Rating: 
Summary: Takes up less shelf space than the magazines
Review: I have/had a large collection of Dragon Magazines from my junior high school and high school days. On the one hand, I never wanted to get rid of this little bit of my history, with its invaluable cache of articles, ideas, and comics. They are a veritable time capsule of RPG gaming during the golden age of the hobby. Fun memories of my nerdy youth.On the other hand, I never wanted to keep the magazines so badly that I felt like "going to bat" with my wife over keeping them in the limited shelf space in our small urban condo. So the magazines continued to sit alone, in cardboard boxes in the basement of my parents' house. Enter the Dragon Magazine archive. How often do I use this software? Frankly, not often. But that isn't the point. To me, the Archive is a safety blanket. If and when I want to look at an old article, magic spell list, "Giants In The Earth" column, old ads, or old editions of "Wormy" or "What's New," then I can do so at any time. The issues are well-scanned, the detail is great, and the ease of use is high. A fine product considering the volume of content and low price. Most importantly (I will re-emphasize), it takes up a heck of a lot less shelf space than the magazines. Which means that the WAF (wife acceptance factor) goes way up, which is worth the negligible cost of this software.
Rating:
Summary: Takes up less shelf space than the magazines
Review: I have/had a large collection of Dragon Magazines from my junior high school and high school days. On the one hand, I never wanted to get rid of this little bit of my history, with its invaluable cache of articles, ideas, and comics. They are a veritable time capsule of RPG gaming during the golden age of the hobby. Fun memories of my nerdy youth. On the other hand, I never wanted to keep the magazines so badly that I felt like "going to bat" with my wife over keeping them in the limited shelf space in our small urban condo. So the magazines continued to sit alone, in cardboard boxes in the basement of my parents' house. Enter the Dragon Magazine archive. How often do I use this software? Frankly, not often. But that isn't the point. To me, the Archive is a safety blanket. If and when I want to look at an old article, magic spell list, "Giants In The Earth" column, old ads, or old editions of "Wormy" or "What's New," then I can do so at any time. The issues are well-scanned, the detail is great, and the ease of use is high. A fine product considering the volume of content and low price. Most importantly (I will re-emphasize), it takes up a heck of a lot less shelf space than the magazines. Which means that the WAF (wife acceptance factor) goes way up, which is worth the negligible cost of this software.
Rating: 
Summary: An invaluable resource, but very badly finished.
Review: I love the old Dragon magazines, and as an ongoing RPGer and game writer, I find the material in these first 250 copies of Dragon absolutely invaluable. The purchase of this archive was worth it to me for the content alone. However, I was sadly disappointed with the clumsy GUI provided with it and worse yet, the way much of the archive has been scanned. The content is what matters in something like this: Unfortunately, many of the pages have been -badly- scanned, and rasterization abounds with scan lines interrupting sentences, paragraphs, or otherwise attractive and useful images. I was also unhappily surprised to discover that several of the pages were scanned UPSIDE DOWN--I'm not joking. More than once I've come across articles with upside-down pages--not at all fun to try to read on a monitor, and the kind of thing you wouldn't expect in any quality product. Since the GUI has proved so slow and inelegant, I normally use Acrobat Reader to view the articles--just be warned that, in my personal experience, despite having no other problems with Acrobat or PDF files anywhere, certain badly rasterized pages from these archives have caused Acrobat to freeze up every time I come upon them. Generally, it confirms my growing belief that, over the last several years, and especially under WoTC's influence, TSR's products have become increasingly about getting your money, rather than turning out a quality item that will remain useful to you in the long run.
Rating:
Summary: An invaluable resource, but very badly finished.
Review: I love the old Dragon magazines, and as an ongoing RPGer and game writer, I find the material in these first 250 copies of Dragon absolutely invaluable. The purchase of this archive was worth it to me for the content alone. However, I was sadly disappointed with the clumsy GUI provided with it and worse yet, the way much of the archive has been scanned. The content is what matters in something like this: Unfortunately, many of the pages have been -badly- scanned, and rasterization abounds with scan lines interrupting sentences, paragraphs, or otherwise attractive and useful images. I was also unhappily surprised to discover that several of the pages were scanned UPSIDE DOWN--I'm not joking. More than once I've come across articles with upside-down pages--not at all fun to try to read on a monitor, and the kind of thing you wouldn't expect in any quality product. Since the GUI has proved so slow and inelegant, I normally use Acrobat Reader to view the articles--just be warned that, in my personal experience, despite having no other problems with Acrobat or PDF files anywhere, certain badly rasterized pages from these archives have caused Acrobat to freeze up every time I come upon them. Generally, it confirms my growing belief that, over the last several years, and especially under WoTC's influence, TSR's products have become increasingly about getting your money, rather than turning out a quality item that will remain useful to you in the long run.
