                         Tripmaker for Windows
                         Reviewed by Doug Reed
 
    Rand McNally describes Tripmaker for Windows as the "all-in-one
computer software solution for planning a trip by car in the United
States, Canada, and Mexico." It contains up-to-date maps of over 640,900
miles of roads and 125,000 cities and towns. The program itself is easy
to load and you should be able to use it with minimal reading of the
manual. Tripmaker is very user-friendly and makes good use of
smarticons.
    What makes this program very simple to use, though, is the Trip
Guide, which asks you questions about your trip and then can very
quickly plan the trip for you. Trip Guide asks you the starting location
and destination, and allows you to customize the trip to suit you. You
can assign stopovers, the distance travelled per day, and adjust the
trip for the quickest, shortest, or most scenic route. Once Trip Guide
calculates the trip, you can adjust it even more, by changing the
locations where you stop at end of each day and the numbers of days
spent in different locations. You can also ask it to avoid certain areas
(if, for instance, you don't want to drive through the downtown area of
a major city). After finishing its calculations, Tripmaker then displays
a map of your trip and an itinerary. You can zoom the map yourself or
click on different sections of the itinerary to have Tripmaker zoom to
those locations for you. The level of detail of the maps is impressive;
not only ar e major highways and intersta tes shown, but also lakes,
rivers, and attractions. These maps can be printed out for you to take
on the trip with you.
    Unfortunately, the maps printed out by my Epson 12 pin dot matrix
printer are barely usable; to get good high quality maps requires a
modern color printer or laser printer. The maps included with the Press
Guide were pretty and useful; just be aware that to obtain such images
requires a high quality printer.
    Tripmaker can do more for you than simply draw out your trip. Provided
with the daily costs of hotels, entertainment, food, and an estimate of
gas prices and mileage, it can provide a good estimate of the total
budget required for your trip. If you need suggestions of the
attractions along your trip and places to stay, Tripmaker can help you.
You can then pick the ones you find interesting and add these to your
list of stopovers. It also includes 5 Attraction Packs that list
thousands of exciting attractions: Discovering History; Urban
Attractions; Fun for Kids; Airports, Military Bases and Universities;
and Scenic Tours. The first four can suggest possible destinations or
stopovers, based on either your interests or locale. The Scenic Tours
pack, on the other hand, comes with 88 preplanned trips. By telling the
program what area of the country you are interested in, it can suggest
several pre-made tours of local attractions and scener y. Each trip
comes with a short narrative to tell you where you will be going and
what you can see. You can very easily add one or more of these
preplanned trips to your itinerary, and Tripmaker makes all  the
calculations for you. Additional Attraction Packs are available from
Rand McNally.
    There is only one problem with this program. The scale printed next
to the map by the printer was not even close to being accurate. On one
of the maps it indicated that the distance between Dallas, Texas and
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to be less than one hundred miles; I know from
experience that it is 200 miles between the two cities. The itinerary
that was printed out, however, had the correct mileage on it. So stick
to the itinerary and forget the printed maps.
    Overall I would say that I really like this program. It is easy o
use and capable of doing a great deal of the planning required in
preparing for a cross-country trip by car. The scenic tours are also a
nice touch. If you like to take trips by car, this program is a
must-have.

                         Rand McNally New Media
                     8255 North Central Park Avenue
                         Skokie, IL 60076-2970
                             (708) 329-8100
 

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