Hi Ed,
Two kilometres out of town is hardly seriously 'outside of major population areas' (to quote myself). You will find that the Navteq maps are good in Edmonton, Calgary, along the Transcanada hiway corridor, along the #2 hiway corridor and across the Yellowhead hiway corridor. Although don't count on a lot of detail in many of the smaller centres even along those corridors.
Outside of those areas (okay, farther than 2km outside) it's a crapshoot.
Check an Alberta atlas or roadmap that shows the Red Deer river accurately. Now pull up the area around Gleniffer Lake on Streets & Trips and see the difference. ..
.. Ooops, you won't see Gleniffer Lake on S&T.
Look south of Spruce View on Hiway 54 and see if you can even find the river without zooming all the way out. At any zoom level that gives you detail it simply disappears. You will see all the range roads ending for no apparent reason but there is otherwise no sign of the river.
DMTI is another company that, like Navteq and TeleAtlas, compiles maps for various industries. They make the Metroguide Canada product for Garmin. Check this link and you should see the area I'm talking about. Compare it to that area in S&T to see what I'm talking about.
Now zoom in on the little community of Spruce View on hiway 54 in S&T, then check this link on the Garmin map viewer. Note that even though the Metroguide Canada assembled by DMTI is much older than S&T 2008, it has the street numbers. You will this sort of difference in detail everywhere.
Now the Gleniffer Lake example isn't a really good example either. The Dickson Dam that creates the Gleniffer Lake has been there for years and years. Even though the Metroguide Canada map shows the Red Deer River it still doesn't show the dam or the road across it. But it's also many years older than the Navteq product in S&T 2008. Garmin has not issued an update to Metroguide Canada for at least four years.
I can show you lots of other examples to illustrate the huge differences between Navteq's data and DMTI's data.
Unfortunately because there hasn't been an update from Garmin to the Metroguide Canada product since I bought it I can't tell how much more up to date it might or might not be on hiway changes, new subdivisions and such.
Just for one more example of how bad Navteq's data is, check this link in Castlegar. Pull up the same view in S&T. Take a look at how crudely the river and the islands at the junction of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers are rendered. (Well, according to Navteq there are no islands there.) And check the difference in detail in street naming and other stuff in and around Castlegar.
What the heck, let's do one more. Fernie has a pretty sizable river running through it. Check this link for Fernie. Now pull up the same area in S&T. ..Oops, no river at all.
For the record, this isn't a criticism of Microsoft Streets & Trips. It's just to illustrate how poor the overall coverage of Navteq's 'North American' product really is. People who live in major population areas and never leave them, or travel only on major hiways between major centres will be generally happy with the product. Anyone who, like me, likes to avoid such areas will constantly be finding deficiencies like this.
I'm fortunate that I have an alternative and something else to compare to. Now if Garmin would just update the darn thing.
..ken..