Microsoft Puts Drivers on the Map With Streets & Trips 2004

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 5, 2003 — Paving the way with superior travel and mapping products, Microsoft Corp. today launched Microsoft®
Streets & Trips 2004. During the past four years, Streets & Trips has remained the No. 1 best-selling travel and mapping software 1 solution, delivering an inclusive array of maps, points of interest, routes, detailed driving directions and Pocket PC compatibility with real-time Global Positioning System (GPS) support in one value-priced software package.

According to the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), total domestic leisure travel is up 2.1 percent in 2003, over last year. 2 The TIA also reported that 81 percent of domestic leisure travel is made by car, truck or RV. 3 Many of these weekend
“road warriors”
will make last-minute plans, furthering their need for a complete, customizable and portable mapping software solution. Streets & Trips 2004 fulfills this need; it provides consumers with new tools such as drive-time zones, the ability to see one-way streets and real-time GPS support, making it ideal for everyday travel, weekend trips and cross-country vacations across the United States and Canada.

“With the added benefits of Pocket PC compatibility and real-time GPS support, pleasure and business travelers can use Microsoft Streets & Trips 2004 to explore new cities and plan accurate routes with confidence,”
said Goca Micic, senior marketing manager in the Home Retail Division at Microsoft.
“Our customers are looking for a product that, beyond simply helping them plan family vacations, can help them coordinate the school car pool or plan routes for daily errands. They’ll find it all in Streets & Trips 2004.”

Streets & Trips 2004 incorporates the following new features and tools:

  • New!
    Drive-time zones and one-way streets. Streets & Trips 2004 now enables travelers to generate drive-time zones, a feature that allows them to see on a map how far they could travel within a specified amount of time. Streets & Trips 2004 also now lets users view one-way streets for more accurate trip planning. One-way streets are noted with arrows right on the streets.

  • New!
    Real-time GPS support. Drivers can find out exactly where they are at virtually every turn. They simply connect a GPS receiver to their laptop running Streets & Trips 2004 or a Pocket PC running Pocket Streets 2004 (included with Streets & Trips 2004) to see their exact location right on their screen.

Streets & Trips 2004 also includes the following standard features:

  • Turn-by-Turn Driving Directions. Streets & Trips 2004 allows users to obtain address-to-address driving directions for virtually anywhere in the United States and Canada.

  • Exporting to Pocket Streets. Travelers equipped with Streets & Trips 2004 can export maps to Pocket PC devices for use on the road. Using Pocket Streets, which comes on the Streets & Trips CD, users can interact with the map by looking up addresses, panning, zooming and using pushpins.

  • Route Planner. Travelers can view, add, delete or rearrange their destinations with this tool. Advanced routing features also let them input current fuel costs, driving speed, and preferred roads and routes (e.g., the shortest or quickest). Streets & Trips 2004 also can optimize travelers’ routes if they have multiple destinations.

  • Office drawing and map annotation tools. Consistent with the tools users have come to expect from Microsoft applications, the comprehensive set of drawing tools in Streets & Trips 2004 allows users to customize their maps. The familiar set of Office drawing tools has been adapted to create tools specifically for annotating a map. Travelers can highlight areas, draw lines, add arrows, display a radius, insert text, add pushpins and more.

  • Advanced searching to locate an address or place. Streets & Trips 2004 contains more than 1.3 million addresses, places and points of interest across the United States and Canada that travelers can find on the map. The Find box lets users quickly enter a street address or name of a place and locate it instantly. If they don’t know the correct spelling, Smart Find intelligently suggests matches.

  • Patented Snap-Routing technology. Snap-Routing allows users to drag and drop a route anywhere on the user’s map, and watch it snap into place while the map and driving directions recalculate automatically — even for the most complex journey.

  • Saving as a Web page, sending maps via e-mail, or using five print layouts. Users can incorporate their Streets & Trips map as part of a Web page, send it via e-mail to friends and colleagues, or print it out in any of five formats:

  • Map-only output format prints out only the map.

