>Google Maps inform me I need IE 6

Or Firefox, or Opera, or Mozilla, or Netscape ... latest versions - or Safari

>If Jim's folk maps don't work it may be a browser thing.

There's a clear explantion of what browsers will work on the website.

>If Google maps is so useful what ever happened to Streetmap and >Multimap which work on all graphical browsers.

I found this interesting explanation of just that here.