AutoRoute Great Britain & Europe 2003 (new version is Autoroute 2004, asin: B0000BY7X8)

AutoRoute 2003 has the information needed to make it easier to get where you want to go, with new maps for Sweden and Portugal plus street-level information for more countries. That means you can type in two addresses (AutoRoute 2003 can decipher post codes or suggest matches for places with hard-to-spell names to make it easier) and get driving directions with estimated times. You can also see useful places along the way from ATMs and petrol stations to pubs, tube stops and hotels. There are 400,000 "points of interest" across the 13 countries the maps cover and you can import your own address data (for the UK only) or stick (virtual) pins in the map to mark places. Add any of these to the journey and decide how long you want to spend there and AutoRoute 2003 adds them to the directions.

You can also customise the routes AutoRoute 2003 comes up with, either by specifying which kind of roads you prefer to drive on, or by telling it the roads you don't want to drive down. You can mark a whole area to avoid or drag the route onto a different road.

Unless you're taking a laptop in the car you'll want to print the maps and directions and AutoRoute 2003 gives you an excellent choice of map styles to print out, including turn-by-turn diagrams or strips of the map with directions printed alongside. You can also export maps to view on your Pocket PC (the software includes an updated version of the Pocket Streets program) or save them as Web pages.

AutoRoute 2003 doesn't have the same level of detail for all countries. England, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are particularly well covered though, and the route-finding tools are powerful, flexible and easy to use. If you're driving in Western Europe for business or pleasure, AutoRoute 2003 will help you stay on the right road. --Mary Branscombe