• Over 1.6 million points of interest such as ATMs, hotels, landmarks, and more
• Enhanced Keyword search helps you quickly find nearby business and POIs immediately
• Customizable trip planning options allow you to plan stops, scenic detours, and more
• Navigation Mode lets you estimate drive time before you leave your house
• Includes sleek USB GPS receiver

• Windows Vista: The Definitive Guide
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• Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008

Streets & Trips with GPS Locator helps you travel with complete confidence and it's so easy. This comprehensive trip planning software makes route planning a snap, anywhere in U.S. and Canada. Calculate mileage, pick out the fastest routes and mark points of interest. It gets you where you're going quickly, easily, and without all the guesswork. Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008 with GPS Locator pairs the power of Streets & Trips, the best-selling travel and map software, with a sleek new Global Positioning System receiver. You'll always know exactly where you are. Map your route, plug the GPS receiver into your laptop, and go! It starts with all the door-to-door routing, location-finding and comprehensive mapping power of Microsoft Streets & Trips, and adds a plug-and-play Global Positioning System (GPS) locator that helps you stay on track, and always knows where your next turn is. Includes sleek, stylish, ultra-compact GPS device with SiRF star III technology. It's 10 times more sensitive than previous models, finds your location faster, and has the power to locate you even in most buildings or a crowded city. All-new USB adapter provides the flexibility to travel cable-free! Just plug the included GPS receiver and adapter into your notebook PC and go. Reroute any time you wish, instantly, without going online Find out where to expect construction on any local or state road in the US or Canada Import contacts from Microsoft Office Outlook or Excel into your maps View the map in Full Screen mode & refer to the estimated drive time to always know how far you are from your destination Connect the included GPS receiver right into your computer's USB port and travel cable-free with the new USB adapter Windows VISTA and XP friendly
You know where you want to go, and Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008 with GPS can help you get there. This best-selling travel and map software has been enhanced with several new features that take all the guesswork out of traveling, letting you focus on the sites, instead of the directions. With more than 1.6 million points of interest to choose from, and with updated maps and the most extensive trip planning features you'll find anywhere, Streets & Trips will help you plan your trip, your way.

A sleek GPS receiver plugs into the USB port on your laptop PC, giving you enhanced GPS capability.

Which Streets & Trips version is best for you? View comparison chart.

And with a sleek Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver that plugs into the USB port on your laptop PC, this software is all you will ever need to get you across town, or across country. You can now drive with absolute confidence, knowing that you have the most complete and updated information at your fingertips at all times.

What's New in 2008
Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008 offers the latest available maps of nearly 6 million miles of routable roads and highways throughout the United States and Canada. While you're driving, verbal turn-by-turn directions let you concentrate on the road while the software guides you. Customizable trip planning features allow you to plan multiple stops, find nearby places to visit, calculate drive time, and more.

Updated features let you identify one-way streets at a glance, and a robust keyword search lets you quickly find business and other points of interest quickly by entering in single search terms. Do you need a cup of coffee now? Simply type in the word "coffee" and Streets & Maps offers you the nearest coffee houses. Best of all, the search results automatically refresh as you continue to drive, so you will always have the most relevant information at your fingertips.

Online or off, Streets & Trips gives you the latest maps that give you the most accurate, detailed door to door directions at your fingertips. In a hurry? You can optimize your travel efficiencies by calculating mileage, time, and expenses in advance, even avoiding delays due to construction by downloading free updates from the Web. An updated navigation mode makes it easier than ever to know where you are, so that you can estimate drive time quickly and precisely, and enhanced customizable trip planning options will help you to plan stops, scenic detours, and fuel stops. You can even add multiple destinations; and quickly alter your route at a moment's notice.

Streets & Trips also features enhanced support for your GPS receiver that gives you a new perspective map view that can give you a road view like the one you would see through your windshield. And the automatic re-routing feature gets you back on track, even when you miss a turn.

