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|-=>CompuNotes<=-|
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Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing
April 10, 1997
Issue 73
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Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@inlink.com
Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- 
mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com
Graphics Editor, Webmaster: Judy Litt mailto:jlitt@aol.com
Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/
LOOK *** NEW WEBSITE!!!!!
Website: <http://www.geocities.com/~compunotes>
email: mailto:notes@inlink.com
fax: (314) 909-1662
voice: (314) 909-1662
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CONTENTS
My Notes:
1=> Link to Us!
2=> This Week's Winner!
3=> New Writers Needed!

Reviews:
4=> Product: Blood & Magic
Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com
5=> Product: Internet FastFind
Reviewed By: Doug Reed mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com
6=> Product: Snagit/32
Reviewed By: Judy Litt, mailto:jlitt@qualitty.com
7=> Product:  Delorme Street Atlas USA Ver 4.0
Reviewed By: Michael Gallo, mailto:gallomike@aol.com
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CompuNotes is: Available weekly via email and on-line. We cover the PC
computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great
columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week
to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull,
sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way
it is! Please tell every online friend you know about us!
CompuNotes
B440    
1315 Woodgate Drive
St. Louis, MO 63122
notes@inlink.com   
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Patrick's Notes
1=> Link to Us!
Well, we have a new website up and running! Please come visit us! We 
have a complete archive of all CompuNotes sites up and about 30% of 
the reviews we have done!

Our page: http://www.geocities.com/~compunotes

We would also like to offer a link on our LINKS page to you! All it 
takes is you putting a link of us on your page! We'll then add you to 
the list of CompuNotes supporters who have their own page! We even 
have a neat graphic for your to use if you would like!

Send the details of your page to Patrick Grote. 
mailto:pgrote@inlink.com.

2=> Winner!
This week's winner is mailto:chris@ed-tech.com! Send them a
congrats message mailto:chris@ed-tech.com!

3=> Would you like to write for us?

Well the time has come again for us to find new writers. If you would 
like to write for CompuNotes, there are three ways to do so. First, 
you can send a message to me at mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com and I will 
add you to our list of potential new reviewers. 

When we get a list together that none of our current reviewers wants, 
you get the list and if you are lucky enough to be among the first to 
reply you may get something. One such list was sent out recently and 
another will probably be sent in the next week or so. 

Alternatively, you can write website reviews for us or review 
shareware & freeware that is available over the Net. To do either, 
contact me at mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com and put the area you would 
like to review in as the subject. If you can write two 
shareware/freeware or two website reviews, you can also become a 
software reviewer. 

4=> Product: Blood & Magic
Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com
Requirements: DOS, 486/66, 2xCDROM, 8MB
MSRP:$49.95

Thanks to the success of Warcraft and Command & Conquer the strategy 
genre of computer games has seen an explosion lately of real-time 
strategy games. Interplay has no less than two new entries into the 
arena, M.A.X. (a futuristic Dune-II style game) and Blood & Magic (BAM 
for short). BAM is part of Interplay's new license with TSR, the first 
of a series of new AD&D games set in the Forgotten Realms. If you are 
a long time AD&D player there is probably much here that is familiar to 
you, even though this is a strategy game and not an RPG. Scanning the 
newsgroups brings up very little mention of BAM - more attention has 
been focussed on MAX (and I'll tell you why when I review it). For 
those or inexperienced with real-time games BAM is a treat. Hardcore 
real-time fans should be forewarned, however, that BAM does not offer 
all the bells and whistles that other games in the same genre do. 

First and foremost I like the fact that in this day and age when 
everything coming out requires a Pentium, BAM still runs (and runs 
well) on a 486. The graphics are VGA, not SVGA, but are nice to look 
at and are reasonably smooth. Graphics don't have to be 24-bit, 256- 
color wonders to look good, and the graphics in BAM are very 
appealing. In fact, it looks a lot like the graphics from Master of 
Magic, only BAM's are a little smoother and better looking. 
Introductions and cutscenes are nothing more than slightly animated 
still pictures, a disappointment in this day of high-tech animated 
scenes. 

