Product: MapPoint 2001
Company: Microsoft
Website: http://www.microsoft.com
Estimated Street Price: $249.00
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Review By: Julien JAY

Introduction

Microsoft has just released MapPoint 2001, the first software of its upcoming Microsoft 2001 line of products. Microsoft MapPoint 2001 is (as you can guess) an innovating mapping corporate software that is part of the Microsoft Office family. This second release of the software (the first one was MapPoint 2000) is built around the technologies used by Microsoft Expedia and Microsoft Streets & Trips. Microsoft MapPoint® 2001 combines powerful map-making and analysis functionality with the simplicity of Office. The focuses of this release are to provide users easy to use software to quickly identify geographic locations, visually analyze business data, and effortlessly create, customize, and integrate maps into Office documents. Microsoft designed it to answer corporate users’ needs: 

• Find address or places in towns
• Identify business opportunities
• Define new potential sales areas
• Identify accomplished sales to illustrate activities in an area
• Integer maps with other Microsoft Office applications

Features list

The release of Microsoft MapPoint 2001 is the hard work’s accomplishment of the Microsoft Geographic Business unit. Microsoft created its geography unit after buying NextBase Ltd, the maker of the famous ‘Automap Road Atlas’ software and released its first mapping software in early 1995. Years by years the Microsoft Geographic team has improved this mapping software by including new features, enhancing existing ones, and boosting performances of this pioneer software. Microsoft even released new geographic related software based on the acquired technologies like Microsoft World Atlas and its online service maps.expedia.com. With the arrival of MapPoint the Microsoft geographic related range of products grows in order to satisfy the needs of home and corporate users.

Setup

Installing Microsoft MapPoint 2001 is more than a breeze! In just a few minutes (well exactly 2 on our powerful test system) the software will be fully installed and ready to be used. The setup uses the Microsoft Windows Installer Technology to bring users an unrivalled setup experience. However the setup look & feel isn’t exactly the same than with Microsoft Office 2000 Premium as it more looks like the Microsoft PictureIt! 2000 one. When installing the software, you are being offered two choices: install only the application and let the huge mapping data on the CD (so it requires the CD to work) or copy everything on the hard disk to avoid the use of the CD. Most users will choose the compact installation, as the full install is very big (585 to 640Mb)! Only network administrators or laptop users will have to perform the full install.