I purchased RouteBuddy last year when it was new. I had high hopes for it, based upon the advertising, but it's definitely "not there" yet.

Before I go into the program, itself, it should be said that unless one has the latest and most powerful laptop (Intel Mac), you had better forget about even trying it. I had a new laptop at the time, just purchased a few months prior to getting RouteBuddy (G4 14" iBook, 1.42 MHz, 512 MB RAM). It was extremely slow, so slow that it was basically impossible to use. It took 5-10 minutes to even open up the basic starting document with a map showing. Everytime the map was moved on the page, it would take another 5-10 minutes to redraw it with the new map. It took 14 GB of space to place the map file on the iBook hard drive. I had to just about trash everything that I really wanted on my iBook just to try the program out. So, unless you've got the "greateast and latest" laptop -- forget it, it's not going to work in a practical sense (unless you like waiting 30 minutes to get a couple of "points" on the map).

As far as finding addresses, "no can do". You have to know where something is on the map and navigate to it, by moving the map to the location. The problem is, you don't always know where something is. As far as "routing" a course to a destination, well, at first, the program put me on the wrong side of the freeways, going into exit ramps instead of entrance ramps and basically driving on whatever side of the road that the program wanted. I reported it and it was said that it was going to be fixed. Don't know if it has been, because I can barely get the program to run. It takes me, basically, all day, just to test something out (so you can guess I hardly use it, at all).

Besides driving on the wrong side of the road, the program does not automatically put you on main streets to get to your destination, but rather, runs you around in back neighborhoods and almost around in circles to get somewhere. It doesn't make any sense at all.

I thought that "Route 66" was an absolutely terrible program and nothing could get worse. Well, I was wrong, unfortunately. Perhaps things will get better -- but -- it's got a *long ways* to go before it even matches "up to" Route 66 (and that's terrible to say).

Things are not "Mac intuitive" either. Like, for instance, deleting a "waypoint" -- I would figure that one would just select it and select "Delete" from the Edit Menu or perhaps the "Cut" from the Menu (works in a lot of other Mac applications) or "Command-X" would normaly work, too. But, no -- none of that worked. I hunted and hunted before I found out that you hit the "Delete Key" to delete it. What is that? -- from the Windows world??!! If it was from the "Mac World" at least it would be "Command-Delete" instead of just plain "Delete" (besides the fact that *nothing* else would work besides just that one thing). And..., can you "restore" if you accidently hit just the "Delete" key -- no, not that I know of. It might be there, but no one is saying. At least, if it were "Command-Delete" it would be harder to accidently do. And then, you would think that "Command-Z" would work, too. But, nope, no way! Like I said -- *totally* un-Mac-like!

And there are a *lot* of other "non-Mac-intuitive" parts to it. So, I'm not sure what "world" these programmers come from. Perhaps they're from the "geeky, command-line, type-it" world of the Windows and/or Linux people -- I don't know. They're sure not "Mac-types" or they would have known that, for sure (plus a whole lot of other "Mac" types of things).

I would advise them to *adhere* to the standard and well-known and true and tried "Mac-interface" and the "Mac-standard" of doing things, if they intend to create a "Mac program".

So, as I said -- it's got a "long ways to go" and "it's not there yet."

I hope we do get some kind of good mapping, routing and driving program, that can run on *normal* laptops and be "Mac-like". We sure need it. But, the way it looks now, the only alternative is to go for Parallels Desktop and get a good "Windows" mapping program. At least they know how to make them work and work right.