I found a friend with Streets and Trips 2008, installed it on my laptop as a trial version (not activated) and have had a chance to play with it for a while. For anybody else looking for PC software over and above the Garmin package, I hope you find my explorations useful. From here on, SA=Street Atlas, S&T=Streets and Trips. Should be easy to figure out, but just to be clear (since you're all morons, right?)
Of course, I'm comparing it to the DeLorme Street Atlas I've been using for 5 or 6 years (currently SA 2008), so although I'm really making an effort to be open-minded, there's just things I don't like about it, although a couple I do like.
I really like the ability in S&T to drag the route to a new waypoint. That's cool, and faster than SA's process of adding a "via" into the route. Conceptually, there's really not much difference, but it's a nice difference in execution.
Both programs have settings for road preferences, and fuel mileage and cost, and while SA has more road types (as opposed to S&T's very general Interstates, other, arterial, toll), S&T has more levels of preference (as opposed to DeLorme's preferred/normal/avoid.) OTOH, I'm not sure what a scale means with only 4 (effectively 2) choices. Both let you adjust your speed habits, as well. SA by specifying an average MPH on each road type, S&T by setting "slower, average, faster." I'm not sure what that means, though: is it a comparison to average traffic?
I absolutley despise S&T's use of screen real estate. With a route planner and driving directions up, the actual map is less than a quarter of the screen. God help you if you then turn on GPS driving assistance. (BTW, if you do, the directions panel goes away, but if you bring it back, the map is suddenly VERY small!) Granted, you can drag the boundaries around, but. . . . SA's screen is always the map, with a tabbed panel at the bottom that changes according to the selected tab (Route, Find, GPS, etc.) No pop-ups, no always-on-top windows, no extra panels coming and going, no re-sizing of the map window.
Screen navigation is different between the two. If you drag the mouse in SA, you are drawing a zoom box; it zooms to the area you outlined. In S&T, dragging moves the map. To move the map in SA, you start from an edge so the pointer changes to a hand, or drag the outline in the larger-scale reference map at the bottom-right corner.
Zooming is WAY better in Street Atlas. I can't zoom the way I want to in S&T without actually grabbing the slider at the top of the screen, and it's still too sensitive. SA zooms with the navigator at the top right, with two different scales of change, or like I said before, just drawing a box on the screen.
SA does not have route optimization (best route through a dart board of random waypoints, like Iggy's county seat route in his post above) or route-from-here. I've never needed route-from-here; I suppose I would just drop a via into my route at my current location, and in the right location in the sequence of vias and calculate the route, but I'm usually retty good at knowing how to get back to my route if I have to deviate for something. Optimization is pretty cool when you have a list of known stops. In SA, you have to sort them yourself.
SA has no "perspective view" of the map while tracking with GPS, strictly overhead, but both programs let you choose North up or driving direction up.
SA has better support for non-Delorme mapping systems, and for mobile devices. The mobile version comes with the PC version, and runs on Palm or PocketPC/Windows Mobile. The PC can export maps and routes to the mobile version, which can be stored in main memory or a memory card (I just put the memory card in my laptop's card slot and copy in Windows, but it will also "install" the file through the device's sync process), and the mobile can connect to a GPS receiver for route tracking. It will speak directions as well (but not over Bluetooth, apparently), although it's not text-to-speech, it's prerecorded commands. Where the PC would say something like "Turn right onto highway 231 in 4000 feet," the mobile would say "Turn right in less than one mile." You can even route on the mobile device, although it takes relatively forever, and you can't use waypoints, just a start and end. SA will also export routes (but not maps) to Garmin's format directly from the PC. It WILL send maps to other portable devices such as iPods; it calls these "portable maps." The device does nothing with them other than displaying them. You have to find a 3rd party utility to get Garmin's format from S&T, although it's not a big secret or hard to find. The last mobile version of S&T was 2005, which I don't think you can find anywhere any more.
Obviously both software packages are really for driving a car, not riding a motorcycle, but either one can be used very well for route planning, and if you take your laptop along, route modification. Either one will get routes onto your Garmin, although it's easier with Street Atlas. I've seen little problems in both packages with small mapping errors, roads that aren't really roads, things like that. For example, I used Street Atlas to get to our hotel at Disney a couple of years ago, but the route it made went through an employee gate, which we were not actually allowed to use. And I really hate finding a nice squiggly line on the map and put it in my route, only to find it unpaved when I get there. (I've taken to checking them with Google Earth beforehand now.)
In my own riding I use Street Atlas on my Windows Mobile smartphone, and my Bluetooth GPS receiver is less than half the size of my phone, so I certainly have no problems with space or capacity. They stay under the seat, get pulled out if I'm lost for a quick location fix, then I'm off again. Not as convenient as a bar-mounted Garmin or TomTom, but a heck of a lot cheaper (since I already had the phone and the laptop.)