Rating: 
Summary: A great Idea, but ...
Review: I really looked forward to getting this product. I have 75% ofthe Dragon Magazine on my shelves, but trying to search for somethingis a lot easier with all of them online. The one problem that I have with the product is that it doesn't seem to work reliably on Windows NT and there haven't been any patches posted for several months. END
Rating: 
Summary: Dragon Good... Interface Bad.
Review: I've been an avid reader of Dragon magazine since fourth grade, I'm somewhat embarassed to admit. Way, way back at the very beginning D&D caught my fascination, inspired me to read outside of school, think creatively and study cheerfully. My archives include darn near the whole published run thus far. Stacks and stacks of Dragon magazine takes up a fair amount of space, and I thought perhaps it would be a good idea to remove these from my ever sprawling gaming collection, hawk them on eBay and utilize this CD collection in its place. Not happenning... The content is, of course, lovely, however the interface is absolutely infuriating. Click, drag, swap function, zoom in, swap function, drag, and so on and on. It is impossible to focus in easily on a single column to read on screen. The only plausible alternative is to print out the page, which requires further investment in paper and ink. It may very well be worth the price of admission for the graphics alone, the artwork being quite good (although at times spotty), but I was hoping to be able to read on screen without resorting to printing that which I wished to peruse. Furthermore, the search engine is less than impressive, which is a shame as this was also a principle attraction for me. Gosh durn it, I expected much better from TSR!
Caveat emptor...
Rating:
Summary: Good Resource.
Review: If your looking for a great source of information this is for you. The GUI is not too great but the search feature works well. All the issues are on the CD's in easy to access PDF format.
Rating:
Summary: Solid content with poor delivery
Review: It would be asking a lot to have 250+ issues of a magazine delivered in the most high tech framework, one that would meet future standards seamlessly. (Crying about the program not working on niche platforms like UNIX is a little odd, given that this is a consumer product.) But TSR's choice to go with a proprietary interface that doesn't work as well as the shareware Acrobat Reader is just odd. As a result, less tech-savvy users will find this product frustrating, trying to navigate using TSR's "kewl" interface, when instead they should just download the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe.com. Having said that, once users have made the leap to using Acrobat, this product is a treasure. With a good printer -- or simply a monitor that's comfortable enough to read on -- this would be a bargain at twice the price. I've already spent many, many hours reading reprints of articles I never saw before, and haven't even gone digging for fondly remembered stories and comic strips. This is a must for any D&D fan, from any era. (And now that D&D and "Dragon" magazine are owned by Wizards of the Coast, hopefully they'll learn from the mistakes made here and do better with their electronic products.)
Rating:
Summary: An absolute must for fantasy gamers of every stripe!
Review: No matter what version of Dungeons and Dragons you play or what campaign world your game is set in, this collection of magazines-as-PDFs is a must have. While the interface is admittedly clumsy on Win98 and ME, I found it to be fairly well-behaved under XP and 2000; even if you don't use the interface for reading, it's search-engine is invaluable for digging through thousands of pages of articles, looking for that one house rule you just KNOW you saw fifteen years ago... Furthermore, the seven issues of "The Strategic Review" give gamers today a perspective on the state of the hobby as it was before many of them even thought of Dungeons and Dragons or indeed RPGs in general. Containing short "adventure modules", quick one-off stand alone games, fiction, art ranging from David Trampier's "Wormy" to Phil Foglio's "What's New With Phil N' Dixie", the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM archive is a must-have for anyone who's serious about (Advanced)Dungeons and Dragons.
Rating:
Summary: An absolute must for fantasy gamers of every stripe!
Review: No matter what version of Dungeons and Dragons you play or what campaign world your game is set in, this collection of magazines-as-PDFs is a must have. While the interface is admittedly clumsy on Win98 and ME, I found it to be fairly well-behaved under XP and 2000; even if you don't use the interface for reading, it's search-engine is invaluable for digging through thousands of pages of articles, looking for that one house rule you just KNOW you saw fifteen years ago... Furthermore, the seven issues of "The Strategic Review" give gamers today a perspective on the state of the hobby as it was before many of them even thought of Dungeons and Dragons or indeed RPGs in general. Containing short "adventure modules", quick one-off stand alone games, fiction, art ranging from David Trampier's "Wormy" to Phil Foglio's "What's New With Phil N' Dixie", the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM archive is a must-have for anyone who's serious about (Advanced)Dungeons and Dragons.
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