I did have a heck of time installing the game, mainly because the 
soundcard setup utility choked on my GUS PnP Pro during autodetect and 
crashed the computer. I had to reinstall BAM, then set the sound card 
manually (no big deal), and then everything worked just fine. The 
sound is good but not great. Sounds like swordfighting, opponents 
dying, all come across clear and distinct on my card, however the game 
is lacking in it's musical score. The game comes with a very short and 
useless manual, but luckily does include a tutorial that explains the 
basic game mechanics. I don't really hate the manual - all it really 
does, though, is give you the basic storyline and tell you how to set 
up the game. Nothing about how to build, create, fight, or any of the 
other knowledge required to actually play the game once you get it 
loaded. 

Enough with the problems, let's get down to gameplay. Essentially it 
goes like this. You are a wizard who controls a bloodforge, a mighty 
magical relic that enables you to create basal golems and collect 
mana, the source of magical power. Basal golems serve as the conduits 
for collecting that mana, but they also can be transformed into a wide 
variety of higher beings with strange and magical powers (30 in all). 
BAM allows for either single or multiplayer games (multiplayer is via 
hot-seat, direct link, or LAN). In single player mode the player can 
choose from one of five different campaigns, ranging in difficulty 
from beginner to expert. There are three battles in each campaign, 
with defined objectives for each side. In addition, "neutral" monsters 
and magical relics litter the landscape, adding some variety to the 
battles. Once the five campaigns are completed, the player can choose 
to go on a Legendary Campaign, a series of increasingly harder random 
battles. Legendary campaigns consist of an additional fifteen battles, 
with the goal being the conquest of the Forgotten Realms. In the 
initial five campaigns the player can choose to play one side or the 
other (generally one is good and the other evil); in a legendary 
campaign the player creates their own custom persona. 

A player begins a battle with a couple of golems and a Bloodforge, 
which both stores the players mana and creates basal golems to carry 
out the player's commands. Unknown portions of the map are blacked 
out, leaving the player to send a golem or two out to explore the 
surroundings and find any goodies or opponents. Goodies come in two 
flavors; magical items that confer powers upon the creature carrying 
the item or foundations for mystical sites. Players convert 
foundations into mystical sites by placing one golem on each of the 
four corners; this triggers a transformation in the foundation and the 
player can choose one of five different mystical sites. Unlike most 
fantasy games, the player is not limited to sites that are "good" or 
"evil", so you can choose to create both a temple to create virtuous 
followers and a crypt to create "dreadful minions" (to quote the 
book). This way the player is free to choose the creatures he/she 
prefers to fight with and develop a winning strategy around them. 
However, once a site is built it doesn't mean that the player can 
immediately choose the most powerful monsters! The game restricts the 
player by forcing them to research both spells and creatures before 
they can be used. Research is driven by both the player's experience 
and the amount of mana in the bloodforge. You get experience for 
almost everything (such as casting a 5 mana healing spell). While a 
neat idea, it does create an easy cheat: it is possible to prolong 
early battles almost indefinitely, allowing the player to collect 
enormous amounts of experience, mana, and research in the early going. 

So, the $50,000 dollar question is does BAM measure up to the rest of 
the real-time crowd? Not really. For one thing, BAM includes air and 
land combat, but not naval combat. Further, BAM lacks the "spawning" 
mode of other games like Warcraft II and Command & Conquer whereby 
only one copy of the game is needed to play a multi-player game over a 
network. BAM does offer, however, fun and engaging battles with a very 
wide variety of monsters to choose from and do battle with. If you are 
new to the real-time genre, however, I think that BAM might be a great 
game to start with. First, the game is relatively easy to grasp and 
straightforward in its method of creating your army and smashing your 
opponents. Further, the computer opponent is good but not great, 
giving you a chance to try out a "weak" opponent before moving onto 
other games with much tougher AI's. Interplay's first venture into the 
AD&D universe is not a great one, but it ain't bad either. 

Interplay Productions  
16815 Von Karman Ave.          
Irvine, CA  92606                  
				    
Internet E-mail:  mailto:Info@Interplay.com
Web Site:  <http://www.interplay.com>
American On-Line: Keyword INTERPLAY
    or E-mail IPTECH
CompuServe: GO GAMEPUB
    or E-mail 76702,1342
Genie:  Type M805;1 or go to the Bulletin Board in Scorpia's area
Prodigy: Use the Web  browser to our Web Site
    or E-mail PLAY99B
FTP Site:  ftp.interplay.com

Ratings:
Installation/Ease of Use: Silver
User-Friendliness: Silver
Quality: Silver
User: Novice strategy gamers

5=> Product: Internet FastFind
Reviewed By: Doug Reed mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com
Requirements: Windows 95/NT 4.0, Internet Explorer 3.0/Netscape 
Navigator 3.0
MSRP: $49.95

