There
is no feeling that quite compares with that of heading out on the open
road - looking for adventure, and whatever comes your way. Well, maybe
I felt that way a few years ago, but after a few thousand miles of detours
and some nearly catastrophic wrong turns, the need for some pre-travel
planning became apparent to me.
Over the years, I have used a variety of path finding aids to direct my travels. The first is the tried and true road atlas, still a boon to navigation, but not necessarily up to date. There are packaged trips available through travel magazines, also not always current, and rarely start where you are located. The best of the bunch is the customized trip routing available from most of the big motor clubs. Provide a starting point and a destination to the routing service and they will provide a custom itinerary for your travel with sources for lodging, food, and points of interest marked along the way.
While all these products are certainly helpful, none of them even comes close to the convenience, power, and feature set available in DeLorme's Map'n'Go 2.0. Map'n'Go is like a road atlas custom made for your particular route of travel. It can create a travel package that starts and ends where you want it to. Through its multimedia capabilities it can take you to many of the points of interest along your route so you can better decide which ones to include in your schedule. Finally, its like having your own travel agent available 24 hours a day. Change your mind as often as you want, try a dozen different scenarios, this agent never tires.
In order to run Map'n'Go, you will need an IBM or compatible with a 386SX-33 or higher CPU, 8 MB of RAM, 9 MB of hard disk space, MS Windows 3.1 or later, 256 color VGA, compatible mouse, and ISO 9600 CD-ROM drive. A sound card and printer are highly recommended. My test system was powered by an AMD 5X86-133 CPU, with 16 MB RAM, #9 531 Motion 64 bit video, 4X Toshiba CD-ROM, running Win 95.
Installation was a snap. I placed the CD in the drive, closed the tray, and auto-run fired up the setup program. I accepted the default directory chosen by the setup program and the files were installed in only a couple of minutes. I chose to run the interactive tutorial which provided very basic instruction on several aspects of the program, such as choosing way points and printing out directions.
The program interface is clean and intuitively arranged. The toolbar icons are large enough and the graphics inside the buttons clear enough that you can actually tell what they represent. Basic route planning is as simple as 1-2-3 : 1. choose a starting point in the box next to the green button, 2. choose a destination in the box next to the red button, 3. click one of four buttons indicating the fastest, shortest, desired, or most scenic route. It took about two minutes for the program to calculate the 2296.5 mile fastest route from Orland, ME to San Antonio,TX. Printing a brief form of directions took about another minute.
My next move was to find some points of interest along the proposed route. I merely clicked the "along the way" button, and a list of dozens of points of interest was generated in a flash. Pressing the play button started a multimedia extravaganza, a narrated slide show that included highlights of many of the points along the way. I could have limited this list only to sites that appealed to my personal interests by filling out a user profile that includes such things as the rate I am willing to pay for lodging, whether I am interested in camping, my food preferences, etc. Any of these sites that appeal to me can be attached to my route map with the click of a button.
Some other useful features found in Map'n'Go:
The printed documentation included with the program consists of a booklet that is inserted in the CD case. Although brief, the booklet is adequate for installation and familiarization with the basic operation of Map'n'Go. The online help is a different story. It contains a table of contents and topics with detailed help for all of the programs functions and features, and is searchable by keywords and phrases. Technical support is available free of charge by phone, FAX, 24 hour automated fax back library, BBS, E-mail, and FAQ at www.delorme.com. If you are interested in a more detailed description of Map'n'Go, the web site has a Shockwave presentation that is great. The combination of DeLorme's mapping technology and AAA's listings
of 22,000 places of lodging, 10,000 restaurants, 10,000 campgrounds, and
15,000 points of interest, makes a powerful tool for travel planning. With
a price of $39.00 or less, this is an incredible deal.