Wouldn't it be nice to leave that big, wrinkled map at home and instead get door-to-door directions downloaded from the Internet?

MapQuest and a slew of other Web sites promise to do just that. But out on the street, travelers find digital directions aren't always a match for a good, old-fashioned road map.
http://travel.wsj.com/n/SB959801411757583530-main.html

My first test of an on-line map was asking for directions to the house of my business partner. Mapquest had me turn off a street running along the bottom of a cliff onto one that ended at the top of that cliff. From an airplane, or to a computer that took into account only the N-S and E-W coordinates of a point, they probably look like they intersect, but it's hard to drive up the cliff.

Fortunately, I had been there several times before and knew enough to go the long way around to the other end of the street at the top of the cliff, but if I hadn't ...

I too have gone the wrong way in following directions from an online map service, in my case, Yahoo. It directed me several miles away from my destination in San Diego, into what seemed to be cemetery, rather than the company I was going to visit.

More recently, I purchase a copy of MS Streets & Trips and used it to locate a company in Phoenix. Driving from the hotel, the directions got us almost there correctly. The company is on the right side of the street, but just before getting there, the directions said to make a left turn up a side street for 50 yds!

That said, I have had success with both the online and the Streets & Trips software. The latter was particularly valuable this summer in planning our vacation as it located several Sheraton hotels in the areas where we wanted to visit on the East Coast, after Starwood Preferred Guest reservations could not tell us where the hotels were located in relation to the attractions we were interested in -- and I am SPG Platinum .

Yahoo!'s map had me touring some VERY unsavory-looking portions of OKC looking for my hotel.

A call to the hotel revealed that I was a good 10 miles away from where I should be.

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"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

It can get hilarious sometimes! I recently was in SAN on business and was supposed to meet my new client at his golf club - Marbella Golf and Country Club - close to San Juan Capistrano - yahoo maps was doing great until I realized I was at the end of the directions but was in downtown SJC. I may be confused about many things, but I knew right away there wasn't a golf course downtown After calling the club, I was a good 6 miles away. Apparently, the map software took me to the closest downtown for the zip code I entered.

Fortunately, I made the tee time, but barely! The golf, on the other hand, was anything but successful - KILLER course!

I find the Yahoo ones great so long as it's freeway driving. However, it went insane when I had it do directions in Boston. (For those of you who have driven in Boston, I suppose there's no surprise in that). I was going from Brookline to Hyde Park and boy did it get it wrong. And it gets ugly fast near Hyde Park, so I was none too pleased.

Once you get out into the country, a small error on the site's part can be a big problem. I can remember using a net site to map a trip between NW Tennessee and St. Louis, and the site was convinced there was a non-existant bridge over the Mississsippi River.

We knew there was no bridge, but if we'd followed the net directions instead of the paper road atlas, we would have had to back track 40+ miles over very narrow 2 lane raods in rural Kentucky.