Streets and Trips Alternative for Mexico?
Hi there, For several years, we used Microsoft Streets and Trips along with the GPS attachment in our laptop and it was great because we did not need an internet connection to find our way around. ...
Forum Discussion
I haven’t really figured the Garmin Base Camp program out yet but I have been fooling around with it. So far all I can say is there must be an easier way. With S&T I can force a route quite easily by putting in waypoints and just telling it to go from point to point. With Base Camp I cannot figure out how to do it easily – though I was able to create a route after much time and effort. I can even create a route more easily in the Garmin that with Base Camp on the computer – I would think it should be the other way around. I am sure I am missing something.
To clarify – you can tell any GPS to go from one place to another and just go the way the GPS tells you to go. But there may many reasons to take a route other than what the GPS says. I use the term force a route as a term of my own making. There may be a more technical term. An example would be when the GPS just wants you to use cuotas or Interstate Highways and we want to take the libres or back roads. So we can put in “waypoints” and tell the GPS to go from this point to this point to this point and so on until we have the designed the route we want to take.
Having the capability to design a route on the larger screen of a computer rather than the small screen of a handheld device is what makes these computer map planning programs valuable to us. We can see the whole route and we can see all the fine points we need to see to create a route that goes where we want. An example might be taking a periferico / libramiento instead of the route that takes us through the middle of Guadalajara or Mexico City.
Now that I seem to have learned how to post a picture I will try to post some screenshots of maps to compare S&T to Base Camp to show what they look like and how they show the same route. I use the Snipping Tool in Windows to create the screenshots.
Here are two shots showing a route from Guanajuato to Ajijic. Doing this in S&T took about 10 seconds while with Base Camp it could have been as much as a half hour. Admittedly I do not know how to use Base Camp.
Base Camp route
S&T route
And here are two shots of Guanajuato showing an overview of city streets. Both S&T and Base Camp can zoom in even closer to show finite details of the streets.
Base Camp Guanajuato
S&T Guanajuato
To clarify – you can tell any GPS to go from one place to another and just go the way the GPS tells you to go. But there may many reasons to take a route other than what the GPS says. I use the term force a route as a term of my own making. There may be a more technical term. An example would be when the GPS just wants you to use cuotas or Interstate Highways and we want to take the libres or back roads. So we can put in “waypoints” and tell the GPS to go from this point to this point to this point and so on until we have the designed the route we want to take.
Having the capability to design a route on the larger screen of a computer rather than the small screen of a handheld device is what makes these computer map planning programs valuable to us. We can see the whole route and we can see all the fine points we need to see to create a route that goes where we want. An example might be taking a periferico / libramiento instead of the route that takes us through the middle of Guadalajara or Mexico City.
Now that I seem to have learned how to post a picture I will try to post some screenshots of maps to compare S&T to Base Camp to show what they look like and how they show the same route. I use the Snipping Tool in Windows to create the screenshots.
Here are two shots showing a route from Guanajuato to Ajijic. Doing this in S&T took about 10 seconds while with Base Camp it could have been as much as a half hour. Admittedly I do not know how to use Base Camp.
Base Camp route
S&T route
And here are two shots of Guanajuato showing an overview of city streets. Both S&T and Base Camp can zoom in even closer to show finite details of the streets.
Base Camp Guanajuato
S&T Guanajuato