I have to tell you that when I first received Internet FastFind (IFF 
for short) to review, I was prepared not to like the product. Gail 
Marsella had originally received IFF to review but was unable to get 
it to work, primarily because IFF refuses to work with anything other 
than Microsofts 32-bit winsock. Anyone so shortsighted, in my book, 
could not have possibly designed a truly useful program. But beyond 
this glaring error, I found IFF to be not only easy to use but very 
useful for its intended purpose: finding what you need on the 
Internet, as quickly as possible. IFF is actually a great product, 
barring of course that one bug I just mentioned (give them the benefit 
of a doubt I say and hope they fix it soon). 

IFF consists of 7 different components designed to simplify your life 
on the Internet, all wrapped into one shell. Installation is the only 
real part of this software I didnt like. First, like all Symantec 
utility software you are required to install all of the components - 
no options. Secondly, again like almost any other Symantec utility, 
IFF willfully feels free to change any and all file associations 
without bothering to ask first (it replaced WinZip with EasyZip for 
Zip files, much in the same way that Norton Navigator did exactly the 
same thing). Secondly it added two new icons to my desktop, which is 
beginning to look extraordinarily cluttered. Seriously, what is the 
deal with these companies that they feel like we MUST have their 
softwares icon on our desktop? Havent they learned that about the 
Start menu yet? Symantec makes this a major pain with IFF with the 
disclaimer on their website that removal of the EasyFTP icon will 
disable EasyFTP - now, if anyone can explain why EasyFTP requires a 
desktop icon to function and no other FTP program does, Id love to 
here it. What arrogance! 

If you think I hate IFF, youre wrong. EasyFTP and EasyZip I could do 
without - I already had programs to fill those roles, and I simply 
would have like the option to choose to not install them or at the 
very least they not alter the file associations. I also would like a 
less cluttered desktop! 

The most common component of IFF that you will use is WebFind. WebFind 
is very similar to other search tools you can find out there - it 
simply sends your query to all of the available search engines and 
compiles their responses. You can tailor this by adding or removing 
search engines and setting time limits for completion of the search. 
One nice touch I havent seen before is that WebFind does remove 
duplicate entries from the list before presenting it to you - saving 
you the hassle of looking at the same site twice in the list. WebFind 
can be started from the Start Menu but it also exists as a button at 
the top of your browser - just click on the button to bring up 
WebFind. The results are loaded directly into your browser, again 
making it easy and convenient to look through the results of your 
search. By default, the last 10 searches are saved in a folder for 
easy retrieval at a later date should you want to go back to a 
previous results. One really nice touch with WebFind is under the 
options menu - you can have WebFind verify that the links being 
reported are valid. Anyone who has spent serious time searching with 
the various web engines knows that it seems like nearly half the links 
reported by the search are invalid - this is a great option, and 
although it slows down the search somewhat is a great idea 
nonetheless. 

NetFileFind is another search tool included with IFF but is not that 
useful. Essentially it searches public FTP sites for files (or file 
types) that you interested in, allowing you to quickly and easily 
download the file once found with EasyFTP. While in principal the idea 
is not bad, the problem is that if you dont know the file name you 
arent going to find it. NetFileFind can find files based on a portion 
of the name, but again youve got to know at least a portion of the 
name. And god forbid you try searching for all files of a particular 
type - can you imagine how many *.mid files there are out there? Of 
course, NetFileFind just finds the file - but nevertheless while its 
looking its eating processor time. 

Coupled with NetFileFind is my least favorite part of IFF, EasyFTP. 
EasyFTP is designed to be simple to use and operate, and it is - but 
it is very limited. EasyFTP works by treating FTP sites as if they 
were a directory on your hard drive - you can access them through 
Explorer. EasyFTP comes with a large number of hardware and software 
vendor sites as well as a collection of public FTP sites, so chances 
are you can find the site you are interested in already present. By 
treating FTP sites like a directory on your hard drive it is easy to 
quickly copy or move files from your computer to the FTP site or vice 
versa. So far, so good - it works great. But EasyFTP does not 
understand dynamic addressing - FTP files that tell where to find 
other files. For example, if you log onto ftp.uu.net and go the 
published directory looking for the archive directory for CompuNotes, 
what you find instead is a file called Compunotes.z - and EasyFTP 
cannot read this file, so it cannot find where the back issues of 
CompuNotes are. Aggravating, to say the least! 

