Rating: 
Summary: Yes, irritating, but still an amazing bargain
Review: I'll be the first to admit I find the CD's and the software difficult to work with, and I know it could have been a much better product. Still, the amazing bargain of having every National Geographic magazine ever published in one compact set is not to be underestimated. I gave a friend the 1960's CD for a birthday gift. (At one point you could buy decades individually). He absolutely adored being able to read the articles from the decade he was born in, and experience some of the issues and discoveries he was too young to appreciate at the time. The user interface is awkward, and the print function is hideous, but don't let that stop you from experiencing the full history of National Geographic on your computer. You'd deprive yourself of an archive of some of the most beautiful photography and writing ever produced.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, irritating, but still an amazing bargain
Review: I'll be the first to admit I find the CD's and the software difficult to work with, and I know it could have been a much better product. Still, the amazing bargain of having every National Geographic magazine ever published in one compact set is not to be underestimated. I gave a friend the 1960's CD for a birthday gift. (At one point you could buy decades individually). He absolutely adored being able to read the articles from the decade he was born in, and experience some of the issues and discoveries he was too young to appreciate at the time. The user interface is awkward, and the print function is hideous, but don't let that stop you from experiencing the full history of National Geographic on your computer. You'd deprive yourself of an archive of some of the most beautiful photography and writing ever produced.
Rating: 
Summary: This software is not produced properly.
Review: Like other reviewers, I found this set of CD ROM hard to use. Its quality of text and photo are poorly made. Worse, it may have some bugs in its program that I can only zoom to the point of full pages, no zoom in further. The print out is very bad too. So it is hard to read both on screen or on pages. I tried some later years, the quaility doesn't improve much.
The program like to ask for registration but failed to log on to its server through my cable connection.
By buying this set of CDR, I was hoping I can get something useful, but now, I have to find out a way that 'unlock' it photos like NG claimed to be one benefit of registration but I never was able to.
Rating: 
Summary: An invaluable source of knowledge and a bargain to boot!
Review: National Geographic has been, for over a century, a wonderful repository of photographs and text on virtually any subject imaginable. Its combination of great writing and stunning illustrations has made it a mainstay in innumerable homes since its inception in 1888.Recently the National Geographic Society released this near perfect digital incarnation of every page of its entire collection of journals. I first picked it up as soon as it was released back in 1996. Back then, its 31 CD-ROMs ran for $149 and I happily paid it for the collection. While the quality of some of the older pages' text left something to be desired and the constant swapping of discs was a tad annoying, the wealth of information more than made up for it. When the DVD-ROM version appeared I eagerly snatched it up. Now, the only trade is in the quality of the images. That, coupled with the bargain price, makes it such an excellent and invaluable product that everyone should own it. Unless you are lucky enough to own every paper issue of the National Geographic Society's journal (and even then the search tool would be immensely useful) this product is virtually a must-have.
Rating:
Summary: I've had it for two years and it always irritates me!
Review: The big problem with this software is this: You CANNOT copy and paste from the articles--they are stored at image files, NOT as text files. Worse, if you try to print out the pages, the text is illegible. NG released a patch that would darken the text, but it didn't work--it darkens everything, so you just end up with a darker page. I am a teacher and I was hoping to be able to use the articles in class, but I have not been able to. I have had these CDs for more than two years and I have NEVER been able to use it in the way that I had hoped. In short, this product has been nothing but a waste of money for me.
Rating:
Summary: Just awful
Review: The software is not compatible with currently updated Quicktime, XP or my monitor. Can't even download. I backdoored some of the files and articles appear to be scanned, are fuzzy and disappointing. Cannot online register and the mail registration address is not valid. Very very worthless in my world.
Rating: 
Summary: Neat concept worthless execution
Review: This is a decent program although I wouldn't have gotten it had I known the troubles I was going to have. The software is very outdated and does not have a nice presentation for the photos or articles. The big problem I've had, and still have, is that I'm unable to register by modem or mail. The software is designed to only search for dial-out connections and it doesn't recognize broadband. I have e-mailed and snail mailed out 2 copies of my registration form to the Mindscape software company and have gotten no reply. My best guess is that the product is no longer being made and no one will accept responsiblity for the copies still out in the stores. The best part about this program is I can store the CDs in the nice wooden box it came with.
Rating:
Summary: A Nice Wooden Box
Review: This is a decent program although I wouldn't have gotten it had I known the troubles I was going to have. The software is very outdated and does not have a nice presentation for the photos or articles. The big problem I've had, and still have, is that I'm unable to register by modem or mail. The software is designed to only search for dial-out connections and it doesn't recognize broadband. I have e-mailed and snail mailed out 2 copies of my registration form to the Mindscape software company and have gotten no reply. My best guess is that the product is no longer being made and no one will accept responsiblity for the copies still out in the stores. The best part about this program is I can store the CDs in the nice wooden box it came with.
Rating: 
Summary: Very useful; but get DVD-ROM version instead
Review: This is a great piece of work. All articles, pictures, maps of 110 years. However, don't get the CD-ROM version. 31 CDs is too much to handle. If you do a search for a particular topic, it comes up with articles in 10 different CDs. Then you have to flip CDs in and out. I bought this for my father and it is a huge pain; brings back the days of flipping floppies. Instead, get the DVD-ROM version. Doesn't look like Amazon sells it (at least right now), It's a lot more useful. There's only 3 DVDs to flip.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Quality
Review: We purchased this product to do some research for a trip which we are planning. While we found the search facility to be acceptable, the technology used to display the articles is generally deplorable. Our plan was to look at the information using a laptop which has a screen resolution of 800x600. At this resolution, articles from the present back until 1970, can be read, but with some eye strain. From 1969 back until 1940, it is almost impossible to read the articles and from 1939 back until 1888, forget it. We did find that on a desktop machine with a better resolution, readibility did improve somewhat, but the pre-1970 articles are still tough and the pre-1940 are still really bad. The manufacturer of this product should be ashamed by the lack of quality. They apparently simply scanned in every page of every article without ever looking at the result. The company must have no quality control. I cannot understand how a reputable organization like the National Geographic Society could allow their name to be associated with this amateurish product.
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