Delorme Street Atlas USA 2006 Handheld Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the third or fourth version of Street Atlas USA Handheld I've bought. On each of the prior occasions I gave up trying to use it with a variety of PDAs. One more time I thought since DeLorme boasted of the major revision they'd made.
Not really. It is still a stinkeroo.
It installs easily to a Palm device and earlier versions installed easily to Windows CE. And it works nicely with a non-DeLorme Blutetooth GPS.
But it is useless on a PDA. Maps are shown in 2D view only and they are simply thin lines across the screen. Street names even in the optional large font size are still unreadable unless you focus intensely. The highest zoom setting still covers too much area while the lowest zoom settings result in such crowded data that your route is lost.
The second weakest feature is trying to find a location. DeLorme forces you through a convoluted procedure. And finding an address seems to take forever.
The absolute worst feature is trying to create a route on the PDA. It is frustrating, time consuming and, in my experience, almost never works.
Finally, DeLorme's map information is incorrect and doesn't seem to be updated. The 2004 version didn't note that the street I live on is one-way and it constantly routed me going the wrong way. It sill does.
Actually using the product is a nightmare. The representation of your GPS location on the Palm TX's 320 x 480 screen is so tiny as to be invisible, virtually impossible to quickly see in a moving vehicle. Not a good situation. The display does not stay centered. One moment your GPS locator is squarely in the center of the screen. The next, it is at the top of the screen. Then the bottom or the sides. There is no uniformity.
The product allows you to set waypoints in order to customize your route. You literally have to do that on the computer rather than the PDA, because the PDA maps are simply too cumbersome to work with. You can do a reverse route on the PDA. Wouldn't you expect that if you simply reverse the route you created, that the waypoints you inserted would be considered? Logic says yes; DeLorme says no. Recalculating a route took almost 15 minutes on the Palm and resulted in a hodgepodge of side streets being included. Since I didn't follow the recommended (and very strange) reverse route, the program simply stopped posting the GPS location to the map. Apparently if you aren't following a pre-determined route, you are out of luck.
I'm finished with DeLorme. Never again.
Jerry


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Street Atlas USA 2006 Handheld gives you exactly the maps you need, conveniently accessible on your handheld computer or Smartphone. It's designed to create the maps and routes you want and synchronize them to your handheld device. You can also create routes on your device, with the fastest Delorme routing engine ever. It's been extensively updated, with 268,000 additional roads and thousands of new lodgings, restaurants, fuel stops, and retail stores, all located with GPS accuracy.Store your maps on removable-media devices & hot-synch to Palm OS external media cardsBeam maps to family and friends Bring topographic maps with you using Topo USA 5.0 softwareImport aerial photos, satellite images and USGS 7.5 minute topo map files from Topo USA 5.0 Aerial Data Packets Get voice prompts when tracking with GPS (requires Pocket PC and Palm OS 5.2 or later)

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