Street Finder

AA Autoroute, Route Planner, Streets & Trips

By Jane. November 26, 2008

Is AA Autoroute 2007 the last release for this well loved software?

Originally created in the late 1980s by UK company NextBase. It was a clunky old DOS application to begin with, yet extremely impressive. I fondly remember installing it from seemingly hundreds of floppy discs onto an old 386 machine. It was later ported to Windows and then, as is often the case with successful software, quickly bought up by Microsoft in 1994. In it's day A a Autoroute was a must have, something that you'd keep on your hard drive just in case ever you wanted to know the location of a weird looking postcode or the slowest route to an unwanted visit to relatives.

Close to 20 years later, in these days of free online maps and tiny sized GPS mapping devices in our cars, PDAs and even phones - You might well wonder what the age old classic Autoroute has to offer.

Well, to start off, GPS works very well with Auto route but, unless you like lugging a heavy PC around, probably only worth using on a laptop and even then best restricted to passenger use, not one for the driver. A win there for new fangled Tomtom style GPS devices then.

Unlike online maps of course, you have the mapping data permanently installed to your hard drive, taking up gigabytes of drive space offers surely an advantage in speed. Sure enough the maps pan smoothly and load quicker than their on-line counterparts but the maps do look old and tired compared to the smooth lines of googlemaps for instance.

Do we need DVD based aa auto route in a 21st century with super fast broadband and everyone slowly moving to 'the cloud? The answer, probably not. Which is maybe why Microsoft has decided to drop Autoroute, at least from the UK, the last version being Autoroute 2007.

Alternatives to Autoroute

• AA Route planner - AA's Autoroute app is decent route planning software with bang up to date 2008 maps offering quickest and painless way to find the best route for any UK journey. Recommended if all you're after is route planning.
• Includes the most up-to-date road networks


• Select your journey by clicking your starting point directly from the map, followed by destination


• You can even export the information into a .csv file and save journeys by trip and date


• Automatically links between the AA's published atlases


• The chosen route is highlighted on a map, with the options of avoiding motorways


• You can even reverse the route


• Multi-zoom and pan tools for easy map navigation


• Save your favourite routes


• Print out a map and/or directions of your journey

• Map Point - Die hard auto route fans may want to look at Mappoint. Microsoft's expensive mapping software for the pro. Offering data presentation software designed for analysis, visualization and communication of business information using maps and geographical data.

• MS Streets and Trips - ok this is just the American version of our dear Autoroute but they look to have a 2009 release.

• Memory Map - no route planning function at all here, but we do get those beautifully detailed UK OS maps (at additional cost per map though) and a 3d projected view. Indespensible for serious hill walkers. It integrates perfectly with a GPS, with a pocket version installable to a GPS enabled windows mobile device.

Related Links : Autoroute 2007