Google Earth

If anyone is interested, Google Earth Pro is available as a free download. Believe it cost about $399 per year before !!!

http://google-latlong.blogspot.it/2015/01/google-earth-pro-is-now-free.html

Thanks Geo, I just need a device capable of running it! Mind you I was a little surprised that the recommended RAM was only 1GB.

Hi Steve.

I am running 8Gb of ram. It is slow to load though due to the poor broadband speeds here though in the hinterland.
Perhaps one day they will spend some money on more modern technology.

Yes Geo that would be one of my problems as you really need at least 1MB download speed, despite the Google recommendation of 768Kb. As I think I've said before I'm no longer the big fan of Google I used to be, but they still have some great products, maps being one of them in my opinion.  We have used both their Street and their satellite view many a time to check out houses when buying. I still often use street view to do a virtual tour of road junctions before travelling. Don't think we would have made it across the Rome GRA without knowing what was needed to get on and straight off for Ciampino!  I note they are rolling out new functionality to provide historic street view data. I'm sure this will be well used as we just recently found images of our drive from 2009 on there, which might be very useful with the pending road changes the comune are doing.

Steve have you tried getting http://www.eutelia.it/ they provide around 6-7 Mb download speed and are especially suited to out of the way locations. We've had them for several years now and at €30/month with unlimited download, have rarely had a problem.

Flip wrote:Steve have you tried getting http://www.eutelia.it/ they provide around 6-7 Mb download speed and are especially suited to out of the way locations. We've had them for several years now and at €30/month with unlimited download, have rarely had a problem.

Thanks Flip, but from what I've looked at they do not cover Abruzzo at all. I'm sure there are others like them that do, but I've never felt the need to bite the bullet and try them out. Probably the main reason is cost of doing so over the full year as we are often back in the UK for a few months at a time. Really the same applies there (UK), so we also do not have ADSL there. Therefore we stick with the MIFI router, using it in both countries, which I have to say improves all the time, but is still at best 1.5MB/S in the UK and of course a bit less in Italy.