MS Autoroute 2010 - Discussion

Well, the 'New' Microsoft Autoroute 'Europe' was released in November, and I have just aquired a copy.

Deliberated long & hard over GPS 'stuff', working towards a lap-top & GPS-mouse based system to run Mem-Map for green-laning, but got the G-F a Garmin back in November so she could find my house & stuff.

Was quite impressed by the 'useability' of the thing, actually, as well as taken by the way it 'dings' when speed limits change or a speed-camera is aproaching, and thought, "OK for 'ordinary' navigation, thee things can be useful" so tought to see if I could get the lappy to do something similar.....

GPS Mouse I have came with some direction routing 'free-ware' I found just infuriating, so after looking at the GPS forums & doing a bit of reading / thinking, went for Auto-route after some favourable reviews & alert to the 'New' version......

Initial impression is it dont do wot the garmin does; reviews on the gps forum suggested you can set the map view to give a 'tilted' semi 3D view like the Garmin does...... not saying it dont, but if it do, I cant find the option!

Also, anoying, the map stays facing north on the screen & only the possition marker (we call it the Atari Spaceship, after the Asteroids game spaceship it looks like!) shows you which way you are pointing.

Maybe changeable, but again, not found an option.

It doesn't alert you to speed limits or cameras, though I didn't expect it to, but I was wondering if I could import the grid refs from one of the down-load sites as push pins to get it to do something like..... any-one know?

And the 'places of local interest' data-base is much 'thinner' (it seems) than in the Garmin, but I suppose it does have a much bigger area to cover. (Garmin is UK & Ireland, Autoroute covers all Northern Europe)

Important to me is finding LPG petrol stations; have GPS location listings for most of them, but cant see a way to get thee into the data-base itself, only as push-pins, I think, so not sure how easy it may be to call them up as POI's.... guess thats the Q- I cant find a way to ADD POI's to the pre-loaded database..... any ideas any-one?

One thing that was impressive was the recalculation time if you went 'off-route'... could be the PC speed, but when I diverted off a clogged up M-way, it had re-routed by the time I was at the end of the exit ramp, where the Garmin took a lot more time, both to tell you you had deviated from route, and to come up with another!

If I was looking for a sat-nav system and didn't already have the GPS sender for the lappy, I think I'd possibly be a bit dissapointed with it for the money. Its RRP is £85 with GPS Dongle, and the G-F's Garmin was about the same price, though UK only, but you can get cheaper stand alone Sat-Navs with wider coverage for the same sort of money, and cheaper ones with card slots.

And a dedicated sat-Nav is certainly a lot more convenient & easier to use than Auto-route on lappy!

Software alone is around £40 (if you shop around), and again, for UK only, you can buy a dedicated stand-alone UK sat nav for that in aldi..........

But what does any-one else think, and as I've not used Autoroute 07, what does any-one else think of it?

And what hints tips, features, hassles can any-one else offer?

Don't know about Autoroute but I use a Garmin zumo 550 a lot and it has all of Europe on it. You can integrate it with Memory Maps and plan routes etc. it has safety camera alerts and the option of north or track direction upwards (i.e. at the top of the dislplay)

You can apparently import POIs but apart from the safety cameras which download automatically from the Garmin website I haven't worked out how to do this yet.

Downsides compared to other kit I've tried - it does take a while to recalculate if you go off route and making it give you an alternative route to the one it has chosen is not as good as on a Tom Tom but otherwise it's a cracking bit of kit - not cheap though!