Customer Reviews

The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine (Book & 8 DVD-ROMs)

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

It's wonderful to have the entire run of the New Yorker at my fingertips. One can only marvel at all the time and effort that went into this project. I'm thankful and impressed.

After using it for a couple of days, here are some comments:

1) Swapping DVDs is more inconvenient than I'd expected. I'm an informational grazer, and I'll sometimes want to dip into something that's on a different DVD from the one currently in the computer. I might take a spare DVD wallet and put the New Yorker DVDs in it so I don't have to open the heavy hardcover book (which contains the DVDs) each time I want to swap disks. As a previous reviewer states, it would be great to be able to install all the data on one's hard drive. Using the New Yorker DVDs is not quite as smooth as using the Web. (I guess we've been spoiled.)

A couple of times, when I've swapped DVDs, the application hangs while trying to read the new disk. I'm not sure why.

2) The search function is not totally intuitive. The author/department/year/issue search works completely differently from the keyword search, and when you're trying to use them together, it's not easy to figure out what you're doing.

3) For some reason I can't access the issue of February 20, 1989, although I can access other issues on the disk that contains it. I don't know if it's just a defective disk or if this is the case with all copies.

4) I wish I could print just the text of an article without the cartoons and ads if I wanted. Some articles are spread over an unnecessarily large number of magazine pages, because some of those pages contain only one column of actual text. And on printouts, the text resolution (even of more recent issues) is not as crisp as in an actual copy of the magazine. Basically, it would be nice to be able to print out the text of an article as a Word document or something similar. (I think this is not possible for legal reasons, though.)

5) I wish there were an intermediate viewing size between Fit Width and 100%. The former is too big but the latter is sometimes too small. PDF files are incredibly resizable, but these files are not.

Since the New Yorker is planning to issue a new Disc 1 every year (which contains the table of contents and the main installation materials), they can hopefully fix some of the search problems or make the interface smoother.

These are all quibbles, though. I don't want to overlook the wonderful fact that I now have access to all of the New Yorker from my own computer. This is a terrific resource.

To view the Complete New Yorker you must install their software, and you must accept their license agreement. Scroll down past the usual legal terms to clause number 7, where you will see that you give them permission to record your complete viewing information, including which pages you view, for how long, at what time, from what IP address. Further, you give them permission to link all this data to your personal information including your name and address, and give/sell this to any third party.

Here's exactly what it says:

7. Collection of Viewing Information. You acknowledge that you are aware of and consent to the collection of your viewing information during your use of the Software and/or Content. Viewing information may include, without limitation, the time spent viewing specific pages, the order in which pages are viewed, the time of day pages are accessed, IP address and user ID. This viewing information may be linked to personally identifiable information, such as name or address and shared with third parties.

Just spent a day with the product and must say :"The Complete New Yorker : Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine" is an incredible value.

After installing the database from your hard drive you can search the New York times by keyword or read it from cover to cover. (Note the keyword feature only searches titles and abstracts of the articles. It is impossible to search the actual text itself).

After a keyword is entered a list of articles with abstracts appears in the search window. A double click on the title will bring up the "viewer" which loads a scanned copy of the article (reminds me of an Adobe pdf document). The image quality so far is excellent. A few pages have been scanned in on a slight angle but most are straight as an arrow.

My only complaint is that the data is split across 8 DVDs, and unfortunately you don't have the option of installing the data to your hard drive. On some subjects this can mean a lot of disc swapping. For example on the subject of computers I had to swap discs five times to read the articles. And the load time is very slow compared to reading documents from the hard drive or the internet.

Speed aside the archive is WONDERFUL! The New Yorker is a well written magazine and to have every issue since 1925 at your finger tips is awesome. I highly recommend this product. I only hope in a future update the New Yorker will give the user the option to read the archive straight from the hard drive.

It seems, reading these early reviews, that there were some problems with the original installs. The New Yorker seems to have addressed those. Upon my installation of the reader software, I was prompted to update - whereupon any glitches or poor performance seemed to have disappeared.
Instead I have at my fingertips a very deep and comprehensive tome of American culture of the 20th Century and beyond.
The software allows you to expand the view from 100% up to 500%, fit to width or fit to height. It seems more than capable of viewing by any reader, on any system.
The search engine and navigation windows are very intuitive and easy to use.
The material you will be reading is The New Yorker. No need to cover that ground.
If you are a fan, buy it. Buy it on Amazon, where it is hugely discounted compared to book stores. Take a moment as well to subscribe to the weekly magazine and get an even better discount.
I am highly satisfied with my purchase.

