in CSV format. Excel can even read the smaller ones.

Grab a file, give it a try, and let us know how it works. Start with a smaller file like Beaches or Waterfalls.

If you run into problems, send me a note and I might be able to make a format adjustment for you.

JM

I did a little research about your new gps set up and it looks pretty cool. I have a 15.4" widescreen on my laptop but I think it would be tough to use in my full size truck. At $109.00 from Amazon it's a real bargain and if you have an aircard you get even better features. I look forward to your review on how it works. The review I read said the gps reciever is very good even in cities with tall bldgs.

Good Luck,
Ray

"Exploring New Worlds One POI at a time"

I tried the waterfalls as you suggested, and they all ended up in Antarctica! Probably my fault. S&T's has a data wizard, and they do take csv files, so I will tweak a bit and see what comes up.

"Exploring New Worlds One POI at a time"

Ray, I bought mine at CostCo for $99+tax, so the price is pretty consistant. My Co-Pilot (Debbie) does the navigating, and the refresh rate is fantastic. We had S&T 2004, and used it to print out maps of destinations like AAA's TripTiks, but this version makes that unnecessary, as we have it installed in the laptop. Soon we are going on a long drive to the "Lost Coast" of Northern California which will take us through Petrolia. Pretty remote country. I will report on the signal strength and mapping quality when we get back. The laptop has WiFi, so I will also be looking for hotspots along the way to hook up to. May be able to report as we go.

Garmin CSV files have longitude first followed by latitude. It sounds like the order may have been mismatched during your import test.

You might try again, but this time look for a setting in the import process that lets you adjust the order of the data fields. The field order is 1) longitude, 2) latitude, 3) location name.

JM

Knowing longitude went first made all the difference. Now the importer on S&T worked perfectly with the data. I'm going to start hunting for more CSV files now! This program is awesome!

O.K., I'm back from my Oregon-Northern California trip. Weather was great, scenery too, yada,yada,yada. Now to the important stuff; Review of the S&T w/GPS: First let me say that this program is NOT for those who want hand-held portability, despite what MS says about using it with your PDA. I installed this software on my Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook with a 15" screen (weight 8 POUNDS!) Hardly portable! The software was in the form of a DVD, and was painless to install.
The hardware consisted of the latest generation GPS tracker 2"X 2" square, and a 5' USB cord that plugs into the laptop. You are supposed to attach the hardware to your dash top with an included suction cup (more on that in PROS & CONS.) The hardware is powered by the PC.
As I had a co-pilot for the trip, ease of use and a short learning curve were paramount. I let my wife fiddle with different aspects of the program while we were en-route.
Let me say that MS has done themselves right on this unit. It performed flawlessly, at one point we were tracking EIGHT satellites at once! The unit refresh rate was phenomenal, giving us our speed, direction of travel, and timely oral instructions as to where to turn. Options include several modes: silent or oral prompts, day or night screen views, optional POI's along the route (configurable to as wide an area on either side of your route as you want). MS included over 7,000,000 POI's with the software, and if you have your own set of data, not to worry; It has a data import feature that is very configurable to your co-ordinates. Up to date traffic road construction areas were pointed out along the route, as were alternate routes. Point-by-point directions, including time, gas used, and a countdown to destination were available. Overall, a pleasure to use and very helpful finding obscure places. (We used it to find covered bridges in Oregon that were off the beaten path)

Pros: Easy to install, quick learning curve, very configurable, price:$99 at CostCo, $109 on Amazon w/free shipping.

Cons: NOT PORTABLE (you don't want to use this to find Caches); Suction cup would not stick to vinyl dash; When in audible directions helper mode, POI's couldn't be included (answer: have your POI's in the trip directions as scheduled stops before you go audible)

Conclusions: Not for lone drivers, but if you want the versatility of a laptop, this is great! At every place we stopped (mark that Motels) we had Wi-Fi access, and the ability to research local attractions. Weather forecasts and road cameras were available for our use, too. Truckers ought to love this, and anyone with an RV, or co-pilot. I highly recommend MS Streets and Trips 2007 W/GPS as an inexpensive alternative (if you already have a laptop) to much smaller dashboard units.

