Trip Planning and GPS Software

[timandsusan]

I have used DeLorme Street Atlas and Topo software for 10 years. Now that Garmin bought DeLorme--these products are not available. Has anyone found another software program runs on laptop for trip planning and GPS tracking while driving?

[J_herb]

Fizz wrote:

J herb wrote:

I can setup a trip and that works fine than when I go to hookup my antenna to the USB and want to start the trip windows won't find the antenna ( configure GPS )( not detected )it works fine on windows 8.1
I have reinstalled S&T and it didn't help, did you do something special to get yours to work ? I understand that others have had the same problem, they say MS didn't put drivers in windows 10 for S&T antenna.

Sorry about the confusion.
I never ran it with the GPS.
I only plan out my route then upload to Garmin

Fizz, thanks for getting back to me! and yes everything works fine until I go to using the GPS. Im going to have a tech reinstall windows 7 so I can use S&T with the GPS antenna. It's good to know that I could upload it to a Garmin GPS.

[fj12ryder]

^^^^^^BaseCamp will do that. I just now input about 20 campgrounds and created a route in the proper order and it took about 10 seconds to create a route to all of the campgrounds. Not a big deal. Find the campgrounds, input them in the order you want, then have Basecamp create the route. There are several ways to configure the routing so you will hopefully end up on the type of roads you want. 🙂

I usually create routes for several days at a time, that way I leave room for adjustments and changes.

[Hdmod]

Looking for a trip planner/optimizer that I can load 30-40 Rv campgrounds in and it maps out the route. I have not found anything that works off the net.

I used Mappoint in my business and that worked really well........but not out on the road and it is unsupported and I am a google fan now.........

[Fizz]

J herb wrote:

I can setup a trip and that works fine than when I go to hookup my antenna to the USB and want to start the trip windows won't find the antenna ( configure GPS )( not detected )it works fine on windows 8.1
I have reinstalled S&T and it didn't help, did you do something special to get yours to work ? I understand that others have had the same problem, they say MS didn't put drivers in windows 10 for S&T antenna.

Sorry about the confusion.
I never ran it with the GPS.
I only plan out my route then upload to Garmin

[J_herb]

Fizz wrote:

J herb wrote:
I really like my Streets & Trips 2013 and since Microsoft is not going to fix windows 10 so I can run S&T I'm going to go back to windows 7 on my netbook that I use for trips.

I have no problem running S&T 2013 on my desktop or laptop, both are Win 10.

I can setup a trip and that works fine than when I go to hookup my antenna to the USB and want to start the trip windows won't find the antenna ( configure GPS )( not detected )it works fine on windows 8.1
I have reinstalled S&T and it didn't help, did you do something special to get yours to work ? I understand that others have had the same problem, they say MS didn't put drivers in windows 10 for S&T antenna.

[Fizz]

J herb wrote:
I really like my Streets & Trips 2013 and since Microsoft is not going to fix windows 10 so I can run S&T I'm going to go back to windows 7 on my netbook that I use for trips.

I have no problem running S&T 2013 on my desktop or laptop, both are Win 10.

[J_herb]

I really like my Streets & Trips 2013 and since Microsoft is not going to fix windows 10 so I can run S&T I'm going to go back to windows 7 on my netbook that I use for trips.

[timandsusan]

Thanks for the info. I agree with each of you. I plan to use SA until something else appears. Since there are road changes, I use my vehicle based GPS and a Garmin my wife has for some assistance. But for planning it is SA and I like by large screen for seeing the maps while traveling. Let's keep watching for something new.

[fj12ryder]

I used Mapsource before Garmin updated it and replaced it with BaseCamp. You can do the GPS tracks with BaseCamp if you wish. Not a big deal. Can easily be downloaded from the GPS device.

Personally I can't see a lot of difference between the two, except BaseCamp has more route configurations.

[ORbiker]

fj12ryder wrote:
Mapsource is still available, but the new name is BaseCamp. Same program, just updated and renamed.

Mapsource is so much more then BaseCamp ever will be. Basecamp is horrible.

Garmin had a good thing for years, but focused on their security of the programs too much. I've had GPS's from Garmin since they first came out. I was in Lane County SAR here in Oregon for 10 years. Maps are great, but when you jump out into the thick woods of western Oregon it sure is nice to have plotted where the truck is, so that you can safely bring out the lost party and your team.

Here is a screenshot of the laptop after a weeks riding the motorcycle in Eastern Oregon. The GPS tracks what I did and saves it.

[fj12ryder]

As long as you stick to the roads the map shows you're good. But you sure can't zoom in on those paper maps like you can the electronic ones. 🙂 The roads I like usually aren't on the standard road maps.

[Fizz]

Horizon170 wrote:
I don't use/trust the electronic stuff to get from point A to point B.
Truckers road map has been good for us the last 30+ years. I update every 2 years.

That's like preferring a typewriter over a word processor. You can do a lot of various tasks with that "electronic stuff"

[Horizon170]

I don't use/trust the electronic stuff to get from point A to point B.
Truckers road map has been good for us the last 30+ years. I update every 2 years.

[Healeyman]

Tim,

Another Tim here from north Dallas, TX.

When we started RVing in 2003, I did trip planning using Microsoft Streets & Trips. Here is the trip plan for our first trip in 2003.



As we drove, I would follow the trip plan with the laptop on a table installed between the driver and passenger seat. I had a yellow GPS module on the dash which fed into S&T on the laptop.



If we changed the route during the drive, which happened a LOT, I updated at the end of the day so that we would have an accurate record of where we went.

We now have a different RV, a different laptop, no table, and a different version of S&T.

Now I still plan the trip Using MS S&T, but now I manually load it one day at a time into a windshield mounted Garmin. If we make unplanned side trips my phone does pretty well at finding things. I still make trip updates at the end of the day.

I have used this process for 14 years and it still works for me.

Tim