Jim, I bought it before we left the Reno Rally area. The lack of voice prompting was the reason I continued to use Street Atlas over Streets and Trips. I've used S&T now for about 900 miles of towing and school is still out. There are some things I still prefer in SA but others I prefer in S&T. I am compiling my suggestion list for MS's site for suggestions. For one, the voice doesn't prompt me until about a quarter mile before the turn. That's a little late when you find you need to change lanes in traffic with the Montana hanging out the back. So I occasionally glance at the 'next turn' driving guidance instruction along with the miles until the turn to keep abreast of it.
Also, the voice just says in two tenths of a mile turn left. It doesn't tell me the name of the street. If it's a five-way intersection or there are two streets close together... So I again look at the map. The driving guidance instruction has the street name and is in a large type.
I also like to know both the next turn and the one after that in case the second closely follows the first. I like to know which lane to get into and how quickly. SA tells me that, S&T does not. But if I turn on the driving directions pane, the one that lists all the turns, I can look up there to see how far to the second turn and prepare myself for that.
The voice is a major improvement and caused me to try the product. I will continue to use it for our remaining five travel days until we reach our "holidays homebase" near the kids. I'd like to see some additional changes but so far I like it, with the above exceptions. I prefer S&T for route planning, much easier to learn and use for that purpose. I'm still undecided whether I will stay with it for on the road navigation but at this point I'm thinking I will.
I am finding S&T has the same kinds of map anomalies SA has. Not necessarily the identical problems but the same type. For example, I'm planning our route to south Texas for next January. There's a campground at Newcastle, OK, I'm considering for our first night out. The Passport America and Trailer Life directories say go west on HE Bailey Spur, then turn north on OK 76. However, S&T says there is no way to exit the spur onto 76 and wants to take me way around. So I just put the stop in the middle of that intersection and added a pushpin with instructions to get to the campground. SA would let me build a navigable road to connect the two but S&T won't. SA has similar problems, though.
One thing I **really** like about the new S&T is the **option** to use dynamic turn view. That option auto zooms the map so you see then next two turns, no matter how far apart. But as you get closer and closer to a turn, it zooms the map to provide more details about the area and the turn. I understand SA2006 has this, too. In S&T you can use that dynamic turn view OR choose the option to keep the location centered on the map. That one does not auto zoom. You can manually zoom with the + and - key. Or you can choose to have neither of those options. You can also choose to rotate the map so your current moving direction is always up. So does SA but S&T does better at moving the map so I can better see what's ahead of me. SA waits until you are almost to the top of the map before it advances the map. I prefer S&T's method on this.
Sorry so long. I got a new toy and have been playing with it.
Linear Mode