Thanx for the informative well written review! Sounds like a decent system as long as one has a navigator and room for a laptop.

Ray

Wow Looks like this will be Awesome, I can't wait to try it out, hmmm, have laptop will travel.
DizzyFox

I use DeLorme's Street Atlas, which with it's voice recognition software doesn't require any kind of copilot to ride along with you. It's got similar turn by turn voice guidance as the handheld units, but with many more options than what you can stuff in a handheld unit.

I have 45 field engineers working for me and almost all of them prefer Street Atlas over S&T, the main reason being that in SA you can import and export in so many different formats. I have S&T from 2006 and it wouldn't allow simple exporting in csv, and that used to drive me batty.

Well I found something really neat tonight (or rather this morning) about S&T that I didn't know. You can take the S&T push pins and import them into GPS Utility, then it in turn can save them out to Garmin CSV, to GPX, to KML, to just about anything.

So, if you are placing pushpins that you want to convert to POI's, get the GPS Utility program, it can do a lot with those files.

I use 07 S&T all the time by myself!

I sit it in the passenger seat. I put the destination before I leave of course, which you should do with any GPS..

the only thing is that it does't do auto recalculation..
so to compensate, I just leave the mouse pointer hoverng over the recalculate button. If i happen to miss a turn
just reach over without lookng and tap the left mouse button or double tap the touchpad.. and it recalculates.

so you definitely should get familiar with the program before usng it first time i think.

But is there a way to get speed camera POI warnings with it?

It's way more powerful than a dashmount gps but the trade
off is convienent portability, but it's still not bad,
because you also get laptop features

I may try SA.

Oh i've tried tomtom6 and i guidance 3.0.

S&T blows them away in power.. but it's apples and oranges.

i guidance is much better than tomtom.

I don't think S&T has a pda version?

i guidace includes laptop and pda softare in one bundle, so that's good too. although i havn't tried iguidance on my laptop yet.

using IGuidance on the pda is pretty decent.

I also have a garmin c530. It's nice for quick route finding and recalculation, and adding pio easily. But since I already have a pda w/ i guidance i don't need it. I think i'm going to sell it.

I just sent this site to a friend (scroll over to see complete URL. He bought it and is thrilled with the price and the unit.
http://www.compuvisor.com/microsoft-streets-trips-2007.html?...

I have been trying MS S&T 2007 extensively. I uses voice guidance which is timely and easily understood. For driving a big rig the laptop display, for my old eyes, is excellent (15"). With a wireless remote wheel mouse I can navigate quite safely solo. I use the word "quite". I don't recommend it for heavy traffic nor curvy narrow roads.

We spend quite a bit of time driving in Mexico. S&T's has the ability to leave a "GPS Trail" which is portable from map to map easily using copy/paste. The GPS trail applies to any map. You can copy a fravourite unmarked place etc to a fresh map and save as a master route. Very handy especially for Mexico where maps are very very limited. If anyone has info for adding Mexico roads to MS Streets and Trips , I would really like to know.

Hope this helps all. Love this group, thanks for the tips and help.

Oh, btw,I use MS Access to import the .CSV files to store in central location and manipulate the data more easily then import the CSV files into Streets and trips using the "import Data" function.

I attended a Driver's Education Class, and they said it is illegal in Texas to have a running laptop sitting in the passenger seat facing the driver.
That kind of defeats the purpose of Streets & Trips. That is what I used before I got my Garmin, but I wasn't aware of the law.
Anyone else heard of this law?

Many states have laws prohibiting video monitors from facing the driver in motor vehicles.

Only thing keeping GPSrs legal is screen size...and some of those are pushing the limits now days.

My uncle and father (who travel alot together to here and there) use to use a laptop, but found it very frustrating. Although they like the big screen, they had problems such as dropping the laptop, big stomach hitting the space bar and doing something that they didn't want, etc

They finally got a T2 portable.

As for me, since I drive alone, I don't think that the laptop would be a good choice going 90 mph down the road.

