Unified Business Solutions

Microsoft has released MapPoint 2010 and Streets & Trips 2010.  I’m a big fan of Microsoft’s mapping software, having used either MapPoint or Streets & Trips for nearly a decade now.  This is the first time a new version of MapPoint has been released in consecutive years since 2002.  Hopefully, Microsoft will continue to update it annually just like its little sister product Streets & Trips.

MapPoint 2010 is a huge improvement over MapPoint 2009.  For one, Microsoft fixed a few things that they "broke" in MapPoint 2009.  Longtime readers of this blog know I was hugely disappointed with MapPoint 2009.  MapPoint 2009 got rid of all the hundreds of great pushpins that were available in previous versions of MapPoint and replaced them with a handful of ugly pushpins.  I am happy to announce that Microsoft heard our gripes, and all the great pushpins are back.  Another incredibly stupid decision in MapPoint 2009 was to remove the map view back and forward abilities.  That inane decision has been reversed and it’s back in MapPoint 2010.  But MapPoint 2010 isn’t just about correcting the blunders in MapPoint 2009 and refreshing the mapping data.  There are some great new features as well.  There has been some nice features added involving the pushpin datasets.  Now you have the ability to hide and show entire sets of pushpins.  I can have multiple data sets on my maps and not have all them showing at once all the time.  You can also show and hide all the pushpin info boxes at once instead of opening and closing all of them one-by-one.  There are more selections of Nearby Places although they still have not put the “Zoos” choice back, but don’t get me started on that again.  The ability to reroute is now significantly easier.  You need only click and drag the route over to the new road.  Microsoft has claimed you could easily re-route for years, but this is the first time they’ve actually delivered.  Unfortunately, it adds “stops” to the trip plan every time you re-route, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.  I may not need to use the “avoid area” trick anymore.  There’s also some nice exporting features in this release such as sending routes to GPS devices and exporting to the industry standard GPX format.  Plus, there are even more great features that I didn’t even mention!

Overall, I’m very excited about MapPoint 2010, but you don’t need to take my word for it.  You can download free trial versions of MapPoint 2010 and Streets & Trips 2010 and see for yourself.

Bing – MapPoint 2010 Released – Bing Maps Blog – Bing Community