Product Reviews

Although this route planning package used to go by the name Travelmanager Europe, the phrase 'parts of Europe' would have been more accurate. All the former Eastern Block countries, including those that comprised Yugoslavia, are absent, and even Greece is excluded. For those countries that are included the level of detail can be sparse. Main roads and entire towns are missing from the west coast of Ireland, for example. But perhaps the most annoying aspect of this package is that it doesn't load completely on the hard disk when you install it. Much of the mapping data remains on

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the four CDs, and you're continually instructed to insert a different disc into the CD drive.

Apart from these limitations, Easy Travel does its main task of working out a route reasonably well. Where other packages might take half a minute to calculate a new route across Europe, Easy Travel will do the job and plot it on the map in around 10 seconds. It also includes a large database of points of interest but, sadly, there's no support for GPS-assisted navigation.

If Easy Travel is a fairly basic route planning tool, how does it compare with the free services available on the web? As you might expect, free services differ considerably in quality. The AA site is much less sophisticated than Easy Travel in a number of respects but the Via Michelin site appears to offer very similar facilities. If you don't want to have to rely on mobile phone coverage to provide internet access in more remote areas, a laptop with Easy Travel might be a more reliable option. Unfortunately, though, this entry-level package doesn't have an entry-level price. Other route planning packages such as Map & Guide (reviewed in the next column) provide more information for less.