Hmm.. One of the strongest points for me using Streets and Trips was after the route is generated it is so easy to customize it.
Do many stand alone GPS units have an ability like that? Or just use preplan notes as the main reference and just ignore turn directions you disagree with when they came up.
Mine's an older Garmin and I can only add one stop-off along the route. So customization is very limited in my case. But most of the newer units allow several stop-offs, like 50 more with many of them, to allow you to customize (a.k.a. force your will onto the thing). Some units allow you to favor or ignore certain specific roads, just like Streets & Trips does.
Mine has the option to select Truck or Car routes, and Faster or Shorter for each one. Usually, one of these ends up being the best route, but not always. Sometimes Streets & Trips (or Google Navigator or PC Miler) will have a completely different routing, but more often than not all of them are similar, with just one or two major deviations. You can note the best route if it's from Streets & Trips or whatever, then where the Garmin and Streets & Trips differ (like turn right on this road to go up through Houston instead of going straight to San Antonio and then up through Dallas), go the Streets and & Trips way and the Garmin will quickly figure it out and recalculate the new route, which from that point on will match the laptop's routing.
For example, let's say you have a load from New Orleans to Laredo, and the Garmin wants you to go through Houston to San Antonio and then down I-35 to Laredo, which is roughly 700 miles, but Streets & Trips wants you to go to Houston and then down US 59 through Victoria and straight on down to Laredo, which is 650 miles. The major difference in the route is to turn or not in Houston. If you make the turn, within a few minutes of being on US 59, sometimes after several recalculations, soon enough a recalculation will show that staying on 59 is the better route instead of doing a U-turn to get back on the original route. From that point on, the Garmin will route you the same way that Streets & Trips did in the first place.
That's how I work the Garmin, by using the other tools like Streets & Trips, PC Miler and the Droid, to get the best routing. The vast majority of the time, the Garmin is the one to go with, anyway, tho.
A standalone unit, like a Garmin, is not the same as Streets & Trips, so you can't try and make it the same. If you do try, you'll get frustrated and won't like it. Streets and Trips isn't the same as a Trucker's Atlas, or PC Miler, or MapQuest. You have to work with each one they way they are designed, rather than how you want them to be designed. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Like Google Maps or the Google Navigator will find addresses and businesses that the Garmin, Streets & Trips and most all the others cannot find, but Google Navigator's routing often leaves a lot to be desired. But you can use it to find a place, then locate the same place on the Garmin map, then tell the Garmin to go to that location, even if the Garmin doesn't know that there's an address there. Browse the Garmin map, zoom in to the location that matches Google, then hit GO on the Garmin and it will calculate your routing.
As much as I love my laptop and can't be without it, I've come to think of the Garmin in the same way. I wouldn't want to be out here without it, even if I have the Streets & Trips GPS thingy with me here in the truck if the Garmin goes out. If the Garmin does, I'll use Streets & Trips with the GPS in a pinch, but only until I get get the Garmin replaced.
Bottom line is, no matter how staunchly laptop GPS users defending their using it, a standalone is safer than using a laptop. A standalone takes some getting use to, obviously, but it doesn't take much time, and once you get the hang of it, it's as fast or faster to set up a route than is using the laptop. Some people go on and on about how with a standalone you can't do this and you can't do that, like you can with Streets & Trips, but the reality is yes you can, just maybe not in the same way.
All I know is, with one exception, everyone I've ever talked to that went from a laptop and Streets & Trips to a (good) standalone (like Garmin, Tom Tom, Rand McNally), they have never gone back to using the laptop for GPS. They use the GPS for GPS, and the laptop for more broad mapping and checking the standalone's routing.
If you're like most people, you'll get a GPS and then run it and Streets & Trips at the same time, for about a week. And then turn the laptop off while driving and just use the GPS unit.
