| | |  | Language & Travel | Home » » » Autoroute Euro Win32 Mini Box Dvd | | | | | | | Description: | | It is the customisable travel planning software that helps you get accurate directions. | | | Features: | |
• Plan your complete trip including multiple destinations, rest stops, scenic detours, petrol stops and more
• Includes over 5 million miles of navigable roads and motorways throughout Europe--37 countries covered
• Includes over a million points of interest including post offices, chemists, restaurants, petrol stations, cash machines and more
• Plan your way with flexible trip planning options and a new, intuitive user interface
• Personalize and save your maps--add drawings, notes and draw pins with important information
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 7.4 inches | | Product Width:
| 5.4 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.29 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.06 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.48 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.51 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.34 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.22 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 15 reviews |
| | | System Requirements: | | | Platform:
| Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008 / Windows XP / Windows 2003 Server | | Media:
| CD-ROM | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 15 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 found the following review helpful:
 Ok features, poor quality mapsJul 11, 2010
By Daniel D. Schneider
Just got back from a trip in Spain where we used Autoroute 2010 to find our way around (Madrid, Cordoba, Seville, Granada and Barcelona). Unlike another reviewer, we didn't encounter missing streets, but some critical pieces of information were missing that resulted in several hours of extra driving. For example, trying to get from the Madrid airport to our hotel in the downtown area, Autoroute tried to send us across a plaza that was blocked to auto traffic (permanently). In several cities (Granada in particular) it planned for us to drive on a road that was restricted to Buses and Taxis. In Cordoba it sent us the wrong way down a one way street! All of these errors combined to make it a nightmare to drive in an old downtown area with many one way streets. When there is no parking and no place to pull over to study the map, you get into trouble, fast. On top of that, add road construction and closed streets when Spain beats Germany in the world cup semi-final and you have a real headache. Then, since the recalculated routes often return you to the problem spots, you're left driving in circles or way out of your way to find a place to pull over and then have to route on your own, dragging the path to a usable street (at least you can do that). Glad I used the 60-day evaluation copy and didn't spend money on it. Unless they improve the quality of the map data, I will be looking for another solution the next time I'm in Europe.
Other gripes:
The Navigation view pane splits into three horizontal strips: list of directions, map, and next turn/trip info. On a widescreen laptop, this makes the map way too small (the benefit of a laptop over a standalone navigation unit should be the extra map real-estate). It would be much better to have the list of directions show in the vertical "pane" on the left and leave room for a larger map. It's possible that this can be configured some how, but I couldn't figure a way to do so.
It seems that pushpins (saved locations) can only be entered by clicking on the map at a particular location with the pushpin tool. I wanted to enter them by address (as I had the addresses of our 5 hotels and wanted to save them so I wouldn't have to search each time I started the software. Also, it would be nice if custom pushpins could be selected from a drop-down as an origin or destination for routing. Instead, I had to right-click, choose "Route" and then "Add as start" or "Add as end". That's tedious when you want to route to a pushpin that is outside of the current map's zoom level (zoom-out, pan to pushpin, possibly zoom in to differentiate, right-click, select).
Finally the pronunciation of the Spanish road names was atrocious ("Plaza de Espana" => "Plaza dee ess pot yawn". While this may be expected, I was particularly annoyed with the way it pronounced "onto ramp" (as in "merge onto ramp"). It sounded like "on tramp". For an English phrase that got used regularly, the pronunciation should be fixed.
The integration with the USB GPS antenna was nice and the software ran fine in a Windows XP virtual machine on a Mac laptop.
In conclusion: the application itself shows promise, with a few annoyances that should be fixed, but the map data absolutely needs some sanity checking.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 LukewarmSep 30, 2010
By Rob
Generally, AutoRoute is a lot like Streets and Trips. The USB GPS receiver is not as sensitive as others I have tried or a common car GPS. It often lost reception on wooded roads or in city streets. Cable supplied is stiff and too short. Illuminated "Microsoft" starts flashing when GPS reception is established. This is quite bright and can be distracting at night in a vehicle. There is no way to hold the receiver in place on a window or dash. Some maps such as cities in Estonia did not always have enough resolution to tell where the GPS icon indicated the location was. Map of Iceland has no streets or roads or other features, only dots for towns.
Major countries and city maps such as Copenhagen worked fine when clear reception possible.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Helped make the best trip everJul 31, 2010
By FAR
Just returned from four weeks in Europe which included two weeks driving from Nice to Paris via Tuscany. We used AutoRoute with a Dell Mini computer and a bluetooth GPS. It worked as well as any full featured GPS but with a 10" screen. We used AutoRoute beforehand to plan where we were going to go and locate our hotel, rental car return, and various sights. When we got to Europe we used the routing with the GPS and never got lost (a first). We only had hotel reservations for the first few nights in Nice, so we used AutoRoute to find most of the hotels we stayed at, including a wonderful hotel in the hills of Tuscany near Florence. The routing function worked great and guided us right to a parking garage in the middle of Florence just blocks away from the main sights. I didn't use the turn-by-turn directions much; instead I just stayed on the blue line. I did use the turn-by-turn coming into Paris and it was impeccable. I would highly recommend using AutoRoute with a mini computer as an alternative to buying an expensive GPS. However, unless you are fairly knowledgeable in configuring bluetooth, I would recommend getting a wired GPS receiver instead.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Outdated and missing many roads in SpainJul 09, 2010
By P
"p"
We bought the software for a trip to Spain, used it with a USB - GPS that I bought on Amazon. The program works great with USB - GPS, the main problem we found was that many of the roads we were driving on did not exist in the mapping program. This included some major highways, such as the A-50 from Salamanca towards Madrid. Another major road was an interchange near San Sebastian that is not very well signed by Spain and does not exist on the MS Autoroute, so we totally screwed that one up. We could use the program, it was just annoying that we missed these and many other roads. The roads have been in place for a while, they show up on Google maps, too bad they don't have an offline program that would work with a GPS. We also had to disable the turn by turn directions, since the program would constantly take us off the highways and on to side roads and then back onto the highway, of course, we didn't follow those directions.
We used a netbook and the program to do the mapping. All in all, it worked, but it was kind of hard to use. I think if you have a GPS device for your car, you are better off spending the $150 per country that Garmin charges, even if you already have the computer you are going to use. The dedicated GPS systems are still better and I don't think Microsoft really cares about their customers enough to keep their programs updated. I did a little bit of searching just today (I should have done this sooner) and found others complaining of the same problems. Now that I have the setup and program, I will use it, but I wish I had just spent the money on the Garmin software.
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Excellent product!Sep 07, 2010
By Charles K. Munroe
"CKM"
We travel frequently to Europe on vacations. For years my wife hated being the "navigator" with paper maps. Like many couples with a wife as navigator that resulted in some arguments and upsets while on the road. Then, we started bringing a laptop on our trips, loaded with AuotoRoute. We both loved it, not only for use in the car, but as an excellent trip planning tool. We have an OEM car NAV system on one of our vehicles at home, but there is no comparison with AutoRoute on our laptop. That OEM GPS system with its little screen and limited capability is OK for general use around the US, but AutoRoute in Europe and Streets and Trips in the US puts that GPS to shame in all respects.
When it appeared that Microsoft had stopped producing AutoRoute and was no longer supplying updated data, we were both disappointed. We resolved to continue using our 2008 version of AutoRoute as long as possible. Now, we have a new 2010 version. My wife is very happy, and pleased with the changes that have been incorporated. So am I. It's a great product for supporting trips to Europe; especially, for people like us who prefer to travel around in rental cars!
See all 15 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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