Route 66 - Britain / Europe Professional 2005 Review
Route 66 has been available for a number of years and has recently been updated. The latest version is the 2005 edition, and this brings with it a plethora of features for Laptop/PC Users.

Route 66 is basically a mapping program for the PC. Very similar to Microsoft AutoRoute and other similar programs in terms of features, it's a low cost solution to have complete European maps on the PC, and to be able to attach a GPS Receiver and see your position on a moving map.

Route 66 calculated the most reliable and accurate trip for your journey and contains more than 6.2 million streets and more than 770,000 Points Of Interest across Western Europe including POI's like Hotels, Restaurants, Theatres, Petrol Stations and much more.

Main Features
- Export maps and routes to your Palm or Pocket PC
- Import addresses from Access, Excel, FoxPro and Outlook Contacts
- Print out maps and routes for use on the road
- Add any number of waypoints to your route
- Professional geographic data form leading in-car navigation manufacturers
- Free up-to-date traffic information for Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands
- GPS-Compatible
- Over 3.1 million miles of road
- Over 770,000 Points Of Interest
- Over 63 million house numbers

Using Route 66
Route 66 is very easy to setup, it's advisable to install the complete version to your PC. it will take up around 1.5gb of disk space, but will be worth it so you don't have to keep swapping CD's in and out. When you run Route 66, it's easy to navigate, there's only one screen which is the map screen, but you can select various overlay windows like Traffic Information, GPS etc.

There are two modes of Route 66. The first is Route planning that allows you to search for any sort of address, or Point Of Interest and navigate to this, and the other mode is the map/routing screen like below where you can see the map, your highlighted route and your position on the map.

When driving a route, you will see the highlighted route in pink. Unfortunately Route 66 doesn't automatically re-route you if you go off the planned route, so you do need to either re-join the original route, or add a new waypoint to the journey, delete it and this will allow the Calculate button to re-appear. Route 66 therefore prefers you to stay on the planned route and not to deviate from it in any way.

Routing Algorithm's
Routing Algorithm's appear to be calculated on a fastest/direct route. This cannot be changed, but you can tweak the road speeds which are configured for miles per hour or km/h and this will make some difference to the way routes are calculated.

Traffic Information
One thing that is new within Route 66 is the Traffic Information and it is a great feature! Traffic support covers Britain, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands and provides you with up to date traffic information direct over the internet to automatically recalculate your route.

What's more, Traffic Information is free of charge once you have an internet connection established to your PC/Laptop.

When you plan your route, Traffic will check the Route 66 Internet Server for any traffic information alerts for the country you select. This doesn't only just cover the route that is plotted for you, it will download all TMC (Traffic Message Channel) data for the country at that point in time. If there are any traffic incidents or slow downs, Route 66 will not only report it on the map, but will show a description for each traffic incident.

Traffic Information will re-plan your route to avoid some of the more severe traffic incidents, and you can manually exclude roads from your route by placing a Road Block over a road.

GPS Hardware Requirement
Any GPS Receiver that outputs NMEA which includes SiRF and Evermore based GPS Receivers should work with Route 66 providing you have the relevant PC USB/Serial drivers installed onto the PC. Just point Route 66 to the correct COM port and settings, and away you go!

Technical Specification - System Requirements
- Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP
- Pentium 400 MHz Processor
- 128mb Ram
- 1.48GB Available hard disk space
- CD-Rom Drive (8x)

Technical Specification - Optional
- NMEA 013 2.0 GPS Receiver
- Internet Connection
- Pocket PC 2000 or higher + Serial Connector
- Palm OS 3.5.0 + HotSync Manager 3.0.1 or higher

PDA Exporting of Maps and Routes
With the 2005 edition of Route 66 you can export maps and routes to a Pocket PC or Palm OS PDA. It will not give you routing, but it will download images of either your current view, driving directions, strip maps or turn by turn maps. This is offered as a visual guide just in case you don't have a PC in-car and you want to see where the next turn should be.

Conclusion
Whether you just want to use a mapping program at your desk on your PC, or whether you want to take your Laptop or Tablet PC in-car and use it for navigation, Route 66 is a combined solution. You don't get automatic re-routing or voice navigation, so it's not a complete navigation product, but it does come at a good price! If you are looking for a complete navigation product for the PC, check out our InfoMap Navigator 3 review.