Playboy Cover to Cover Hard Drive - Every Issue From 1953 to 2010

by Playboy

Product Details

• Item Weight: 9 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: 0979526191
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,494 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Every issue of Playboy Magazine on a pocket-sized aluminum 250GB hard drive with additional 200Gb available for your personal files. Use it at home or traveling anywhere you can find a Mac or PC. Hot-swappable USB bus powered portable hard-drive (no AC adaptor required), install the Playboy Cover to Cover program, and begin reading. You will have immediate access to every page of every issue.

It's all here: from that first treasured issue featuring Marilyn Monroe in December 1953, all the way to the December 2009 issue, featuring Chelsea Handler, and every issue in between. That's 56 incredible years of Playboy, over 650 issues, and more than 100,000 pages, all at your fingertips. This high-performance, rugged aluminum hard drive measures a tiny 3" x 5" inches, and easily fits inside a briefcase or jacket pocket. Plus, there are over 200GBs of extra room on the drive to store anything else you'd like.

Package includes:
Portable 250GB USB 2.5 inch Hard Drive with 200GB Free Space. Mini USB to USB cable. 1 Year Warranty Hard Drive

Specifications:
Hard Disk Drive: 2.5 inch Hard Disk Drive Interface: Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and 1.1 Capacity: 250GB Spindle Speed: 5,400 RPM Performance: Up to 480Mb/second Power: USB Bus Powered (no AC adapter required) MAC Minimum System Requirements: USB 1.1 port (Hi-Speed USB 2.0 recommended for faster transfer) USB Mac OSX 10.4 or later 512 MB RAM required (1GB recommended) 750 MB available hard drive space Color monitor with at least 1024 x 768 resolution To print: laser or ink jet printer To access software update feature: Internet access WINDOWS Minimum System Requirements: USB 1.1 port (Hi-Speed USB 2.0 recommended for faster transfer) Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4 with Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 SP4 KB891861) XP (Service Pack 2 required) 512 MB RAM required (1GB recommended) 750 MB available hard drive space Color monitor with at least 1024 x 768 resolution.

PC-Mac

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Avoid if buying for photos January 6, 2011

By border collie guy

I'd avoid this product if you are buying for the photos. I was impressed with the quality (resolution) of the virtual tour on the web so I went ahead made the purchase on Amazon. What they don't tell you is that image quality of the virtual sample is higher and much better than what you get when you purchase the hard drive. Many photos (pictures and cartoons) appear to have black ink or smears on them when viewed on the hard drive (or when the data is copied to your machine and then viewed). I compared several images from the hard drive to the virtual tour and the smudges and fake looking "colored-in" areas are not a problem with the on-line version...and yes I was using the same computer and monitor set up (I'm running Windows Seven on a nice Dell with a high quality Samsung monitor). Another thing that was frustrating was that you can zoom up to 400% on line but only 300% using the proprietary Bondi reader that you have to use to view the purchased issues. I was also not able to update to the latest version of the Bondi viewer/reader despite installing and uninstalling the version that comes with the hard drive and I'm very computer competent. I tried to reach Bondi tech support and they are nonexistent. I've sent several emails and left multiple voice mails....no follow up and there is no telephone number provided in the instructions (I had to search the web to find that!). So why two stars instead of one? If you are buying just for the articles you will likely be happy, but who buys Playboy for just the articles?

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Playboy should be embarrassed. January 25, 2011

By D. Bunch

I purchased the Playboy Cover to Cover The 50's DVD box set when it first came out in stores. It was OK, but the included book and reprint of the 1st issue were great. When they announced the Hard Drive, I decided to treat myself for Xmas, and got it.

1st off, it's a fairly classy looking little drive, from an off-brand company - so durability is iffy. Bondi had assured me before purchase that indeed, the drive's Playboy content could be backed-up onto another hard drive at any time, so that's a relief. And they may or may not offer future issues to add to the collection, another iffy.

But here's the kicker. Only the actual centerfolds are truly sharp and clear! Covers and pages suffer from all sorts of flaws and errors: missing pages and covers, poor scan quality, yellowed pages, crooked pages, and double-truck pages (that's where an image, ad, etc. spreads across both the left and right page) that don't line up. No effort was made AT ALL to restore, align or color correct the scans. In this day and age, this is just plain laziness and shows how far Playboy has fallen...anything for a buck, bleed the brand dry.

As for the most practical application of this collection - viewing on an iPad - forget it (sort-of). There's no app for the Bondi viewer, but you CAN export/print issues to an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file...with a catch. The covers are scanned into the Bondi files as separate files, and the Bondi viewer assembles them into each issue. To get complete issues as .pdf's, you'll need a version of Acrobat (or shareware) that can make single .pdf's from multiple .pdf's, save the covers and actual issue content, and assemble. Note that there is no option to do years or decades...it's one issue at a time, baby....and that would be more than a bit time consuming.

I've returned mine, and received confirmation of the refund within 48 hours of them receiving the drive.

Coulda been a contender...but no cigar.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, could have been great January 14, 2011

By B. Austin

Having played with this for a couple of days I have to admit I'm impressed. I previously owed the 1950's DVD box set using the Bondi software as well, and this feels more refined and faster. I've been able to easy index various contributors and articles and save them for later.

The quality of the scans aren't great. In some cases there are water stains or scribbles on the pages. It's possible that was the best they had, since let's face it I doubt Hugh Hefner and company were thinking of posterity early on in the magazine's run. Printing in particularly is pretty disappointing. At the very least it would have been nice to include the option to read transcribed text like Zinio and other software offers. That said, on a computer screen everything should be fairly readable.

As others have mentioned, the quality of the pictures is also an issue. In fact I was really shocked to find out this 250gb harddrive has 215gb free. You'd think with all that space they'd scan these documents in a higher resolution, or at least offer some extras like separate folders with high-rez shots of Playmates. It seems like a lost opportunity which Playboy may be kicking themselves for now. When I inquired via email on the 1960's DVD box set they immediately offered me a [...] off coupon for this set, which would indicate it isn't selling as well as they had hoped.

Which is kind of sad, because for all it's faults there is a goldmine of intellectual property on this hard drive. The articles, pictures, even advertisements are great to read. Sure I'd like higher quality scans, but I own both the Rolling Stone and National Geographic box sets and poor quality scans are an issue for all digitized magazines. So grab it while you can, because I have a feeling this won't be on the market for that long.