Care to get up close and personal with Niihau? How's about an overview of Tuvalu? Surely you need a helicopter shot of Pakatoa Island to get your morning started right, yeah? If so, and you're too lazy to hit up the World Wide Web, there's a better-than-average chance that an older
National Geographic magazine has exactly the elixir you're searching for. Problem is, sifting through every single issue since 1888 takes a fair bit of time -- time you'd rather be spending in an obnoxiously long security line as you await your flight to Ushuaia. Thanks to "modern technology" and "storage innovations," said quandary can now be resolved quite simply. Nat Geo is offering every last piece of information it has ever published on a portable 160GB
HDD, and amazingly 100GB is free for you to manually add to the collection. Too bad this $199.95 device wasn't available
before Christmas, but hey, at least you've now got something to blow those Santa Bucks on.
posted December 30th 2009 3:10AM
How can it be complete? Will they provide updates for future issues?
I'll just wait for the ultimate extended signature collector platinum edition.
u had me until .PDF ... UGH
@Eugene Action No PDF in the product, but no direct access to the image files either. You need to view/print using the included application.
My wife used to have the CD-ROM version of this, the one that came in a special mahogany box.
The file quality was utter crap — low-resolution, low-quality JPEGS — with a worthless viewing program, no copyable text, and no index. I imagine this is the same thing unless they've redone their entire collection from scratch again.
@Paul D
It is almost an order of magnitude larger so it must be significantly improved in resolution.
@electrobrains
Or even more than an order of magnitude. How many CDs was it?
@Paul D Prev version (112 yrs) was 36 CDs @ 72 DPI. This version is 120 yrs, 6 DVDs @ 200 DPI. (I'm the lead developer for the project).
We definitely heard the critiques of the 112 yr product, and did our best to improve the quality for this edition. If you have access to a good printer, you will definitely see the difference. I'm biased, obviously, but other comments on Amazon and other sites agree too.
Though, not everything can be stopped from being uploaded to the web, i believe some things should be left un-torrented
this is one of those things.
you'll only agree if your form of work or passion is ever defiled or disrespected.
if it's not being given for free, there is a reason for that people; someone worked to bring you this.
don't you all like to get paid for your work?
I'm not saying this because i have tons of money so i can buy all these cool gadgets and everything whenever i want. In fact, i'm a student who recently lost a job, and money is tight for me right now. but i'm also a musician, and as i learned on what it takes to make music, i realized the effort of what other artist do to bring me my favorite forms of art; whether it be music, movies, or literature. So maybe you don't see it like this, and you go on downloading everything and not paying for a single form of entertainment that isn't tangible.
but think about this, if life was without your favorite band, your favorite artist, director, writer, author, you wouldn't give something as meaningless as money to have their art brought to you?
(i know there are probably a lot of grammatical errors in that rant, but just ignore them) Readers on Engadget love to bring out irrelevant typos in other people's comments as forms of argument.
@mrgandi
Boo! Rant of a rich boy who's suffering because he just spent his loose change to replace the Pirelli Pzero's on his Porsche Boxster S from doing too many donuts trying impress his many lady friends. My heart goes out to ya, bub. Now, how about letting us poverty-class people have a little fun in our lives without all the guilt?
@Average White Boy
If i didn't know any better, this is probably Tiger Woods himself.
you can always just get it on DVD...
http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/browse/productDetail.jsp;jsessionid=F70DC7297877C95320D254AE1A4A0D85?productId=1076013&categoryId=
I suspect this is a reissue of the set you could buy a few years ago on CD. It was RUBBISH, just VERY, VERY POOR quality scans of printed magazines. Rubbish 'search' facilities too. Useless as an information or educational tool.
If it is, don't waste your money, even at $50 it's not worth it.
@colinet My comment was going to say "I just cannot believe that ***120*** years worth of National Geographic would fit on 60BG. It's a rich magazine with tons of pictures and lengthy articles" But your comment solves that question and is disappointing. If this were in more of a website format with search-able, copy-able, highlight-able text and nice high res pictures (at least for more modern years) I would really want this. I think it'd be an awesome thing to have. NG should get a crew to start making a better version of this. In a year you could have a richer version much more worth of ownership.
@colinet Nope. This is a completely new product. Every issue was rescanned. New app, viewer, searchable DB, and interaction model. Image resolution increased from 72 DPI to 200 DPI. (prints and reads much better).
I don't know why but 60GB for hundered years worth of magazines seems a bit small... what format is it?
I want this in full color on the islate wit the mag+ ui http://www.vimeo.com/8217311
I'll take the BlueRay+ version for cheaper Alex!
This is NOT just a reissue.
This version uses Adobe AIR. The interface is well done, very intuitive. The quality is good and you can zoom. You can print pages, too. There is a way to copy the DVDs onto your hard drive and lose the DVD's. Since I'm mostly interested in more recent issues I only copied 3 of the 6 DVDs onto my hard drive and that works fine too. It has a local Cache and always looks there for content first.
I got my copy from Amazon for below the retail price. It was on gold box a few weeks ago for about $35. A great deal, but still a good price even at retail.
The really sad thing is that I probably will find a torrent for this....sigh.
I've got the old 32 CD edition which is of meagre quality and has been sitting on a shelf for ages.
@pachi72
Can't wait 'til it hits TPB. I'm making room on my drive as I type. Then I'll be able to keep a few issues on my Apple iSlate to read any time I want.
I have all of them up to 1999 on CD's from the collection they sent out a few years back. I would love to have the update.
Yeah, I had the CDs in the wooden box until I eventually E-Bayed them.
The resolution and interface was terrible, even at the time I thought it was a joke.
If this is the same thing as before, someone needs to take a hard look at themselves.
@Mike V Read the previous posts. It is a brand new interface, with much higher resolution content. Completely new product. NatGeo listened to the critiques of the previous product and responded.