RAC Routeplanner - where do you want to go today? (rac.co.uk/services/routeplanner/)

Member Name: oxjdc

Product:	rac.co.uk/services/routeplanner/
Date:	17/08/00 (1629 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free and efficient

Disadvantages: Crashes, limited

Kick me if this is already in the category somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.

http://www.rac.co.uk/services/routeplanner/

Is a nifty little service from the Royal Automobile Club. You type in your starting and finishing destinations for a journey, and the gizmo tells you the best route – you can specify whether you want this to be the shortest mileage, or the one they believe will be the quickest

Click the button, and you get a pretty picture of a rescaleable map, together with a description of the route you ought to take, in the hope that this will stop you getting lost . It’ll also tell you whether there are any delays known along the stretches of road you are likely to be travelling.


This is an excellent service – something for which people often pay, but free. On the other hand, this does mean that the server sometimes gets overloaded. This isn’t usually a permanent crash, so patience is a virtue in these instances (as is judicious use of the “refresh” key.

My only other criticism would be that it is very hung up on towns – it’s not too good at recognising villages, city areas, stations and so forth – for instance it denies all knowledge of a place known as “Charing Cross”. The best way around this is to find out the start of the postcode for the place you are going, and use that instead. It seems very happy with postcodes.

jdcxxx

Summary: