Complete National Geographic- Every Issue Since 1888 (OLD VERSION)

by National Geographic

Product Features

• The Complete National Geographic includes every printed page--every article, photograph, advertisement--from 1888 through 2008
• Browse special "readlists" from National Geographic stars or personalize your archive by creating and saving your own lists of favorite articles
• Test your knowledge of subjects with a trivia game and reference hundreds of the magazine's classic maps
• Geobrowse helps you easily find articles, photographs, and maps about the location you choose
• Includes bonus DVD with videos documenting the history of the National Geographic Society and National Geographic magazine

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 2.8 x 5.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: 1426296355
• Item model number: 96352
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (98 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #564 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #4 in Software > Education & Reference > History
  • #4 in Software > Education & Reference > Geography
  • #24 in Software > Home & Hobbies

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Explore 120 years of amazing discoveries, fascinating maps, and the world's best photography with The Complete National Geographic. This definitive collection of every issue of National Geographic magazine, digitally reproduced in stunning high resolution, brings you the world and all that is in it. Use the advanced interface to explore a topic, search for photographs, browse the globe, or wander on your own expedition.

The Complete National Geographic

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Rediscover every printed page--Every article, photograph, advertisement--from 1888 through 2008 on 6 DVD-ROMs

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Browse special "readlists" from National Geographic stars or personalize your archive by creating and saving your own lists of favorite articles.

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Use Geobrowse--a visual geographic search tool--to find articles, photographs, and maps about the location you choose

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Test your knowledge of subjects including exploration, the environment, geography, history, cultures, and more with a trivia game that links to related articles Reference hundreds of the magazine's classic maps digitized as part of the magazine's archive for the first time

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Includes a bonus DVD with tips on how to take better photographs, an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how National Geographic Magazine is put together, and interviews with NGM photographers revealing the backstory behind their famous photographs.

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Complete National Geographic Features Digital reproduction of all 120 years of National Geographic Magazine Highest production quality on DVD Digital scans are high resolution for optimal viewing of images Easy to navigate and explore content Search by keyword, author contributor, topic Visual geographic search Discover content through NG-created, or user-created “Read Lists Zoom in/out of pages Reading and search experiences significantly enhanced Modern, graphical user interface Explore and discover approaches to content Geospatial browsing Trivia Game to drive content discovery Now Featuring Fold-Out Maps The most popular feature of National Geographic Magazine Bonus DVD includes video extras not available anywhere else Best Moments of National Geographic Photography tips Narratives by award-winning NG photographers

Click to enlarge.

Product Description

Explore 120 years of amazing discoveries, fascinating maps, and the world's best photography with The Complete National Geographic. This definitive collection of every issue of National Geographic magazine, digitally reproduced in stunning high resolution, brings you the world and all that is in it. Use the advanced interface to explore a topic, search for photographs, browse the globe, or wander on your own expedition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

319 of 336 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Incomplete "Complete" National Geographic, October 19, 2009

By 

C. Y. Shen (Naperville, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Complete National Geographic- Every Issue Since 1888 (OLD VERSION) (DVD-ROM)

This is a beloved treasure of 120 years of knowledge and history, and a very valuable reference resource. There are a few points that ought to be noted:

>>The CNG has poor quality control and customer support over this product. It relies heavily on customer feedbacks to become aware of missing pages and issues, and took very long time (18 months) to address a few of the reported bugs. The Complete National Geographic will be incomplete with missing items such as:
- Jul 1942 and Feb 1992: Pages missing, causing pagination problems in the issues with double page spreads not appearing on facing pages.
- Mar 1996: Page 35 is missing.
- From 1991 to 2008, at least 30 maps are reported missing. Examples: The World War II double map supplement is missing from Dec 1991. The Sep 2000 map is missing. The "100 Years of Flight" supplement in Dec 2003 is missing. The Jerusalem's Holy Ground map is missing in Dec 2008.

>>The Complete National Geographic contains National Geographic Magazine published through Dec 2008. National Geographic announced "The Complete National Geographic" users will be able to add to their collection after purchasing the product by downloading annual updates on a subscription basis from the internet. Content updates for CNG will be available after the print editions of the previous year have been published. CNG released an updated edition of this DVD set and a 2009 annual update DVD ($14.95) in Sep 2010. The feature to purchase annual updates online wasn't ready until CNG patch 1.65 (requires Adobe Air 2.6) released in Apr 2011. Content update purchases have to be made through the CNG software interface. Stand alone archive files for the purchased content updates may not exist for archive and repeat/multicomputer installation.

>>Updates need to be installed to add missing or fix corrupted pages such as in Apr 1913, Dec 1930, Mar 1950, Apr 1953 (entirely missing), Sep 1960, Aug 1970, Jan 1977, Jul 1979, Feb 1992, Feb 1993, and Dec 2003 issues. However, updates have to be downloaded and installed through the software interface; there isn't an independent update installer for archive and repeat installation.

