National Geographic: 112 Years Collector's Edition

Some other customers complained about poor image quality and poor print quality. I have experienced neither problem. Their monitors may need updating, or readjustment.

If you are a fan of the magazine, or need an outstanding reference tool, this is a good investment to make.


Excellent References   September 23, 2004
Rav (Connecticut, USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Mine contains 31 CDs; and it's 111 years version. I use Mac and installed it from OS9. Then I rebooted back to OSX (Panther 10.3.5). The software launches fine in classic mode and I have no problem viewing it. I like how the magazine resizes itself based on the size of my window. So I can enlarge it easily just by dragging the window's bottom right corner. My monitor is an Apple Cinema HD Display 23" viewing at 1920x1200. The photographs are gorgeous and their resolutions are good even on my high resolution monitor. Types are a little fuzzy but it's legible. Overall, it's an impressive collection to have. I rated 4 star instead of 5 because of the fuzzy type. Note for Mac classic mode user: You must install QuickTime 6.0.3 in classic.


Fuzzy scans, but at least the magazine's available   June 13, 2005
abt1950 (usa)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

What can you say about the National Geographic? It's an old standard and a wonderful reference--no well-stocked library should be without it. Having it on CD leaves a lot more room on your bookshelves for other things.

However--this is not the most user-friendly product. The quality of the imaging is the worst problem. Both pictures and text are fuzzy, almost as if they had been printed on an old dot matrix printer with a well-used ribbon. In addition, the program is less versatile than might be desired. For example, each screen consists of two pages, and there is no way to print only one of the pages, let alone a single image. Instead, you're stuck printing both pages, like it or not. (You can, however, print the entire article.)

If this were anything other than the National Geographic, I would probably give it 3 stars instead of 4.



Utterly Cool   December 14, 2002
Mimerki (Port Orchard, WA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Okay, if you don't love old issues of National Geographic, you don't want this. That said, I LOVE old issues of National Geographic and this is really great! The user-interface is reasonably intuitive, which is rare for such CD compilations based on printed materials (in my experience -- your milage may vary), the text is clear on the screen at large resolutions, and it is basically lovely. I will say that the cardboard folders that the CDs are stored in are somewhat awkward for long-term use, but I can't say it's a big problem.

I do have to add that I wish NG had set this up so it worked under Linux. It's troublesome to have to reboot to use this, so it gets less use than it should.