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126 of 129 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE Dictionary of English, August 30, 2000
"Colonials" like me grew up in the shadow of this Everest of scholarship and the Himalayan series founded on its contents. And now, if we choose to, we can actually own the set, in its 2nd Edition. This is a very desirable acquisition. Perhaps you worry that it might be an unwise purchase. We live in the age of the CD ROM, so why buy the printed volumes? The language seems to operate like a wheel rolling down a muddy slope picking up all manner of accretions as it progresses downhill. Will a work like this, then, become irrelevant? I think not. The citation formula used will always be relevant for readers interested in historical usage. The entire work constitutes, in a way, a history of the English Language, as well as a social history of English speaking peoples from the 12th century through to the end of the 20th century. Some scholars say it is unduly biased in the direction of English Victorian values, with a creeping pre-disposition toward a prescriptive rather than a descriptive stance on definitions. The compilers seem to want to position it to be a final arbiter on "Correct Usage". Who cares? It is manna in the wilderness to anyone who loves the language, who likes to browse, and is not stimulated by the inanity of television. If Political Correctness is the filter through which all literature must pass for you, you'll probably not read very much of value, anyway. No other dictionary is so richly enjoyable as a work to read on its own. One does not go to the OED just to find the meaning of a word, one is beguiled, on opening a volume, to read many pages about all kinds of words. You'll never walk into the British Museum or the Louvre just to look at a single piece of Art and leave having looked only at that one piece. Here is the great exhibition of the language, its gallery. All speakers and students of the language are in Oxford's debt, and will forever be so. No dictionary comes close in comprehensiveness of coverage (its word count, i.e., the quantity of words defined, exceeds that covered in any other competing dictionary). This set, rightly, is the central jewel in OUP's crown of publications. If you're a writer, you can't afford not to purchase this set. Legend has it that a new "improved" edition will be out some time between 2001 and 2003. I sense that the improvements will appeal particularly to the ultra-scholarly linguist/lexicographers among its readers. Improvements shall include the addition of citations that might, for instance, antedate the earliest citation shown in a previous edition. It might, however, not be utterly essential to you you to know, for example, that the first user of the term "Byronic" was Byron himself. The changes from the 2nd to the 3rd edition may be minimal, in print at least. Doubtless, there will be significant improvements to the search capability, appearance, and user friendliness of the software version. But, don't hesitate to purchase the printed 2nd edition. If you feel the CD ROM version is superior to the printed edition, this will boil down to whether or not you are a bibliophile. Nothing equals the tactile pleasure of the printed page, bound well. OED 2 is one of the handsomest printing jobs I've ever seen. The cloth binding is extremely rugged and well designed, elegant and solidly conservative in physical appearance. The paper is itself bright and smooth, the font/type clear and eminently readable. Even the dust jackets are beautiful, a real improvement over the previous design. "Additions" volumes (times 3) are available for anyone interested in the vocabulary of the 90s. The 3rd edition will integrate these into the main work. But, a dictionary in the hand is worth two in the planning stage. And the beautiful volumes of the 2nd edition are available from Amazon.com at what amounts to bargain price. Buy this wonderful, beautifully produced and enduring work; it is a treasure for life that will never fail to impress you with the alluring beauty and quirky mutability of this most glorious of languages.
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141 of 148 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This product should be banned!, August 28, 2006
This program has given me nothing but headaches. It includes buggy software protection that requires that you place CD number 2 in the drive every 90 days in order for the program to run. This always occurs for me when I am traveling and do not have the CD with me. Oops, can't use the program until I get home and dig out the CD in my office.
The next problem is that even once the program has done this ridiculous 90 day check, it still may not run. This is because the copy protection conflicts with the Windows operating system and Norton Antivirus in unpredictable ways. This can result in running out of system memory or in Microsoft Word crashing when attempting to open documents, both of which require restarting my computer.
If you are lucky enough to get the program to run, you will find it has a horrible user interface, like it was written back in the late 80's. The program loads so slowly that I never bother using it to look up a single word while writing, and instead use my other dictionary programs. When the program does come up, it goes to a credits screen, so that you still must click to get to the page where you can do your searches, which wastes a few more seconds. The searches themselves return fast results, but reviewing the results is hindered by there not being any back button. So if you are looking at an entry and click on a hyperlinked term, there is no way to get back to the entry you were just viewing. This is terribly cumbersome if you want to cross-reference different entries to get a broader sense of word's meaning.
I should add that I am not a naïve user with a buggy computer. I have a recent model IBM notebook running Windows XP Professional, and I have worked as a computer technician in the past. I also do not have some hidden axe to grind with Oxford; I simply paid a reasonable chunk of money for what I thought would be a comprehensive and useable dictionary. The content is comprehensive--the very, very best--but it is nearly useless in this implementation.
Let me end my review by telling about my latest experience with this lovely program. I clicked on the dictionary to lookup a word and it wanted the CD ROM to be inserted for the copy protection check. This time, I had the disk near at hand. I placed the CD in the drive and the program read the copy protection key, but it still wouldn't run. I restarted my computer and turned off Norton Antivirus, but this did not get the program to work. I then re-installed the Oxford dictionary, which takes a long, long time, and still no luck. Finally, I went and checked the tech support page at Oxford, and evidently their program does not work with a recent Windows XP security update. Their suggestion? Uninstall the update (which Microsoft considers critical, the maximum severity level) and turn off automatic security updates for your computer. Sure, no problem. I will just open up my computer to every virus in the world so I can run a stupid program that never ran correctly in the first place. I am now relegating the Oxford Dictionary to the trash can where it rightfully belongs. So if you are considering buying this software, just keep in mind that it will not run on Windows XP if you have up-to-date security updates on your system. I also encourage you to read the Amazon reviews for the previous versions (2.0 and 3.0) of the OED CD, many of which report similar problems with the flakey copy protection used in the program. It is rare for me to write a negative review when I am disappointed with a product. But in this case it goes beyond basic dissatisfaction and feels more like I have been robbed of $250. It just boggles my mind that such an unreliable and poorly executed program exists from a major publishing house.
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59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For your reference, December 5, 2004
Those who, reading the below reviews, are unsure whether they should invest in the 2nd edition, or hold out for the 3rd, are advised that according to the official askoxford.com, the 3rd edition is as of this writing (late 2004) not expected to be completed until at least 2018, may run to 40+ volumes, and may or may not have a print edition. If it does, it will surely be priced and marketed only for the lavishly wealthy or for the few major research institutions that will at that point still value the luxury of print materials.
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