Birds of the World 3 CD-ROM Set (Jewel Case)

by TOPICS Entertainment

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005RJFP
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 17, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,777 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From Children's Software Revue® -- "Subscribe Now!"

The search features on this four-CD set could be more straightforward, but for information about bird species, life habits and anatomy, it's an excellent resource. Three of the four CDs; The North American Bird Reference Book, Encyclopedia of Australian Birds, and Birds of the World are packed with photos, video, bird sounds and text, helping to provide insight on the fascinating and delicately balanced world of birds. Even non-bird lovers will develop an appreciation. The fourth CD, Hummingbirds, is a screensaver with 25 images of the tiny birds.
Teaches:
Age Range: Copyright © 2001 Children's Software Revue

Amazon.com Product Description

Birds of the World, Express Edition is a content-rich boxed set featuring three CD-ROMs for both the serious birder and the whole family. Thousands of species are covered from all over the world. The North American Bird Reference Book is filled with information, maps, photographs, and bird songs of 910 species. Also included in this special set are Birds of the World and Encyclopedia of Australian Birds. Both are informative multimedia CDs that include video clips, maps, and plenty of information.

Encyclopedia of Australian Birds explores the rich and exotic world of Australia's avian wildlife. This CD-ROM includes more than 1,500 color images, sound samples, more than 40 minutes of video, and a wealth of text. Birds of the World is a multimedia exploration of some of the hundreds of bird species that inhabit our earth: rare birds, endangered birds, unique and bizarre species, and common varieties. Learn about bird anatomy, courtship and mating rituals, nesting, and migration cycles. Find out which birds are endangered, what is being done to prevent habitat destruction, and why species diversity is so important in gauging the world's ecological stability.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Birds of the World, November 19, 2001

By 

john w parrish (Statesboro, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birds of the World 3 CD-ROM Set (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

This three volume set is quite a buy. The North American Bird Reference book is a delight. Some of the bird names and families are incorrect, but a newer version is available from the original author. Some pictures are not great, but overall the price is fantastic if you only used this CDROM. The Birds of the World and Australia CDROM's are not as thorough, but have some nice movie clips. Overall the latter CDROMS are better than average, but the North American Birds CDROM is still the centerpiece!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where do I begin?, August 14, 2002

By 

mattgb1 "mattgb1" (New York City) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Birds of the World 3 CD-ROM Set (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

Where do I begin to tell you how much I hate this product?

Should I start with its complete lack of any categorical organization to simplify the search method other than an alphabetical listing of hundreds of Latin names and a "search" function that requires too many steps?

Or how about the fact that the only online "help" (a term I'll use loosely here) is through the tedious audio that sounds more like a promotional demo than instructions?

Or how about the fact that this product looks very much like something that was created back on the bad old DOS days, and only "upgraded" since then by the random pasting in of some useless film montages of birds flying by? Or the fact that you can't even navigate to the program with the Windows taskbar (further proof that it's just a re-packaged DOS product)?

No, I think I should complain first about the fact that the actual "descriptive" material (another loosely used term here) is so terse as to be virtually useless.

I have been a bird lover all my life. I figured "how can I not love a CD about birds?" Well, this is my answer. This product is so user-vicious that not only is it a waste of precious disk space (Oh, did I forget to mention that even though you MUST install it on your hard drive, it still won't work without the CD? Sorry.), but it's a waste of the paper it was wrapped in. They should have saved the tree for birds to nest in.

I also get the distinct feeling that the people who threw this together had no concept of what a bird lover might be interested in; instead, it's just a regurgitation of species definitions with such rudimentary "illustrations" that they're completely useless (again, probably a throw-back to the DOS era). There are photos included too, but those are scenic at best and virtually useless for any purposes of identification. And even with the CD, they take forever to load.

And it's a shame too, because any good VB programmer could fix half the embarrassingly obvious interface problems in this program, but they obviously never even bothered to check before rushing it out to market.

If anybody can recommend a good product, please email me. But do NOT buy this one. It's so bad that you might end up losing your interest in birds.

Save your money. For the price of just shipping this crummy CD, you could just buy a good guide book (the Golden and Petersen series books are great, with illustrations and explanations that actually help), stick it in your pocket, and go out and enjoy the birds.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For the birds?, November 5, 2002

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Birds of the World 3 CD-ROM Set (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

If you want to learn ABOUT birds, this software can be a useful teaching tool. And it's certainly not going to break the bank. But really, this is a mish-mosh of several items; a bird encyclopedia, birdsongs on CD-Rom, and a directory of Australian birds (hmmm, how many of us are going to be lucky enough to travel down under to see a kookaburra?) It looks as if someone took bird database information, some of it rather long in the tooth and a bit of this and that and threw together this set.

If you want to LEARN birds, identifying which ones are in your back yard or out on a field trip, this software is disappointing. It's not nearly as useful as a good field manual and even frustrating to use. And there are NOT enough birdsongs to make it comprehensive, though we did identify one scary night-screamer that had us perplexed for quite a while--it was a kind of owl that made a most eerie call in the night and we did manage to identify it using the birdcall portion of the software.

In summary; not a bad piece of educational software for the price, but not the ultimate in a bird reference for your computer.