PatchConnect is an extension of EasyFTP that actually does work quite 
well. IFF reads your system files to determine what hardware and 
software you have installed, then when PatchConnect is loaded it can 
quickly and easily scan the various vendors ftp sites to find the 
latest patches and drivers for your system. This greatly simplifies 
what has become a pressing need amongst computer users - quickly and 
easily staying up to date with the components that comprise your 
computer. 

Notify is a rather straightforward program. Like WebFind, it adds a 
button to the top of your browser, and when pressed you can add a 
particular page to a list. Notify scans the page at predetermined 
times that you set, and if it finds that the page has been changed it 
notifies you and can take you directly to the page. Similarly, 
WebLaunch allows you to launch Web pages directly from your desktop by 
clicking on the WebLaunch icon in the taskbar and selecting the 
bookmarked page of choice. This convenient tools makes it so that your 
favorite pages are only a click away, even on your desktop. Hardly a 
necessary utility, but still kind of fun to have around. 

EasyZip is exactly that, a Zip compression/extraction utility designed 
to be easy to use and operate. It earns the distinction of my least 
favorite IFF utility simply because when I installed IFF it altered 
the Zip file association so that EasyZip is loaded instead of WinZip. 
Like EasyFTP, EasyZip is designed to work as part of Explorer, 
allowing you to open and extract files from a compressed file as if it 
were a directory on your hard drive. EasyZip also includes the ability 
to create a compressed zip file as well as a self- extracting archive. 

All in all I do like IFF, although I would have preferred more options 
during the install and would have liked at least being asked before 
file associations were altered. Beyond that IFF is a very useful 
program - I find myself constantly going back to WebFind. WebFind is 
the really great portion of IFF; you can set it up, configure it the 
way you want it to search, then set it off and go do other things 
while it works. When its done you can pop back and find the info you 
really wanted. Notify is also a very useful utility since it checks 
your favorite sites for you instead of you personally having to go to 
a page and then remember what it looked like the last time you were 
here. Keep in mind, though, that you do have to running Microsofts 32-
bit winsock in order to use IFF! Beyond that, I would not hesitate to 
recommend IFF to anyone who uses the Internet on a regular basis. 

Symantec, Inc.
10201 Torre Ave.
Cupertino, CA 95014
(800) 441-7234
Web: http://www.symantec.com

Ratings:
Installation: Bronze
User-Friendliness: Gold
Quality: Gold
User: All

6=> Product: Snagit/32
Reviewed By: Judy Litt, mailto:jlitt@qualitty.com
Reviewed on: Pentium Pro 200, 64 MB RAM, Windows 95, 12x CD-ROM
Requires: Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT version 3.51 or later, 
mouse or other pointing device
MSRP: $39.95

How to capture what is showing on a monitor's low resolution 
(typically 72 dpi) screen and print it to a higher resolution printer 
(300 dpi or higher), while retaining quality has been the bane of 
designers, software companies, writers, etc. No more! Snagit/32 will 
capture virtually any screen you can throw at it, and reproduce it 
beautifully. 

There are numerous screen capture utilities on the market: freeware, 
shareware, and commercial. Some work well; some, not so much. I have 
tried out quite a few, but I think I've found the last one I need to 
try in Snagit/32. 

There is no manual for this program. There's only a jewel case insert 
and help file. Works for me. 

Snagit/32 can capture the following windows:

Entire desktop
Entire window
Window client area (main body of the window inside its borders; does 
not include borders, title bar, menu bar, scroll bars/caption line) 
Last active window
Region (you select the region by drawing a box around the portion of 
the window you'd like to capture) 
Clipboard
Full-screen DOS
Windowed DOS

The only two I didn't try were the full-screen DOS and last active 
window. You can capture windows with the cursor, although this option 
is only available with the screen/last active window options. You 
capture screens by hitting the hot key (Cnrl+Shift+P by default, but 
you can change this). 

Do you need to capture an entire web page for output to a printer, but 
can't see the entire window on your monitor? With Snagit/32, it's no 
problem. Choose the Autoscroll feature (only available with entire 
window, window client area, last active window, and region options). 
Even though you can't see the entire window, Snagit/32 can capture it. 

You can output your captured windows directly to your printer, 
clipboard, file, or e-mail. You can also preview the capture before 
printing it or saving it. At that point you have a choice to print or 
finish the capture. However, you can't alter the file in any way 
(crop, change colors, etc.). You'll have to take the capture into your 
image editing program to edit it. 