Pharos makes a rechargeable BlueTooth(BT) adapter for about $45 street for MS Streets & Trips GPSr (new 2007 - 2x2 format) as well as one (about $79 street) for the older receiver (3x3 format). I find them stocked at Fry's electronics.

The BT adapters work seamlessly both with laptops and iPAQ's with BT and PocketStreets. I usually put mine on the dash where there is a good view of the sky.

I agree with all you have posted here about S&T's. I am a full time RVer and have had S&T's since 06. The Co-pilot and I have made many trips from the North west to the South west in the past 5 years. This program has only failed us once and that was because a KOA shut down and the original road was graded under to extend an orchard. But we got to the renamed CG with one hairy U-turn on a dirt truck turnaround. I now have a Pharos 150 GPS unit for the towed Saturn Vue. That is a better soultion than putting the laptop on the co-pilots lap during a side trip from the motorhome.
We are very happy with both GPS setups, and with the new S&T's 2008 update that we got from Costco for $25, we are ready to hit the road again with confidence.
Bob

Check it out, I just installed it and will be taking out on the road next week.

http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/s-t-keys-hotkeys-microsoft-str...

I had the 07 version of streets and trips and had to do a manual recalcuate, but I upgraded to the 08 version and now it does automatic recalculate. I use it all the time in my mh to big for the jeep so i use the 660 there will be tryin both out in the spring.

Here's another helpful utility for S&T's users.

http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/microsoft-streets-trips-micros...

This utility will notify you of a near POI.

I forgot to mention that my previous post was for a utility that has shortcut keys that make it easier to use the S&T's

I have used the S&T keys mentioned above for several years with Streets & Trips and it does many things, such as auto recalculation. It enables shortcut keys to do many tasks such as changing views, zooming in and out, and changing modes of display and operation. It is free and easily updatable to current S & T versions. I would recomend it to anyone running Streets and Trips.

There is also a great discussion site for this Software from the Streets & Trips home page on Microsoft's site.

http://www.microsoft.com/streets/community.mspx

Hi riverjock

I just recently released a new version of the POI Scanner 1.5.0. Instead of having dings waves alerts it can now play any MP3s and any waves file preffered by the user. In addition a small bug giving false alerts is now fixed. If you find any other bugs when using this free application, don't hesitate to say so. Every comment is welcome.

Does DeLorme work with any GPSr or do you have to get theirs to use?
Going soon on a 10000 mile trip and was looking for a laptop program to have in addition to my Nuvi 260 and have it hooked up to an old eTrex

I have delorme and use MS Streets & Trip's GPSr (Pharos OEM). I use Generic NMEA as the device and set up as usb (4800,N,8,1). It's slow in locking to satellites, whether using MS S&T or delorme.

I had bought the Delorme to hook up to my laptop....it really isn't all that great...I couldnt get the thing to lock on either. I even contacted the Company and they told me of a patch. not a big difference....
Best bet is to return it and just buy a regular gps.
I got the Garmin C330 in Late Nov. 07 and just love it...Best of luck

With the data wizard in S&T 2006 it doesn't matter what order anything is in because you tell it what each item is with drop down windows such as longitude, latitude, name 1, name 2, etc. I'm sure the later versions work the same. Once S&T imports the waypoints they all show up as icons on the map.

Hi,

I really liked your article. We use S&T 2008 and are very happy. However, I am trying to find a way to get low brigde clearance because our RV is 12'11" high. Any suggestions on that?
Also, when you plan a trip, is there a way to move the end of the day for or backward if you prefer another location? Tried but cannot find a solution for that.

When you build a route after you get directions go to more options on the bottom left of the screen and you can change your driving time end of day, put it to what you want then when you refresh the screen you will see a half moon that will show where you end for the day

You mean like this? I know, its not a bridge, but...

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/driver-hits-bank-with-5th-...

In my other post I forgot to mentiong about low cleareances. Have you downloaded the poi for low clearences for the poi list. It will import just like the other poi's

Does anyone know who provides the maps for the MS S&T?

In the version I have (2006), they come from Navteq.