Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 5

Making Maps

In This Chapter

Basic map functions

Taking a map offline

Working through the settings

Microsoft has had a short and rather tortured history with maps. Microsoft MapPoint emerged from the Expedia Streets and Trips Planner 98, which shipped in Office 97. It was released as a standalone product in 2000, and updated many times afterward, finally succumbing to much better mapping products in 2013.

Bing Maps, an outgrowth of MapPoint and MSN Virtual Earth, started in late 2010, and it’s still alive. You can see the latest at www.microsoft.com/maps.

The Windows Maps app, on the other hand, draws from one of the seminal sources of map information: HERE, a Nokia brand, which Nokia kept when it sold its much-larger telephone business to Microsoft. Windows Maps uses the HERE database, but superimposes Telenav Scout traffic information.

As I write this, HERE is about to go through some major changes, with a consortium of Mercedes, BMW, and Audi in line to take over. It’s hard to tell what HERE’s new ownership will mean for the Windows Maps app.

Remarkably, the Windows ...