Laptop mapping software

strollin wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:

strollin wrote:

OutdoorPhotographer wrote:
I'm another who never found a replacement for Streets and Trips for planning. I wouldn't use my laptop for navigation anymore. CoPilot offers downloadable maps for areas with poor connectivity. But when I planned our last cross country trip in 2013, nothing was as good as S&T. I pulled out an old laptop just for that purpose.

Items I want in a planner:
1. Ability to set start and end time of driving for the day and apply automatically to entire trip.
2. Ability to override start/end for a particular day without altering the other days.
3. Ability to set planned rest stops (i.e. 20 minutes every 3 hours).
4. Ability to set the time for a specific stop in route (4 hours at siteseeing stop or 3 days in Chicago).

S&T's could do all of this. I haven't tired Good Sam recently to see if it does. I'm fine using CoPilot, Google, etc. to navigate between stops but those are useless for planning a four week trip with many varied stops from hours to days.

I guess we're all different. I would never use the features you listed as mandatory simply because I don't want to be on some kind of fixed time schedule when I'm on a trip. I start in the morning when I feel like it and do rest and site seeing stops along the way whenever I need/want to. How can you set a schedule for rest stops?

I'd have to agree with that. I have a stopping area for the day usually, and that's about it. Everything else is pretty freeform. If we are headed to a busy area, like the Outer Banks, then we might make reservations ahead of time, but no way could I adhere to such lockstep travel plans.

Sounds more like a job than a vacation. :)

Exactly! :B

My three cross countries have all had a timeline to be back at work so I have to have an idea of the route. The scheduled breaks keep me from building a schedule that is too aggressive for miles in a day.

I've flexed with every trip but the schedule helps make informed decisions that if I stay longer here, I choose to give up x, y, or z. Without a hard timeline for work, it would be different. I've also crossed the country on the southern, middle, and northern routes so it has been a lot of planning to decide what key spots to hit and what to skip. I would build in five hours in a state to find something local to do if there wasn't an obvious choice Iike a national park.