First, the fix: If "The Complete New Yorker" isn't working on your PC (especially if it's a Dell), try this: Find your "My Computer" icon and double-click it. Right click your DVD-ROM drive icon, click the "DLA" tab (if there is one), and UNCHECK the box that says "Enable DLA on your drives." (If you have two optical drives, this option will probably appear on only ONE of them, but will affect the performance of both.) Then give the program another try.

Now, the quick review: The DVDs are great, even with the oft-mentioned defects and search/interface limitations. Yes, it should have cooked a little longer, but it's still well worth the list price. Even those who deride "The New Yorker" as a rag of the snotty literati will find lots to love. The accompanying book, on the other hand, is essentially useless with one saving grace: Art Spiegelman's 9/11 cover makes sense here, making up for the fact that it doesn't on the DVD. Once you've seen it you'll know what I mean.

One last thing: the 30 January 1926 issue can be added to the list of problems and, as of the date of this review, there is no fix.

The reviewers who have remarked about the speed and user friendliness of these DVD-ROMS make valid points, however, I wish it were possible to give this a 10-star rating NOTWITHSTANDING the speed problems. EVERY ISSUE of The New Yorker from 1925 - 2005 is at your fingertips (as opposed to cluttering up many, many bookshevles)!

At first, I wondered how this format would compare to hard copy, but it's been remarkably easy to get used to, and makes research unbelievably easy. For instance, when "Brokeback Mountain" came out, I wanted to read the original New Yorker story. One author search and one disc change later, I was able to print out the story without having to buy the repackaged novella at a hefty bookstore price. Additionally, the historical value of this collection is--as they say in the Visa commercial--priceless.

This is a must have for the New Yorker fan in your life!

What can I add to what's been said about the miracle of instant access to The New Yorker since the dawn of time, and the unfortunate use of very poor software, small children, or perhaps trained chimps to produce the abstracts.

I will offer a solution to the "disk-swapping" problem complained about by several reviewers: Various utility programs allow the contents of CD- and DVD-ROMs to be stored on hard drives as "virtual" CDs/DVDs, with their own letters, which the program can't distinguish from the genuine article. "Virtual Drive" and "Virtual CD" are among them. They're effective, legal, and moral.

After loading the contents onto a hard drive, we need no longer have the disks at hand, flip them about, lose them, expose them to dust and fingerprints, etc. The virtual disk images can even be compressed on the hard drive, though the success depends on the nature of the material; don't count on significant savings. (The free drive space required for an 8-DVD set is obviously huge; calculate it before you start, so you know you can finish.)

This technique is a lifesaver when using multi-disk sets like this one, and for all programs that obnoxiously require the original CD for operation. Loading and access is much easier, faster, and quieter. Obviously, the usual legalities can and do apply: Don't pass along the original disks; retain them as backups, accessible only to you. Unfortunately, as long as publishers refuse to trust their customers, we need to buy a utility for about $30 to do something we should be able to do already. It's money well spent.

The content of this compendium is unimpeachable and self-recommending. Anyone who loves humor, criticism or high-style writing will indeed have hours, days, weeks of pleasure. But there are some real problems, as my two-star rating indicates.

Other reviewers have touched on the technical issues. I would add that the viewer is not only horribly buggy but a real memory hog and meddlesome with other applications as well. Once you have entered a particular issue there is no way to "pick up the next magazine" and keep on reading: this grazer's paradise needs that function added, pronto. Adobe solved all these problems years ago - why are they present here?

The archive search engine is over-complicated and counter-intuitive, and once it starts you can't stop it - a significant nuisance in a database this large and complex.

The worst evils, however, come in the guts of that database. The article abstracts and keywords are nothing less than a disaster, rife with gross misspellings, typographic and grammatical howlers, huge inconsistencies, and wildly misleading summaries.

One explicit example: On Nov. 17, 1951, Herbert Warren Wind published a profile of Robert Russell Bennett, then at the height of his career as a composer and Broadway orchestrator. It's everything a New Yorker profile should be, full of lively anecdotes, contemporary references and trenchant quotes, with a detailed biography folded into the middle.

