National Geographic: 112 Years Collector's Edition

by TOPICS Entertainment

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000077CE8
• Item model number: CS-311s
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 15, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,006 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #15 in Software > Education & Reference > Geography
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

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

This whopping 32-CD archive brings you every issue of the National Geographic magazine from 1888 to December 2000. That's 1,285 magazines (about 30 feet of shelf space) with 185,000 photos and illustrations and 9,500 articles. Extensive search capabilities include author, title and subject, and you can view all 112 years of covers and tables of contents without changing disks. The magazines serve as a time machine of sorts, with more than a century of advertisements. We found the program easy to use, which is remarkable considering how many CDs there are. It's easy to search precisely, but also fascinating to peruse just as you would your print publications. The product's major weakness is in text resolution, which is blurry both onscreen and when you print. The photos and illustrations, however, look fantastic both on and off screen. Note that there's no way to cut and paste text. Copyright © 2001 Children's Software Revue

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars works on XP, January 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: National Geographic: 112 Years Collector's Edition (CD-ROM)

This product works fine on Windows XP (Home Edition). (We just installed it this week.)32 CDs can cause the user to spend quite a bit of time swapping discs. Definitely could be constructed with a better interface but it is wonderful to have the entire collection available.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Difficult update path, March 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: National Geographic: 112 Years Collector's Edition (CD-ROM)

Good product but purchasers need to be careful about product updates. In their earlier editions NG did not maintain the updates in the market for very long. Individuals interested in keeping their collection up to date may end up needing to repurchase the entire collection to fill in a one year gap. Given the low cost of reproducing CDs this is not easily understandable.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Yours While You Still Can!, December 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: National Geographic: 112 Years Collector's Edition (CD-ROM)

This wonderful product will soon be extinct because of its system requirements. It can only be used on systems using the Windows 98 or Windows ME platforms. That means that someday when you upgrade your computer to work with Windows XP or some future operating system, this product will cease to run. I checked with National Geographic customer service and they said that there are absolutely no plans to upgrade this product to work with XP. So as wonderful as this product is, you will still have to store your old paper copies of the National Geographic in the attic if you wish to maintain a retrospective collection. This product will not suffice as a long term archive for users. National Geographic gave no official reason why it does not plan to update the product, but it probably has something to do with the outcome of the 2001 federal case: Greenberg v. Nat'l Geographic Soc'y, 244 F.3d 1267, (11th Cir. Fla. 2001). This was a case of copyright infringement that National Geographic lost and then was required to pay a freelance photographer for re-use of his pictures in this CD-ROM product. The economics of intellectual property involved in creating such a product may be cost-prohibitive for National Geographic in the future. Ultimately, a loss for publisher, consumers and copyright holders. So get yours while you still can!