The Complete New Yorker [With 8 DVD-ROM]

The reviewers who have remarked about the speed and user friendliness of these DVD-ROMS make valid points, however, I wish it were possible to give this a 10-star rating NOTWITHSTANDING the speed problems. EVERY ISSUE of The New Yorker from 1925 - 2005 is at your fingertips (as opposed to cluttering up many, many bookshevles)! At first, I wondered how this format would compare to hard copy, but it's been remarkably easy to get used to, and makes research unbelievably easy. For instance, when "Brokeback Mountain" came out, I wanted to read the original New Yorker story. One author search and one disc change later, I was able to print out the story without having to buy the repackaged novella at a hefty bookstore price. Additionally, the historical value of this collection is--as they say in the Visa commercial--priceless. This is a must have for the New Yorker fan in your life!

If you're a big New Yorker fan, I really don't think you'll regret buying this incredible set. Since there are over 4000 issues included here, it costs you only about two cents an issue. I've mostly been going through it chronologically, and I've only browsed through the first eight issues or so, but I've already been steadily amused. At least one cartoon in each of the issues has made me smile or laugh out loud. The people who put this together seemed to know that the cartoons would be a big attraction, because they have a special feature that zooms you to the next one of those in each issue. The articles are fascinating time capsules too. In 1925, The New Yorker was still getting its sea legs, but even early on there were fascinating and well written profiles of people like Charlie Chaplin. The movie and art reviews are also interesting. Some articles, I have to say, I'm at a bit of a loss to fully understand, because they involve issues or people who have pretty much dropped out of public consciousness. But with 4000 issues to choose from, you can just skip any article you're not interested in and read another cartoon (although those too sometimes have obscure references). The cover art for The New Yorker has long been famous, and it is quite enjoyable to see people in the high class jazz age as they saw themselves in wonderful art decco full color. The quality of the text and the images is quite good (much, much better than the Complete National Geographic set on CD-rom that I got 6 rears ago), and you can print things out whenever you want (including old covers to decorate bathrooms). In contrast to what some people have said here, I think the search funtion is fine too. Everything I've wanted to look up I've been able to so far. Bottom line: is it absolutely perfect? Perhaps not. But they've invested a fortune in scanning and indexing the entire run, and at two cents an issue, for what many think is the best magazine in the United States, it's a great deal. I figure that even if I browse two or three issues a day, I have another five years of fun and insightful and delightful reading before I'm done.

It's wonderful to have the entire run of the New Yorker at my fingertips. One can only marvel at all the time and effort that went into this project. I'm thankful and impressed. After using it for a couple of days, here are some comments: 1) Swapping DVDs is more inconvenient than I'd expected. I'm an informational grazer, and I'll sometimes want to dip into something that's on a different DVD from the one currently in the computer. I might take a spare DVD wallet and put the New Yorker DVDs in it so I don't have to open the heavy hardcover book (which contains the DVDs) each time I want to swap disks. As a previous reviewer states, it would be great to be able to install all the data on one's hard drive. Using the New Yorker DVDs is not quite as smooth as using the Web. (I guess we've been spoiled.) A couple of times, when I've swapped DVDs, the application hangs while trying to read the new disk. I'm not sure why. 2) The search function is not totally intuitive. The author/department/year/issue search works completely differently from the keyword search, and when you're trying to use them together, it's not easy to figure out what you're doing. 3) For some reason I can't access the issue of February 20, 1989, although I can access other issues on the disk that contains it. I don't know if it's just a defective disk or if this is the case with all copies. 4) I wish I could print just the text of an article without the cartoons and ads if I wanted. Some articles are spread over an unnecessarily large number of magazine pages, because some of those pages contain only one column of actual text. And on printouts, the text resolution (even of more recent issues) is not as crisp as in an actual copy of the magazine. Basically, it would be nice to be able to print out the text of an article as a Word document or something similar. (I think this is not possible for legal reasons, though.) 5) I wish there were an intermediate viewing size between Fit Width and 100%. The former is too big but the latter is sometimes too small. PDF files are incredibly resizable, but these files are not. Since the New Yorker is planning to issue a new Disc 1 every year (which contains the table of contents and the main installation materials), they can hopefully fix some of the search problems or make the interface smoother. These are all quibbles, though. I don't want to overlook the wonderful fact that I now have access to all of the New Yorker from my own computer. This is a terrific resource.

Just spent a day with the product and must say :"The Complete New Yorker : Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine" is an incredible value. After installing the database from your hard drive you can search the New York times by keyword or read it from cover to cover. (Note the keyword feature only searches titles and abstracts of the articles. It is impossible to search the actual text itself). After a keyword is entered a list of articles with abstracts appears in the search window. A double click on the title will bring up the "viewer" which loads a scanned copy of the article (reminds me of an Adobe pdf document). The image quality so far is excellent. A few pages have been scanned in on a slight angle but most are straight as an arrow. My only complaint is that the data is split across 8 DVDs, and unfortunately you don't have the option of installing the data to your hard drive. On some subjects this can mean a lot of disc swapping. For example on the subject of computers I had to swap discs five times to read the articles. And the load time is very slow compared to reading documents from the hard drive or the internet. Speed aside the archive is WONDERFUL! The New Yorker is a well written magazine and to have every issue since 1925 at your finger tips is awesome. I highly recommend this product. I only hope in a future update the New Yorker will give the user the option to read the archive straight from the hard drive.