Microsoft debuts 2011 Streets & Trips this week

Microsoft's Streets & Trips has been the nation's #1 best-selling travel and map software for eleven straight years and they have just launched their 2011 version. With the software loaded onto your laptop you can map trips between one point and another, create routes, and have your laptop deliver it to you in several different forms--including turn-by-turn spoken directions.

But that's the easy part. With your laptop in the hands of your navigator, you can search the data base for over 1.9 million stops along the way, including restaurants, gas stations, tourist destinations, and rest stops while on the fly.

But the real magic of the software, is that whenever you have a wireless connection, you have the ability to search online for millions of services and points of interest along your route, including those locations that are of your particular interest, such as nautical museums, kid-friendly restaurants, Civil War historic sites, wildlife refuges, and nude beaches, and plot them on your map with a pushpin icon.

But that's not all. By adjusting your settings and entering data specific to your style of driving, you can record your gas mileage, travel only two-lane roads, choose the shortest or the fastest route, schedule rest stops, and much more.

You can download a 60-day Trial Version of the basic program and try it out before you buy. The main program, that sells for a reasonable $69.95, includes a USB plug-in GPS that brings it all together. I will post a more complete test of Streets & Trips after a further evaluation.

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2011 Trial edition