  • Driving Directions format prints out only the driving directions.

  • Turn-by-Turn maps and Driving Directions format provides small maps that guide users through confusing city streets, tricky intersections, highway entrances and exit ramps. Driving Directions also will now feature one-way streets to enable more-accurate trip planning.

  • Strip Map and Directions format provides turn-by-turn driving directions printed below or to the side of the map.

  • Highlighted Places Map format highlights the points of interests selected by users.

  • Finding what’s nearby (points of interest). Users can locate points of interest on their route or virtually anywhere on the map by simply checking the boxes of the types of places they would like displayed. For example, more than 492,000 restaurants, 128,000 ATMs and banks, 58,000 gas stations, and 7,000 golf courses can be displayed.

  • Road construction updates. Travelers can save valuable travel time by receiving alerts about local construction or road closures. Information is updated and ready for download from the Web.

Immediate, Accurate and Customizable Maps

Streets & Trips 2004 instantly meets consumers’ mapping and travel needs without requiring them to wait for an Internet connection. Unlike most Internet mapping sites, Streets & Trips 2004 allows users to customize their map to offer multiple-destination driving directions showing the best route to all their stops. Streets & Trips 2004 delivers high-quality, up-to-date maps of the United States and Canada thanks to Microsoft’s work with some of the most respected data providers in the world: Geographic Data Technology Inc. and Navigation Technologies Corp. for the map and routing data, Woodall’s for campground and recreation information, and vendors such as Acxiom Corp. For information about Streets & Trips’ more than 1.3 million points of interest.

Availability

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2004 is available today throughout the United States for an estimated retail price 4 of $39.95 (U.S.), or less after applicable mail-in rebate offers (certain rebate offer restrictions apply).

More information about Streets & Trips can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/streets/ .

About Microsoft Home Retail Division

Microsoft Home Retail Division (HRD) is a leading publisher of home software for the PC. Celebrating Microsoft’s 20 years of delivering products that help consumers accomplish and enjoy everyday tasks, HRD brings consumers the Microsoft Encarta®
encyclopedia, the industry’s best-selling 5 encyclopedia brand; Microsoft Digital Image products, which combine advanced photo-editing features and unmatched organizational tools with unparalleled ease of use; Microsoft Money, easy-to-use personal finance management software; Microsoft Streets & Trips, Microsoft’s all-in-one mapping solution with points of interest, routes, driving directions and Pocket PC compatibility in one value-priced software package; and Microsoft Works Suite, the best-selling 6 integrated home productivity software, which offers six of the latest essential home software titles in one package for tremendous value. Used with the MSN®
network of Internet services, these products have a unique depth and mobility that allow users to take their PC experience even further. More information about the Home Retail Division product lineup is available at http://www.microsoft.com/discover/ .

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.

1 Source: NPD TechworldSM, March 1998–April 2003, based on total U.S. retail sales

2 Source: According to the TIA, this is in regard to
“person-trips”
; a person-trip is one person on one trip traveling 50 miles or more from home, one way.

3 Source: Travel Industry Association of America (July 2003), special permission granted

4 Actual retail prices may vary.

5 Source: NPD Techworld, March 1993–March 2003, based on total U.S. retail sales

6 Source: NPD Techworld, March 1993–March 2002, based on total U.S. retail sales

Microsoft, Encarta and MSN are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

Certain mapping and direction data provided by Geographic Data Technology Inc. under license and copyright. (c) 2002 Geographic Data Technology Inc. and (c) 1991–2002 Government of Canada (Statistics Canada and/or Geomatics Canada), all rights reserved.

The GDT logo is a registered trademark of Geographic Data Technology Inc.

NAVTECH and NAVTECH ON BOARD are trademarks of Navigation Technologies. All rights reserved. (c) Copyright 2002 Navigation Technologies.

Woodall’s and the Woodall’s logo are registered trademarks of Woodall Publications Corp. Copyright (c) 2002 by Woodall Publications Corp. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2002 Acxiom Corp. All rights reserved.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp .

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