Programs That’ll Put You on the Map

This week I look at some programs that can help you get where you’re going, or at least tell you a little about what to expect once you get there.

Automap draws maps and prints detailed driving instructions between U.S. towns and cities. Street Atlas USA, which requires a PC with Windows and a CD-ROM drive, provides detailed street maps for virtually any city or town in the United States. For those whose horizons are more global, PC-Globe and Mac Globe provide maps and information on more than 200 countries.

Automap is a great tool for anyone planning a driving trip in the United States or between the United States and major Canadian cities.

There are two ways to use the program. You can display a national, regional or state map and use your mouse to click on your starting point, destination and any stops along the way. Or you can type in the names of the towns and let the program find them for you.

In either case, the program calculates various alternative routes, including the quickest, shortest or the route with the least (or most) interstate highways. You can even tell it the names of highways to avoid. I like this feature because I prefer avoiding interstates when driving on vacation.

The program will print out maps and driving directions. The map can be limited to just the area where you’re traveling. You can add or delete detail (such as small towns and county roads) and can determine whether to display rivers, lakes, political boundaries, recreation areas and other features.

I found the printed maps a little hard to follow. They’re OK for general orientation but I’d still bring along a regular atlas or set of maps. I was very impressed by the printed driving instructions. The program generates a table with detailed instructions including every turn and road change along the way.

It also provides distances and estimated driving time between towns and road changes. There is a database that includes major recreation areas but these areas are not clearly identified on the map.

The software also provides information on state and major city populations, laws of the road and phone numbers for road conditions, weather, tourist information and hotel and car rental agencies.

Automap has a suggested price of $99.95. It requires an IBM-compatible PC with a hard drive and 512 kilobytes of memory. It uses about 4 megabytes of disk space. A Windows version is forthcoming. A mouse is optional. The company also publishes a European version. Automap Inc. can be reached at (800) 545-6626.

Automap doesn’t provide detailed maps of individual cities and towns. For that, I recommend Street Atlas USA from Delorme Mapping of Freeport, Me.: (800) 452-5931. The $169 program, according to its publisher, provides detailed maps with every street in every city and town in the United States.

It requires that your PC be equipped with a compact disc drive and Microsoft Windows. I used the program to find a detailed, accurate map of my own neighborhood. I also used it during the recent Los Angeles riots to locate streets and neighborhoods that were in the news.

You can locate an area if you know the name of the town, the ZIP code or the telephone area code and exchange. Once you locate a town, you can enter the name of any street.

You can also use the mouse to navigate throughout the map displaying various levels of detail. It doesn’t provide printed instructions nor does it mark all freeway exits. Nevertheless, it provides information that could be very useful for trucking companies, sales forces and others who need directions and maps.

You can print maps or you can save them as graphic files so that they can be edited or enhanced using just about any compatible drawing or painting program.

PC Globe and PC USA (and their Macintosh equivalents, Mac Globe and Mac USA) won’t help you get to your destination, but they will help you learn a lot more about it. They’re really educational programs for the study of geography, economics and world politics.

The programs start by displaying a map of the world. You can navigate with the mouse or enter the name of the country you want to locate.

Once there, you see a map of the country, its flag and an opportunity to hear a crude but recognizable version of the national anthem through the computer’s speaker.

The newest MS-DOS version (version 5) was finished in March of this year and includes the newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union.

The programs can display and print detailed statistics on the various countries. These include population figures, age distributions, health statistics, literacy rate, gross national product, number of schools and much more. It also displays tourist information and data on the government and its leaders.

Comparison charts allow you to relate statistics across selected countries and regions. This can be an excellent educational tool as well as a fun way to prepare for a trip. The company, PC Globe Inc. at (602) 730-9000, also publishes PC-USA and Mac-USA with maps and statistics about all 50 states.

Computer File welcomes reader comments but regrets that the authors cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Lawrence J. Magid, P.O. Box 620477, Woodside, Calif. 94062, or contact the L. Magid account on the MCI electronic mail system.