Want GPS laptop trip planning software > dash GPS ??

I looked at the DeLorme Street Atlas reviews on Amazon and saw a lot of complaints about it not being updated. MS Streets & Trips was rated better.

Garmin BaseCamp will probably work "OK" for me...hopefully it will allow an import from Streets & Trips GPX file and then it will have best of both worlds.

I'll probably buy the Garmin from Costco for their return policy.
If it doesn't suit my needs. . .then return it.

Currently, I'm planning a Canada/Alaska trip which involves multiple alternative routes by land and sea.
I want to be able to load each route separately.
Hopefully, be able to notate POI's with hyperlinks to websites on the laptop.

Each and every has issues.
As a typical planned excursion for us is several thousand miles, planning on a stand-alone is simply not practical. So, I do all the planning on Street Atlas. At the EOD (End Of Day), I will set the next day into the driver's stand-alone by just entering the start, planned stops and next EOD. S&T didn't reliably transfer data and an SA won't to any of the newer devices and Garmin's Base Camp is not all that good as a planning tool. It will load a route into most most devices. I still usually have to go in and add waypoints to make the route go where I want it.

Matt

I've never been too impressed with Base Camp. So I'll continue using MS S&T on my Laptop, for planning and load the day trips into my Garmin.

We use Garmin Base Camp. I can create any number of routes while using my laptop,then download them to the Garmin GPS for later use. This lets me pick the route that I want, and I can review every way point before we depart.

There are some tricks to using Base Camp, do a search and read some of the recent posts about how to upgrade the maps that Base Camp uses.

It's a great program, but there is a pretty steep learning curve.

fj12ryder wrote:
I don't know for sure what you want, but you can plan a route with Garmin Base Camp, and load that route onto your compatible GPS. I'm not sure if that is what you had in mind.

Yes, that is exactly what I want.
After a Google search it appears that BaseCamp will allow trip planning on a laptop and then one can load the trip into the Garmin GPS unit.

Microsoft Streets & Trips will do something similar to what you want. I don't know if you can load it onto a dash GPS You can get it with the small matchbox-sized GPS receiver. Then run the laptop in the vehicle.

However they are no longer making it, too bad. The last version is 2013.

Garmin's Basecamp or MapSource will allow you to plan routes on your PC & save to a stand alone GPS. Maybe you could load the routes to a dash GPS, but I'm not sure.

Newer Chrysler vehicles are using Garmin as their dash units.

I don't know for sure what you want, but you can plan a route with Garmin Base Camp, and load that route onto your compatible GPS. I'm not sure if that is what you had in mind.

You can (sort of) do this with Garmin. They have a free Trip Planning app that runs on your PC/Mac and will download into Garmin units.

And there is one company that I've found that builds in-dash units that use Garmin GPS - Kenwood. I installed one in my RV. It does use most of the Garmin tools, but sadly it doesn't support Trip Planning. The Kenwood uses Garmin for GPS SW updates and map updates. However normal quarterly Garmin map updates are not directly compatible with the Kenwood units. Kenwood only offers annual map updates for the Garmin units. I have though found a way using Garmin utilities of creating updates that can be loaded and used on the Kenwood. BTW, user generated/custom maps can also be loaded on the Kenwood just like any other Garmin.

I have managed to decipher how to load Point-of-Interest files onto the in-dash unit and programming a trip using waypoints on the in-dash unit isn't very difficult. So as a work-around I do my Trip Planning on my Mac, identify major waypoints and manually program them into the in-dash unit.

Me too. Actually I'd like just the laptop software, gps enabled, to run in addition to the stand alone GPS. No more MS Streets & Trips & Delorme does not seem to keep up to date very well.

Looks like I'll be using my 2011 MS S&Ts for a long time.