The most recent articles from PC Magazine

Map and Travel Route Planner 2004

Nigel Whitfield — 2004-03-08T12:22:23.000Z

Nigel Whitfield, PC Magazine, Monday 8 March 2004 at 12:22:23

How to zoom from A to Z in Great Britain and Europe.

Route Planner 2004 Great Britain and Europe is one of an increasing number of packages designed to help you find your way around. It includes detailed maps of European cities, giving the locations of sights, arts venues, hotels, petrol stations and so forth, along with the usual route planning.

Installation is straightforward, but it needs 2GB of disk space and the last stage of the setup took so long we thought it had died.

That minor glitch aside, it's simple to use. The main screen shows a map of Europe and there's a pane on the left where you can type in a postcode or town name. Place and street names can be selected from a pop-up box.

For the UK, this works fine; it worked well with addresses in the Amsterdam suburbs, too. But an address in Antwerp couldn't be found, since there was not enough detail for that city. And in Dublin, although the street we wanted was shown on the map, it couldn't be entered as a destination.

Curious. It suggests that if you require routes that take you off the beaten track in smaller cities, you may not get door-todoor with this product.

And, in common with many other packages, including Autoroute 2002, it suggested a road on our test route that has been closed for 20 years.

Once the information is found, creating routes is swift, and the map details include house numbers at junctions. A few clicks on the icons at the right of the screen add hotels, hospitals, zoos, casinos and other points of interest.

The Hotels tab produces information on places to stay within a selected distance of a location, including the information from the Varta guide and online booking for some UK hotels.

There's another useful touch in the settings screen - enter fuel consumption details and the route automatically includes a reminder to refuel; you can also include rest periods.

For the UK, there's live traffic information, which can be updated over the Internet and taken into account when route planning. Unfortunately the information doesn't extend to the rest of Europe, which is arguably where you may find it more useful, especially if you find it difficult to understand foreign radio bulletins.

The software integrates with GPS (global positioning system); for those who don't have this, maps and directions can be exported to Palm or Pocket PC handhelds. A viewer application is included, but in the Palm version we tested, it's not that exciting - the map isn't scaleable, the directions are just a text list, and the buttons in the application are in German. Still, it's a nice thought.

There's a good range of options for printing out routes. The standard printout includes a clear overview and a large map of the destination, along with step-by-step maps for each turn, and there are options for more detailed lists, or a simple overview.

There is one irritation, though, in that the direction information, both on screen and in the printout, often seems to relate to the next major town - not to what the road signs say. For instance, when driving through Hackney towards the Channel Tunnel, you're unlikely to see any signs for Sidcup.

Ultimately, it's the accumulation of some sloppy points that count against Route Planner 2004; individually, none is a show-stopper, but they combine to mar what would otherwise be a really useful piece of software.

Contact: Media Gold 020 7221 4600

www.dabs.com

System requirements:

OS Windows 98 or higher
CPU Pentium processor
Memory 64MB
Disk space 2GB

The Times Brain Teasers

Maggie Williams — 2002-06-05T11:03:33.000Z

Maggie Williams, PC Magazine, Wednesday 5 June 2002 at 11:03:33

Q.What's a good way of improving your mental agility?A. The Times Brain Teasers.

If you feel that your brain would benefit from a little extra exercise, The Times Brain Teasers will provide it with some mental circuit training.

The software offers a selection of word- and number-based puzzles which the truly committed can choose to answer against the clock.

In addition to the standard Brain Teasers mode, it also includes a Master Class level for those with superhuman qualities. You can choose to play games of 20 or 40 questions, which are rather disconcertingly referred to as 'tests'.

Each test is generated randomly from the software's database of questions, although certain puzzles appear with surprising regularity.

Once you've completed a test, the software guides you through your incorrect answers, showing the correct response and offering tips on how to answer similar questions.

You can save your scores and there's a Hall of Fame showing the highest 10 results.

For anyone interested in training their mind for the rigours of MENSA membership, this is a very entertaining and useful product.

However, from an entertainment angle, the game would benefit from the ability to select or exclude certain types of puzzle, as every game contains a cross-section of number and word challenges.

Price: £14.99 (inc. VAT)

Contact: Jungle.com 0870 727 1771

www.jungle.com

Microsoft MapPoint 2002 European Edition

Roger Kirkwood — 2002-05-08T15:48:58.000Z

Roger Kirkwood, PC Magazine, Wednesday 8 May 2002 at 15:48:58

For plotting location-based business data onto maps.

MapPoint 2002 European Edition is the latest update of Microsoft's map-based application and it provides three basic functions. It's an electronic map and options include searching for a location or finding the best route from A to B. It's also a mapping resource for other Office programs. However, its prime function is to plot location-based business data onto maps.

The real power of MapPoint comes from the geographical presentation of business information, which is also packed with demographic reference data (using up to 875MB of hard disk space). Your own data, such as regional sales figures, can be imported from a variety of sources, tied to locations, then displayed on maps.

Display options include pushpins, shading and pie and bar charts. Customisable territories allow you to group map areas relevant to your business structure.

An ideal source for imported data is Excel. Data automatically updates if you link to the source file, although, disappointingly, if you just import, there's no way to edit it inside MapPoint. You can also import from other Office (97 or later) applications and SQL Server (6.5 or later).

MapPoint determines location from only one data field - for example, a 'town' field - so repeated place names might cause trouble.

European demographic data is updated for this version and focuses, as with road map detail, on western European countries. The rest of the world has less information and maps show towns and cities only, although there's a North American version with associated map and demographic detail.

Combining all these elements together brings various opportunities to businesses and MapPoint can be used to analyse company figures geographically, plan office locations, work out delivery times and guide service personnel to customers. MapPoint supports GPS receivers conforming to the NMEA 2.0 specification or later, while Pocket Streets is included to use maps on Pocket PCs.

The program functions as a resource for other Office programs and this release features tighter integration with Office 2000 and XP, placing toolbar buttons in other programs on installation. You can export maps to other applications, as well as automatically search for addresses contained in Office files.

The 2002 release also features ActiveX controls and enhanced automation support, so developers can integrate mapping capabilities into custom applications.

MapPoint 2002 European Edition doesn't have the depth of other Microsoft products - it lacks data editing, for example - but the new territories function, the ability to save as HTML and better integration with Office suite are welcome additions.

Contact

Microsoft: Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading, Berkshire RG6 1WG

Tel 0870 601 0100, Fax 0870 601 0700

www.microsoft.com/office/mappoint/