It's rare to encounter free software as well designed and powerful as this informative application, but the folks at Google have done it again. When you first fire up Google Earth, you'll immediately notice that most of the interface's real estate is used to display a rendering of the globe, complete with topographical markings. You simply enter information for the location you'd like to visit--such as city name, country, or specific street address--and Google Earth will begin slowly zooming in on your destination. After a moment, you'll see a satellite image of the place you entered. Controls below the location window let you zoom in or out even further; move north, south, east, and west; and save specific locations on the map.
The program's Layers panes allows you to determine what sort of information appears on the map. For instance you can choose to display roads, hospitals, grocery stores, restaurants, golf courses, bars, and even crime statistics. We also appreciate the tool that provides point-to-point driving directions. The only potential downside of Google Earth is it can consume a fairly large amount of RAM when running in the background, so as the developer notes, folks with older machines might experience performance issues. But everyone else is bound to love Google Earth, either as an informational tool or an entertaining novelty.
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