You can save your screen captures in the following formats: bmp, pcx, 
tif, gif, or jpg (with the jpg option, you can choose the percentage 
of compression). You can also specify automatic file naming, so that 
the first capture is cap001.tif, the next is cap002.tif, and so on. 

Capturing software screens for use in printed materials can be a real 
challenge. I recently completed the design and layout of a software 
manual, with well over 100 screen captures. The writer took the screen 
captures, but we worked closely together on it. We had a good screen 
capture utility, but it wasn't as good as Snagit/32. In fact, when 
screen captures were required that included the cursor, she resorted 
to print screen. There is a noticeable difference. If I had had 
Snagit/32 at that point in time, all the screen captures could have 
looked beautiful. It's cheap, it's small, there's no manual, and it 
works like a charm. What more could you ask for? 

TechSmith Corporation
3001 Coolidge Road
Suite 400
East Lansing, MI 48823-6320
800-517-3001 Voice
517-333-1888 FAX
mailto:snagit@techsmith.com
<http://www.techsmith.com/>

Ratings:
Installation/Ease of Use: Gold
User Friendliness: Gold
Quality: Gold
User: Designers, writers; anyone who needs to capture software windows

7=> Product:  Delorme Street Atlas USA Ver 4.0
Reviewed By: Michael Gallo, mailto:gallomike@aol.com
Reviewed On: Pentium 100, 16MB RAM, 1.2 GB HD, 4X-CD, S3 SVGA
Requirements: 386(486 recommended), 8 MB RAM 9MB HD space, 
CD-ROM Drive, Windows 3.1, Super VGA (256 color)
MSRP: $49.95

I love to look at maps. I'm constantly looking for a better route to 
get to work in order to avoid the dreaded Washington Beltway traffic! 
That's why I really enjoyed putting Street Atlas USA through its 
paces. Street Atlas USA combines a highway road-atlas with a street 
level city map into one superb product. I really mean street level. 
Street Atlas goes right down to neighborhood blocks and streets. 

The program has a very easy to use interface. Clicking the mouse on 
any point on the map will first center the map on that location, 
clicking the mouse and dragging out a rectangle tells Street Atlas to 
zoom in on the map area inside the drawn rectangle. The outermost 
magnification is Mag4 (It must be some sort of mapping standard or 
else I would have called it mag 1). At this level the user can see 
entire Continental United States as well as Alaska and Hawaii. As 
title of the software implies, users can only see roads and street for 
states affiliated with the United States, no territories or 
protectorates are included. At the maximum magnification, MAG16, the 
scale is down to one tenth of a mile. This level allows users to see 
all the streets. 

The program provides only information that is relevant for the scale 
that is being viewed. This helps avoid information overload for the 
user as well as processing overload for the computer so that it 
doesn't have to print every street name in the United States on a 15" 
monitor. As the user zooms in, more detail is provided, and there is 
plenty of it! 

At Mag4 (the entire US), the user can see selected major city name, 
major interstates, and state boundaries. As you zoom in you being to 
see some of the less major cities, county boundary lines, zip code 
boundary lines, less major routes, parks, rivers, and eventually 
streets. There is a lot of information to plot on the screen, I found 
some of Mag levels were slow to redraw. I have a decent machine and it 
still took 5 -10 seconds to redraw a screen. That's not a lot of time 
for one screen, but it adds up quickly when you're trying to roam a 
map. My suggestion would be to keep the details to the minimum 
necessary until you've found the right spot on the map, then load up 
on the details. Otherwise, you'll find the task of traversing the map 
to become tedious due to the wait times. 

Street Altas is not like a road direction program. There is no 
function that allows the user to type in a start and finish address 
and then have the computer calculate a trip( that would be a neat 
feature!). One advantage that I found with Street Atlas was that I 
could calculate a fairly precise distance between home and work. This 
was accomplished by using the Draw line feature. In multi-line mode, I 
clicked the mouse to trace out my daily commute path to work. This 
feature is what I would call line of sight. 

That means it calculates the distance a bird would fly ignoring the 
winds and bends in a road. I calculated a precise distance by tracing 
the routes and streets, it came pretty close to what I would have 
measured with my odometer. 

Street Atlas' search engine allows the user to type in an address, and 
the program will then attempt to find a match and then place the user 
at that location. 