But the abstract for this article is shocking. It reads, in full: "PROFILE of Rubert Russell Bennet, composer and orchestrator. Mrs. Merrill, the first woman to receivea Ph.D. from Columbia and the head of Oaksmere, a finishing school for girls near Mamaronick, was interested in mathematical astronomy, and in exploring it she had developed the theory that all the arts are related through mathematics & had devised a method for turning handwriting into music, "musical autograms," as she called them. A person would write his name along a five-line staff, and the linear pattern of his signature would be translated, by means of a series of mathematical steps, into musical compositions. The possibility of melodic graphology fascinated Bennet and he worked to refining the technique."

Pardon the vulgarity, but WTF?! It starts by misspelling the subject's name, and then highlights a minor episode of his life which is lifted almost verbatim from the middle of the article, only with three(!) typos added in.

Other abstracts are as bad or worse. Here is a "sentence" on a Dorothy Parker story of Oct. 8, 1927: "Then she is introduced She is very condescending in her remarks, but tells him How well he does, she's enjoyed his singing so much, where does he get his songs, etc [sic]" Janet Flanner's famous 1936 Profile of Hitler is summarized with irrelevant verbiage on one of Hitler's early financiers, and references the "Munich Beer Putch." (The second and third parts of Flanner's profile don't receive any abstracts at all.) An Aug. 21, 1937, Geoffrey Hellman article on the Cooper Union is abstracted twice with vastly different keywords and content indicated. Even E.B. White is befouled: "We change Mr. [H.G.] Wells with trying to play doom both ways." (Comment, Nov. 17, 1945)

In short, this editorial work is illiterate. And it's published under the name that is the gold standard for American literacy.

There is much delight to be found in these volumes, and the package itself is handsome and seductive. But this sloppiness is intolerable - it reeks of opportunistic contempt for the masters of American prose that live herein. Random House, and the current editors of the magazine, should be ashamed.

P.S. I can't access the February 20, 1989 issue either.

If you're a big New Yorker fan, I really don't think you'll regret buying this incredible set. Since there are over 4000 issues included here, it costs you only about two cents an issue. I've mostly been going through it chronologically, and I've only browsed through the first eight issues or so, but I've already been steadily amused. At least one cartoon in each of the issues has made me smile or laugh out loud. The people who put this together seemed to know that the cartoons would be a big attraction, because they have a special feature that zooms you to the next one of those in each issue.

The articles are fascinating time capsules too. In 1925, The New Yorker was still getting its sea legs, but even early on there were fascinating and well written profiles of people like Charlie Chaplin. The movie and art reviews are also interesting. Some articles, I have to say, I'm at a bit of a loss to fully understand, because they involve issues or people who have pretty much dropped out of public consciousness. But with 4000 issues to choose from, you can just skip any article you're not interested in and read another cartoon (although those too sometimes have obscure references).

The cover art for The New Yorker has long been famous, and it is quite enjoyable to see people in the high class jazz age as they saw themselves in wonderful art decco full color. The quality of the text and the images is quite good (much, much better than the Complete National Geographic set on CD-rom that I got 6 rears ago), and you can print things out whenever you want (including old covers to decorate bathrooms). In contrast to what some people have said here, I think the search funtion is fine too. Everything I've wanted to look up I've been able to so far.

Bottom line: is it absolutely perfect? Perhaps not. But they've invested a fortune in scanning and indexing the entire run, and at two cents an issue, for what many think is the best magazine in the United States, it's a great deal. I figure that even if I browse two or three issues a day, I have another five years of fun and insightful and delightful reading before I'm done.

Don't be fooled by the "hardcover" listing. After all, how on earth could they fit 80 years of a magazine within the pages of a hardcover. They can't.

The hardcover is simply a compilation of highlights and serves as the companion to the DVDs. They contain every article, ad and page from ALL the issues of The New Yorker.

Thats the good news. The catch is that you may or may not get this to work on YOUR computer so read the specs carefully before purchasing...and keep in mind, free updates or not, that these DVDs may have a limited lifespan. Computers WILL change and the DVDs may or may not be playable for a lifetime.

But still...this is a great opportunity to have access to a treasure trove of material, which you can access, read and savor. It is also an incredible bargain (think of how much each and every one of those magazines would cost you if purchased individually).

What a gift this would make for any fans of this magazine! And don't forget that many of the greatest writers got some of their earliest pieces published in The New Yorker, including one of my favorites, E.B. White.

It is fascinating to see how the magazine has grown and evolved through the years. Has it gotten better? Compare the earlier editions to today's copies and see what YOU think.