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Flash: Thanks to DeLorme’s new rebate program, you can pick up a copy of its three-CD-ROM Phone Search USA 2.0 telephone number search package for a low-low-low $29. You get what you pay for. As a business tool, this bargain-bin denizen proves woefully inadequate.
Quick: Name three items you’d want to find in a business-strength phone disk.
– Direct importing of tab-delineated names or numbers to generate mailing lists? Not with Phone Search USA.
– Proximity searches, to find customers within, say, 25 concentric miles of your business? Nope.
– Up-to-the-minute, comprehensive listings? Phone Search USA sports 80 million-plus numbers — paltry in comparison to some of its competitors, which offer up to 110 million or more. DeLorme’s data is supplied by Database America Companies, which, DeLorme says, “gathers its information from various sources.”
Ma Bell they’re not. While it’s hard to tell overall accuracy on three disks covering the U.S., an attempt to think globally and act locally — searching by using names from my address book — showed out-of-date information (or no available listing) for about four out of every 10 of my address book entries. And I KNOW these people exist. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to bet my business on odds like that. So what DO you get for your hard-earned $29? A hit-or-miss consumer tool. Looking for a way to track down that long-lost college roommate? Phone Search USA is cheaper than a private detective It offers a plain-Jane interface (but then, it’s a phone book, not Wired magazine). Fill in the blanks for name, address, or phone number, if all you have is a number that you’re trying to match a business or person to. The fewer entry fields you specify, the wider the cybernet will be tossed — and the greater the chance of mismatches. There are 27 John Butterfields in at eastern states and the District of Columbia, for instance (Phone Search USA did turn up my correct address and telephone number among the 27). But go TOO specific and you run the risk of drawing a blank. While Phone Search USA ignores capitalization and punctuation, it doesn’t allow for near misses, alternative spellings or the like.
Hit return and your CD-ROM drive will whir for a few seconds,
until a scrollable window fills with a list of names, addresses and numbers matching your criteria on the disk you’re accessing. You can save the results, either in total, or picking and choosing — a necessity when your erstwhile roomie’s number could be salted away anywhere over three disks. Plug in another disk (easier said than done; Phone Search USA’s on-disk Microsoft-style help program is infuriatingly obtuse), and you can run the same drill, compiling more potential roomies. Once you’re satisfied, you can export the results into a variety of word processing formats. None of which necessarily leads you any closer to your roomie. But at least you’ve got a list of names. Of course, there’s no indication as to how accurate that list is, or how complete, or how up-to-date. Given the dismal results from my address book experiment, I suspect you’d be better off donating the $29 to your alma mater and calling the alumni office to find your long-lost buddy.
A slightly more successful wrinkle arises through Phone Search USA’s ability to search for businesses via federal Standard Industrial Classifications — numerical categories for everything from plumbing contractors to nut-tree farms. This makes the package an effective, if limited, way to search for local businesses. For example, I conducted a search using the SIC for ‘plumbing contractors’ and a location of ‘Arlington, Va.’ After 14 seconds of cranking, Phone Search USA displayed 20 Arlington plumbers. (By way of comparison, the local Arlington Yellow Pages lists more than 45). Restricting the criteria further by searching only in my area code brought the number down to seven local businesses. Handy.
So is there any reason at all to choose Phone Search USA over any of its competitors, or directory assistance, for that matter? One, which saved it from an even lower overall rating: its interlocking functionality with DeLorme’s truly cool, leader-of-the-pack CD-ROM mapping program, Street Atlas USA 3.0. On this freshly revised single-disk program DeLorme has shoehorned 25 million street segments, a million landmarks, and schools, parks, railroads, lakes, rivers, and the like. If you access Phone Book USA through Street Atlas, you can (with difficulty, multiple disk switches, and no help whatsoever from the help program) find an address and telephone number, and then print out a street map of the exact location. Which will be of no help whatsoever if you’re still looking for that missing college roomie, since you have no idea which of the bazillion John Smiths is your John Smith, and therefore have no way to know what address you need a map to reach. But if you do know who or what you’re looking for, and need a locator map to find how to get there, this is one slick item. DeLorme’s pushing the interactivity of the disks hard; it’s even selling them together in a two-fer pack ($59 the other day at CompUSA). Unfortunately it’s a classic case of bundling a winner with a dog to move Bowser off the shelves. As a stand-alone product, Phone Book USA 2.0 falls apart. But hey, DeLorme: If you ever get the phone disks to function with the completeness, slickness and utility of Street Atlas USA 3.0, give me a call.
| Product: | DeLorme Phone Search USA 2.0 |
| Company: | DeLorme |
| Cost: | $49 ($59 when packaged with Street Atlas USA 3.0) |
Windows: IBM-compatible 386SX (33MHz) or higher computer; 4 MB RAM minimum (9 MB RAM recommended); 4 MB hard drive space); CD-ROM drive, VGA graphics; mouse; Microsoft Windows 3.1 (will work with Windows 95 and Windows NT); DOS 4.01 or higher. Macintosh: Macintosh 68030 or greater processor, System 7.0 or later; 4 MB RAM< , 4 MB hard drive space; CD-ROM drive, color monitor.
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