The Benefits of GPS
Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008 with GPS offers enhanced features that only a GPS device can provide. The new sleek, stylish, ultra-compact GPS device with SiRF star III technology is 10 times more sensitive than previous models, finds your location faster, and has the power to locate you even in most buildings or a crowded city. Plus, the USB adapter gives you the flexibility to travel cable-free. Just plug in the included GPS receiver and start using it right away.

The GPS device allows you to track your route in real time in an easy-to-read full screen display with simple, easy-to-locate navigation buttons. You can also change to the special night map display with a single click of the button. Get real-time, voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions that always let you know where your next turn is. The GPS device also enables you to easily see upcoming turns with an automatically zooming map that shows relevant details based on how close you are to your next turn.

Streets & Trips 2008 with GPS is enhanced with GPS routing features, including distance-based voice prompting, GPS trail, rerouting, intelligent zooming, and much more. With GPS functionality, you have the ability to locate gas stations, restaurants, and other points of interest closest to you as you go, and the GPS Task Pane provides important information fast, including driving speed, latitude and longitude coordinates, altitude, travel direction, and more. The GPS Trail function can even let you retrace your steps to quickly find your way back to your starting point.

As Easy-to-Use as Typing
If you can type, you can take full advantage of the wealth of features Streets & Trips has to offer. To create a route and generate directions, it couldn't be any easier. You simply type in your starting and ending locations and click on "Get Directions." And voíla! Your trips can include side trips and segments, and you can instruct the software to customize your route by telling it what types of roads you want to travel, how quickly you want to get there, and the general area where you want to stop to gas up. Streets & Trips will create your itinerary, down to the precise gas station. Overall you'll have access to over 1.6 million local POIs such as hotels, restaurants, gas stations and even ATMs. And while you're driving, the software can give you verbal turn-by-turn directions that let you concentrate on the road instead of the directions.

Customer Rating:
Summary: ugh.
Comment: The information support on Microsoft's webstie is severely lacking. Updating the software does not seem to be possible...even when brand-new. And since we had a new tollway extension in '07, it would have been nice to have that ON the '08 S&T--or at least updatable.

I've only tried the GPS once (when in Ft. Lauderdale), and it didn't work. Would try it again, but I got a Navagon for Fathers' Day...so I don't need it.

I like the concept of trip optimization. However, it still needs some work.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Streets & Trips 2008
Comment: Even though it is 2008, there are roads built in 2005-2006 not in the directions. Makes for a HUGE problem.

Other than that, it works as advertised.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Its amazing
Comment: This product is great. I hardly ever lose and signal when using this product. It must be used outside so its perfect when driving in a car, Have it navigate your directions for you. It even has a trip planner. Best thing about it no monthly fees!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost a winner
Comment: It's called Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008, but the maps are probably five years old. It's mostly accurate. I would say the positioning is entirely accurate, but since several of the roads we travel have been rebuilt or built since the maps were last updated, it sometimes shows us driving through a field, where the new road or modified road has been built. It's a minor annoyance, and I haven't run into an issue that I oouldn't figure out a way around, even using the outdated maps. The routing sometimes isn't what I would choose, but by adding waypoints, I can always get it to go in what looks like a more efficient manner.
The USB adapter for the GPS sensor is junk, and the reason I had to purchase the 2008 version was because when the adapter broke on the 2007 version, it was cheaper to buy the program with hardware, than to replace the broken part. It looks like a $5 piece of plastic and is as flimsy as a $1 piece of plastic, but when You can finally find it, it costs $40 plus $12 for shipping for a replacement. Be very very careful.
Still - it's a functional GPS, and I can plug the speakers from my laptop into my radio and and adjust the volume so that I can play MP3's and still get the announcements of the next instruction through the radio.
It's still a cheaper option than the 3 inch screen portable GPS's.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very good, but some features need more work
Comment: Microsoft sells three products that all have some level of commonality: Streets & Trips (S&T), MapPoint, and AutoRoute Europe. All three products work similarly but create incompatible files - and should never be the case with MS products. I save maps of customer locations around the country, as well as marked-up maps of enjoyable back roads for car club drives. I've switched to S&T a few years ago since I don't require all the programmability features in MapPoint. Now I have a sizable library of MapPoint routes that can't be read by S&T and there is no way to convert them.

