Well, I can't say that it opened effortlessly for me. I am a member of AAA, and have used their trip planning software in the past. Now it may be for this reason, and assuming that past sessions have left cookies behind, that the link takes me to an error page announcing that my session has expired. I can get from there to a new session easily enough, but it automatically takes me to the Arizona AAA home page (another indication that cookies are involved) from which I can link to the Internet TripTik page via the Maps and Directions menu. So I can launch the software easily enough, but it's a lot easier for me to do it from my preset (member's) bookmark. So I guess I'm not a lot of help on that score.
Now, they have, as Mark noted, added quite a few bells and whistles since the last time I used this program, and I have had a chance to test a few things. As a mapping routine, I have always thought - and still do - that this leaves a lot to be desired. I tested the 'Make a Map' function by giving it my home address, and it missed the location by a good block. I suppose you could find your way here from there, but you shouldn't have to. Similarly, I tested the 'Plan a Trip' function by setting out to reproduce a trip I took a couple of years ago to the Outer Banks, which included both Interstate and two lane travel. I gave it as many major cities as I could remember from the trip, and it did a good job of getting the basic route right, with a decided preference for Interstates, however. When I tried to get it to follow other highways, I would have to explicitly a number of towns along the way and re-map repeatedly. The 'rubber band' feature MS Streets and Trips is much easier and more intuitive to use.
This brings us to a couple of other annoying aspects to this tool. Every time I asked for a map, the initial result was an error message saying that they were experiencing some technical difficulties, and to please try again. When I clicked on "OK" the map appeared. but this should not be required. A second 'feature' that required more work than it should have was rearranging the list of cities to visit. If you add a city, it appears at the end of the list. If you are trying to add that city to the middle of your itinerary, say in order to force the program to route you down certain roads, you have to move it up the list by clicking on the up arrow to the right of the city. But doing this once moves the city (and its up arrow) up the list, so that you have to repeatedly move the cursor and click in order to 'walk' the city to its appropriate spot in the list.
So, my next test was to try out what I have found useful about AAA planing tools in the past, and that is the wealth of information available about attractions along the way. AAA is one of the few trip planning resources that points out the smaller, quieter venues available. These, for my purposes, include the smaller museums and historical societies, as well as quirky attractions like the little known Mississippi Petrified Forest. I must say that it is great to have such information, including hours of operation and admission fees, included with the map. But even this has its limitations. In large measure, I'm sure, due to the very quantity of data, the icons which indicate that information on possible attractions is available do not show up until the scale of the map is so small (zoomed in) that anything farther than two miles from the center of the map simply is not displayed. Thus you can't just have the software work out a route for you and then 'walk' down that route looking for off-the-wall sights. You either have to know about them beforehand or be searching a very small area, such as around an overnight stop,
To be honest, I still like being a member of AAA, and I usually get a paper TripTik for my major RoadTrips, but this software just isn't up to the same standards as others that I use.
AZBuck
