The Complete New Yorker on an external drive (and DVD)

Tech and Sunday reading, two great tastes that taste great together, right? That's why you're reading this right now, hm? Well, prepared to get cultured, kids, because when you're done with your coffee and your Times and your Engadget, you can plug in the Complete New Yorker on an external drive (or DVD, if that's your bag) -- over 4,000 issues since 1925 of everyone's favorite high brow Nast pub, stocked to the brim with stories and poems your friends probably won't get, political commentary we sure as hell don't get, and classy, satirical cartoons everyone just pretends to get; all of which you can snag for $300. Go on, do ol' Eustace Tilley proud.

[Via MetaFilter]

[Jon MacKinnon @ Aug 27th 2006 5:00PM]

Surely it goes out of date in a month... and as its only got up to april this year, its already missing 4 issues? Sorry I dunno how often it's released as im from the UK.

[MB @ Aug 27th 2006 5:08PM]

The "Complete New Yorker," regardless of its packaging, is Valhalla for New Yorker fans or just people who are fascinated by the cultural history of the 1925-2005 era. Every article, line drawing, cartoon and advertisement is included. I really want it but am afraid to get it because of its potential to chew up large chunks of time.

[John Bell @ Aug 27th 2006 5:40PM]

It probably should be noted that the DVD set is actually only $100 list price.

[Zadillo @ Aug 27th 2006 5:47PM]

What exactly does this have that the Complete New Yorker on DVD-ROM didn't have, or is it just the format, essentially (certainly everything being on a single hard drive is more convenient than popping in and out multiple DVD's)?

[MHZmaster @ Aug 27th 2006 5:48PM]

Hmm... the cable in the picture appears to be a firewire cable, but the website says it uses USB 2.0. Quite an interesting idea, though. I hope we see more publications doing something like this in the future.

[Shredsled87 @ Aug 27th 2006 5:59PM]

That is sweet. And yes. That is most definitely a Firewire 400 cable.

[rutsy5 @ Aug 27th 2006 6:02PM]

the best part is that it comes with extra space available for future releases of issues (probably yearly). It would be really interesting for those interested in the world when the New Yorker began

[Dave B @ Aug 27th 2006 6:07PM]

Though I doubt that the hard drive itself is worth the $200 difference between that and the DVD set, the product page does mention this:
"Plus, there is plenty of extra room on the drive for future updates."
No word on whether said updates are included in the package, but interesting nonetheless.

[LTM @ Aug 27th 2006 8:43PM]

So, when does the Playboy DVD / external drive complete package come out because that's the one I want!

[David @ Aug 27th 2006 9:36PM]

And you can actually get the DVD set for about $60 if you look around.

[Nunya Business @ Aug 27th 2006 10:14PM]

Just point me to a torrent

[Dave @ Aug 28th 2006 9:14AM]

Dunno about anyone else, but my favorite part about reading old magazines are the advertisements. I wonder if the page scans have the ads intact, or if the content has been reformatted.

[Nathan @ Aug 28th 2006 9:41AM]

I have the DVD version and yes--it's a page scan of every issue with a searchable index and some keyword indexing. However, there is no full-text index, which can sometimes make it difficult to search if the keyword index is spotty (and it sometimes is).

[J S K @ Aug 28th 2006 10:57AM]

IIRC, the biggest complaints I heard/read about the Complete New Yorker on DVD was that some of the content was scattered over multiple DVDs which meant swapping DVDs to get at said content and that they did not allow you to download all of the content onto HDD for easy searching.

Hopefully, having it on HDD moots both complaints. I'd LOVE to have this on HDD.

[Bill Tong @ Aug 28th 2006 11:45AM]

I prefer the DVD version, make it easy to store for many many years. A hard drive? no way.

[Shavonne @ Sep 10th 2006 10:20PM]

I bought the DVD set when it first came out a year ago for 60 bucks. I couldn't resist the harddrive when I got the email telling me it would be shipping mid-September. Plus, they gave me a $60 discount on the harddrive because I already owned the DVDs. I can't wait. I hate having to swap out DVDs because something I'm looking for is on a different disc.

I honesty don't give a rats butt about having to pay 20 bucks a year for the updates. That saves me money and space since now I'll be able to download them to a harddrive. I can't wait. I'm so excited.