I don't understand why there are 3 products that are so alike - and yet are totally incompatible. There should be one, in a standard and pro version, locale-specific, with and without programmability.

I've been using S&T for business trips for 10 years - you certainly don't want to be late to a customer meeting. However, S&T 2008 is in some ways a step backwards. The 2008 version occasionally makes bad choices of routes and has even chosen some circuitous routes in the DC area (the last place where you need errors!). The 2008 updates to the Navigation Mode are very poor: the interface has terrible usability, isn't resizable, and doesn't integrate well with the maps being shown. It's also frustratingly difficult to use on smaller laptop screens.

The interface itself has is too complex to use while moving - in fact it can be outright dangerous to do anything but take a quick glance at the screen. This would be a great candidate for the Office Ribbon interface and it also needs much better integration with the TabletPC (particularly touch). A TabletPC is my laptop of choice and is the ideal platform for S&T.

What's the situation with the dev teams for these products? Are they one and the same? Is there a multi-year product plan? Is there any code sharing? Features like the Navigation Pane seem to take a tiny step forward each year - but where is the product going long term? What will the final Navigation Pane look like and how long will it take to get there? Has anybody thought about usability of the spoken directions?

I had a big long phone call with the S&T developers several years ago and made some suggestions for their then-fuzzily-defined GPS module requirements (t was very difficult to find a GPS device which would work with MapPoint or S&T). I suggested at the time that they use their corporate resources to include a GPS receiver in the box, since their requirements for one made it very difficult or impossible for the average person to buy. Apparently they got that reaction from a bunch of people since that was one of the big improvements they've made in the product. Yes, you can get a better GPS receiver, but you have to know what you are doing and the one they've chosen solves the problem for 95% of the potential users.

Despite my complaints, I depend heavily on S&T and have better hopes for the 2009 version. What would I like to see over the next release or two?
- move to a Standard and a Pro version. With and without API programmability. Consider a move to a bluetooth GPS instead of the wired model.
- consider allowing the end user to draw in new roads. This may be the Pro version. A graphical interface to the underlying database would be needed. And of course any changes made must be able to be moved to new future versions.
- completion of the evolution of the Navigation Pane. All components resizable, undockable, etc.
- move to the Office 2007 (or 10?) Ribbon - TabletPC and touch enabled. Make sure that the map size slider is physically large so that it can be easily accessed by finger, pen, or mouse. A too-small slider on the bottom (for example, the one in Word 2007) would be unusable. Use the full Ribbon methodology - the current product has too many small icons and they need to be grouped appropriately. The Ribbon also has to be accessible with voice commands for usability and safety purposes.
- a single file format for all S&T, MapPoint, and AutoRoute. Plus upwards migration for old files.
- rethink the algorithms for route selection. Somehow that took a downtown for 2008. A usability plus would be to allow the selection of "quickest route" or choices such as "most direct" or "greatest use of highways" right n the ribbon, so that users can choose the most appropriate route for the particular circumstances. Showing two or three route choices would be very useful.
- think about commonality with future versions of Microsoft Auto. If, for example, Sync were to gain a navigation function it should obviously be in common with the S&T interface and maps. Both to help users who are used to this format, as well as to share development expenses and yield better and more complete maps.
- I have a strong need for this product to cover Japan, but with an English interface. I know, I ask for a lot, but a cell phone interface is too small for that task and I can't find anything that will service this same purpose as well.

Yes, I ask for a lot! But there isn't a better product to be had on the market and I depend on this on nearly a daily basis.

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