>>Either the digital magnifier that comes with the software or the maximum zoom needs to be used to clearly read the texts on your monitor. An ASCII text PDF resolution of the scanned pages shouldn't be expected.

>>The patch (revision 1.26) to copy DVD content to local drive was released for Windows in Jan 2010. It takes many hours to copy all 6 DVDs to the hard drive.

116 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can load to your hard drive - Here's how, October 22, 2009

By 

Sarasotan (Florida) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Complete National Geographic- Every Issue Since 1888 (OLD VERSION) (DVD-ROM)

I loaded mine to my hard drive and love not having to take the DVDs in and out. It took over two hours per DVD to load, but was worth it. You just have to copy them from the DVD to a very specific folder on your hard drive. The directions are in the last of these FAQs in this link to the CNG FAQ page:

[...]

(If Amazon doesn't allow this link here, check one of my responses below this review -- I'll include it there too and maybe it can stay there.)

One of the biggest negatives with this set is that the sideways pictures can't rotate, making them hard to read and enjoy. And there are many such pictures. Hopefully they will come up with an upgrade soon to fix this, as they have received many queries about this.

Although there are some negatives, overall, I am very happy with this set.

The huge plus is you get every issue of National Geographic in a relatively easily readable format when you use the easy-to-use magnifying and dragging features. If you have a 24" monitor, it's pretty readable as is. With magnified reading, when you go to the next page, it resets back to zero magnification, and you have to re-magnify it. But it's fairly easy -- all you have to do is double click on the page, and it magnifies, and you can drag the text and pictures around as needed.


They even include all of the advertisements, which they could have easily decided to omit. (It's fun to look at the ads from long ago. For example, in the April 1916 issue, focusing on the national parks, there's an ad for newly established Cascade National Park, placed by Great Northern Railroad, reminiscent of the days when railroads affiliated themselves with different parks, to boost travel.)

It prints out beautifully, and there is no readability problem with printouts.

There is a handy readlist feature, where you can create your own readlists (very easily done) or look at readlists that the editors have prepared. There are approximately 33 of these already created readlists, covering such things as various editors' favorites, National Parks, The Universe, The Untamed, etc. Just scanning through these articles, it looks like these lists are pretty good and I see a lot of things I want to read.

One problem with these readlists is that they don't give the date of the article. You see something focusing on, say India, and you have no idea if it is from 1915 or 2005. That makes a big difference to me insofar as my interest. They should include the date of the issue in these readlists. When I create my own lists I plan on always including the date.

All in all, I am happy with this set, and would buy again, since it seems to be the best way to get all of national Geographic, short of buying all of the actual magazines for thousands of dollars.

134 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding content, flawed interface, November 4, 2009

By 

bugbugbug (SoCal USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete National Geographic- Every Issue Since 1888 (OLD VERSION) (DVD-ROM)

I've been playing around with this latest version of the "Complete National Geographic" and have a few thoughts to share.

I own one of the previous sets on CD-ROM. That set had a couple significant problems: You couldn't read the text of the articles, and all the magazines were scanned badly.

This set has solved the readability and resolution problems, but has introduced a few of its own.

The earlier issues of the magazine have their photographs printed vertically so that the whole height of the page was used to display landscape photographs. With the magazine, and the earlier set on CD-ROM, you could rotate the pictures on their side and enjoy the whole photo blown up to full, (although limited), resolution. This set has no such feature, so you have to tip your head to view the photo and read the caption, and worse still, the photo can be displayed no wider than your monitor is tall. You can zoom in on the picture for a better look, but it would have been nice to be able to rotate the pages so you could get a full screen view.

Also, the search function is a sorry joke on this set. It uses these funky dials to select your date range, (what is wrong with pull downs I ask?), so it is more difficult to select an exact date range. Also, when you get your results they are displayed in this "carousel" format with the newest results first and the oldest rotating off into the distance. What is wrong with a simple list view and a scroll bar???

As was mentioned in an earlier review, these search results are truncated, so you know nothing about the date, or the key words, or anything about the details of the results. A good search function is kinda important for a collection spanning 120 years, and this one is close to worthless.

Ah, just remembered something else about the search function. When you search for a particular brand name in the advertisements, clicking on the result takes you to the cover of the issue the ad is in rather than the exact page. Very annoying!

So, all in all, better than the old set in one very important way, the scans seem much improved, but the interface needs some serious work.

I did notice that when I checked for updates it had already gone from version 1.12 to 1.15 in the short time since release. Maybe they will see the light and invest some effort into improving the interface. They have already got my money though, so I won't be holding my breath.