Hi! I think this newsgroup is a great source of info. I like to contribute (and hopefully more will follow) by giving reviews of CD-Roms that I have acquired or tried. It's quite expensive to buy so reviews are helpful.
1. Mega Demo from Profit Press
A lot has been mentioned about this CD so I won't be long. I got it after they increased the price. It was interesting at first but the stuff inside are a bit outdated. The sound, animation, and graphics files can be useful and interesting but the prog
rams are a bit obsolete. I use this CD if I need some bitmap files or sound files.
2. Mayo Clinic Family Health Book
I got this from Egghead for about $60. I am very ignorant in terms of biology and health matters and have basic knowledge in nutrition. It was a wish for me to get hold of a source of practical medical information. The great thing about this CD is
that it is MPC, which means that it runs in Windows (I try to limit my purchase to Windows programs). The sound support, animation, and graphics are great. It is based on the book (over 1000 pages) and the topics are covered in-depth but not too technic
ally. You can go through the topics arranged in terms of age, disease and other health topics. The age grouping is helpful because it allows you to instantly access health topics that are relevant to a particular age group. It also has a normal index a
n
d an illustration index that shows the available animations
and illustrations. Mayo (the organization) is also famous and authoritative. The CD also contains a multimedia guide to the Mayo organization.
The weak point of this CD-Rom is the search engine. I was slightly disappointed that I could not search for the symptoms of a disease and let the program point to me towards the relevant diseases. This is limiting because I have to think of relevant top
ics or guess what disease I may be experiencing before finding
out. The search engine lets you specify the word (or words) that you are interested in and displays all the topics that have those words. It cannot handle conditions well . It only looks for the occurence of the words you specify. Hopefully a future
upgrade will enhance this.
Overall, the quality of the Mayo CD is worth the price. It offers information that helps me greatly (since I'm a bit ignorant about health issues). A competitor to this CD is Family Doctor but I have not tried it so I cannot compare (anyone care to revi
ew it?)
3. Win32 SDK for Windows NT
I bought this CD from Microsoft for $69 + tax + shipping to get in on the offer since it includes the final production version of NT. I'm using it also for my development needs. A great deal for developer and a person thinking about going the NT way.
4. MediaClips Wizard
This CD only cost $15 from Egghead (includes $15 rebate if buy Media Clip CDs). It has about 50 graphic files and sounds that serves as a preview of offerings from Media Clips (like a demo CD). It also include drivers for sound cards and CD-Rom. It also
have a CD-Rom speed analysis program and sound card analysis
program.
I returned the CD because it was not useful for me. In my opinion, the graphic files and sounds were only so-so (but they are good quality for people who needs them). The drivers are irrelevant since I have the latest drivers from the net. The CD-Rom
speed analysis program is limited (only measures your transfer speed) and you can find out by reading your CD-Rom drive specs anyway. The sound card analysis program is also irrelevant as it tells you nothing new (eg: can your sound card handles stereo,
etc.)
Well, that's all for now. Reviews anyone? Thanks. For the future, I'm thinking about getting the Seventh Guest game CD-Rom.
