Product Reviews

There are a number of decent GPS systems on the market, and now Microsoft has joined the fray with a new version of Autoroute, which supports GPS navigation and is available with a USB GPS receiver.

Carrying a notebook in the car with you may seem slightly inconvenient, so Autoroute 2006 is also shipped with cut-down versions for Pocket PC and Windows Smartphone. Even so, only a PC's large screen can do the excellent mapping software justice. It covers the whole of Western Europe, and the maps are very clear. You can search

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for individual roads and attractions such as the Brandenburg Gate or Blackpool Tower, and the software moves the map there in under a second.

However, Autoroute 2006 is essentially a navigation aid. The Route Planner works well, working out complicated routes almost instantly, but the main change with the 2006 version is the inclusion of GPS navigation. We tested the software by taking a notebook on the road.

The receiver found a GPS signal very quickly, but the navigation software was appalling. The instructions were often unclear (telling us to "go on to ramp" as we approached two ramps, one going up and one going down) and when we missed a turning the software refused to recalculate, simply complaining that we were "off route" all the time. It is possible to force the software to re-route from your current position, but the recalculation was so slow that we were hopelessly lost by the time it had finished thinking.

Microsoft's Autoroute 2006 is good value as a comprehensive map of Europe, but the GPS navigation feels unfinished and is hopelessly out of its depth compared with any other system.