🚀 go-pugleaf

My husband and I bought the DAK package.  We spent an incredibly
frustrating 2 weeks trying to get it to work on our XT clone. Roy was
ready to throw the thing through the window, when a good deal on an AT
clone came our way. We didn't buy the AT just to see if the CD-ROM would
work on it, but it turns out that it worked just fine.  We still aren't
sure why it wouldn't work with the XT clone.

The CD itself seems like a good piece of equipment. My husband repairs
TVs and VCRs and is into electronics and was pleased that it was a
machine made by Sony.  It has an earphone jack, a volume control and an
eject button. (Not many buttons when you're used to CD players!)  The
little "carriers" you have to use with the CDs are a bit of a pain, but
I understand that's pretty much the standard.  

With the package we got two of the carriers and all that CD stuff they
advertized.

The Encyclopedia is a lot of fun to browse through, since some of the
entries have color pictures (we have a VGA monitor, so they really look
great). It has the same drawbacks as other inexpensive encyclopedias in
that it's ok for a desk reference but useless for real research.  I
expect my children will get a lot of use out of it, though.  It has two
Atlases, which are actually quite interesting.  One for the World, one
for the US. You can pinpoint countries and get specific data for that
area. The comparative data section (I forget what they call it) is quite
interesting. (comparative data on birth rate, death rate, infant
mortality, AIDS rate, crime rate, etc.)  In the US one, you can pinpoint
states and get some info on cities. It doesn't go as far into detail as
I'd like, but you can't have everything. The US map has an interesting
"road map" feature -- it shows you all the major highways in the US.

You can print out pretty much anything you see on the screen, but
beware, if it has pretty pictures (like the road maps), it takes forever
on a dot matrix printer.  You can't print the pretty pictures from the
encyclopedia, but you can print the articles.

The "Library of the Future" has hundreds of old standard books
(classics, etc)  It's kind of neat because you can search for an obscure
passage on any of the books. I wouldn't think it would be all that easy
to read from the screen, but perhaps that's my own eye problem. You can
print chapters to read, if you wish (a nice feature).  I don't think
I'll be using this CD to read much from, but it does seem like an
excellent source of quotes and trivia, if you're into that.

The language disk is somewhat difficult to use, and I haven't quite
figured it out. It seems to be just an electronic version of an
English/whatever dictionary.

I believe the last disk is a dictionary, but my memory fails me at this point.

The software that connects all this has a cute screen where you click on
what you want to see and it prompts you to put in the right CD (if you
haven't already). The software is easy to use, but we haven't gotten it
completely "clean" yet in that it dies with a "bad command" error
returning from certain CDs. Nothing terribly hard to fix, just a minor
annoyance. 

It has a CD-player feature whereby you can plug in earphones and play
regular CDs.  It has this nifty screen (a little too cutesy for my
taste) that looks like the front of a CD player (sort of).  You can do
anything with it that you can with a regular CD player.  Or, you can
tell it to play the entire disk in background mode and it will start the
CD playing and pop you back to DOS.  This way, you can listen to music
while you use the computer for other things.

I've bought a couple other things from DAK in the past and found them to
be exactly what they say they are -- and no more.  But as long as you
are careful to read the advertisements and discard the hyperbola, you'll
have a pretty good idea of what you are getting.

All in all, I think the CD-ROM was a good deal. I, too, have been
somewhat appalled at the price of other CD stuff, but I suspect the
prices will get within reason eventually.  (I consider $300 a bit stiff
for one CD)  I'm also a little frustrated at trying to find a listing of
other CDs available, but I'm just starting and figure I'll find that out
as I go.

DAK advertises a help line. We spent days trying to get through with no
success, but that might have been because it was the holiday season, we
never did figure out why.  My husband sent them a FAX and they did
finally reply to it (with a letter).  They seem fairly sincere in their
guarantees.

One word of advice: if you get this, just in case you decide you don't
like it and want to send it back, you have to repack it just like it
came. There were hundreds of little bits of packaging, twist ties, etc.
Not to mention instruction pages. Make an effort to keep all this stuff
together -- we would have been hard-pressed to find it all!!!
(especially considering my cats shredded the styrofoam all over the
library ... *sigh*)
Barbara              o o o         o o o      bc1w@andrew.cmu.edu      
Carlson            o        o   o        o                               
                  o           o           o                               
Carnegie Mellon   o                       o   Happy Valentines Day       
University         o                     o             
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Graduate School of     o             o        cheerfully accepted!
Industrial Admin         o         o                 
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412-268-3694                  o                no calories ... ]