Originally Posted by
joer1212
1. don't have enough detail
How much detail do you require? If you want to get down to individual residences in cities with populations of 10+ million, too much detail can be painful.
2. are not able to be previewed before I purchase them (even in miniature version)
Can't assist on this point unless I do some digging myself
This is another variation of point 1, so my response is the same
Are we talking 1 year, 5 year, 10 years? I would say 2 years or more recent is probably good enough. As I mentioned up thread, you might miss out on a few subway lines, but subway lines tend to be built in order to importance (i.e. the oldest ones are the most useful)
5. are WAY too expensive ($200 for a Streetwise map of Shanghai? Really??!)
Well, then the free maps are probably worth a little more consideration. Or drop $15 each on LPs for Shanghai and Taipei.
6. are laminated (I need to write on them)
You can use a permanent marker if this is a deal breaker
7. It's too bad that Google Maps became garbage when it was updated a few years ago. I used to print out detailed maps of huge cities (such as London and Moscow), with virtually all the street names included. In order to do this now, you'd have to zoom way in and print 40 pages to cover the whole city. I don't understand how Google thought this was a good idea.
I agree that the decline of Google Maps is a bit of a shocker. My biggest current beef is that they show subway stations, but not subway lines (if there is a way to display them, I haven't figured it out yet). But, Baidu is still quite solid, and even useful if your Chinese reading ability isn't so great. If nothing else, you can compare them against subway route maps -- save all to your phone