Street Atlas can also provide weather, construction and special event 
information that could cause delays or congestion. To use this feature 
I called up www.streetatlasusa.com on my web browser. After selecting 
update database option, I downloaded a tailored DB file that contained 
up to date information. A menu option in Street Atlas will update file 
downloaded from StreetAtlas' web site automatically. The whole process 
took about five minutes and I didn't have any problems. Bravo! 

If you're a teckie, you may already own a Global Positioning System. 
You may be in luck! The Global Position System (GPS) is a set of 
military satellites that fly high above the Earth. With a GPS 
receiver, a user can determine their exact coordinates(well almost 
exact, it's not to within inches, the military doesn't want you 
building a home made missile capable of flying as good as the 
Pentagon's stuff!) anywhere on Earth. If the GPS receiver is 
compatible with PC and is authorized to be used with Street Atlas, you 
can plug your receiver into your PC and then tell Street Atlas to 
access the GPS receiver. Now things get really cool. You can tell the 
program to plot your current coordinate on the map and to track your 
progress! 

This would be really neat to have on a trip. A passenger could get 
real time updates on Street Atlas' map that shows the overall trip 
progress. What a feeling of confidence travelers could have when they 
are in an unfamiliar city. Isn't technology wonderful? 

There are a few things that this program doesn't have. It does not 
have an exhaustive list of places and businesses. Also, you cannot get 
summary information about cities, but Street Atlas does provide zip 
codes, and for each zip code, a right mouse click provides demographic 
information including population, median home price, percent of 
households owned versus percent rented, median year the houses were 
built, average household income, average per capita income and some 
other stuff. This is really neat information to have if you're house 
hunting. If you have an idea where you would like to live, you can use 
Street Atlas to check out the neighborhood streets. Or if you're like 
me you can get very depressed and find out that to live near the 
Potomac River in Montgomery County Maryland requires a median 
investment of $400,000 for a home, OUCH! 

Printing out your maps is a breeze, and with a color printer, they'll 
look just like the color pages of a regular road atlas. This program 
will be great for printing custom directions, since the program allows 
users to annotate maps with both text, text bubbles, and symbols. I 
like directions where the majority of a page is the picture of the 
neighborhood you're going to. I then like to see a smaller inset box 
that show a wider view of the area with the major routes highlighted. 
Street Atlas allows the user to copy the current map screen wherever 
it is to the clipboard. From there it can be pasted to your favorite 
graphics application for some custom work. 

For those business road warriors out there, you'll like this feature. 
Street Atlas can be installed so that the map databases reside on your 
hard drive instead of your CD-ROM. There are two advantages: 1. Hard 
disk searches will be faster than CD-ROM searches, and 2. You don't 
have to tie up your CD-ROM drive. You can use it to play your favorite 
Red Hot Chili Peppers album while working. The one major drawback is 
that this option will eat up your hard drive. I downloaded map 
information for Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, it 
took up over 160 megs on the hard disk-- -YIKES! 

Nevertheless, I can't think of a better program for the business 
traveler to have on their notebook computer than this program. No more 
trying to find your hotel with those dinky little maps the car rental 
places give you! 

My one true disappointment came in the beginning. The first(obvious) 
task I performed after installing the product was to look up my 
address in Frederick Maryland. I'm located in a fairly new development 
that's been around since 1989. However, I could not find my street on 
the map--BOO! I'd like to see Delorme offer some sort of map database 
update so that users can keep their product current. I can understand 
that newer locations take time to get into geographic databases, but I 
think after being in existence for 8 years+ my development should 
finally make it onto some of the geographic maps. 

Overall, I give Street Atlas a high recommendation. You'll find it to 
be extremely helpful when planning trips, and if you're like me, you 
might even be able to shave an extra couple of minutes off your daily 
commute to work by finding better routes to take. Street Atlas doesn't 
have the search engine to plot out routes that minimize distance, 
time, fuel, etc. If you need those features you'll have to look 
elsewhere. 

Delorme
181 US Route 1 South
P.O. Box 298
Freeport, ME 044032
To order from Delorme's Home Page: http://www.delorme.com
Support email: mailto:support@delorme.com
Support phone: (207) 865-7098
Support fax:   (207) 865-9291
web: <http://www.streetatlasusa.com>

Ratings:
Installation/Ease of Use: Gold
User-Friendliness: Gold
Quality: Gold
User: All

--END OF ISSUE

