I just received an email from the Model Railroader folks. Looks like they're taking pre-orders on a two DVD set that will contain 75 years worth of the magazine in a fully searchable electronic format. At 199.95 it's not especially cheap, but figuring you get 900 issues of the magazine it works out to about 22 cents an issue, so in that regard it's a pretty good deal. Here's the link in case anyone is interested in checking it out. Model Railroader magazine: 75 year collection (Pre-Order) Mike
well i like the idea, gets rid of all the magazines that take up space so more models can be stored, because even two decades worth of magazine takes up quite a bit of space
It's definitely a good deal. I understand why the price is so high. But at the same time it's a bit too high for me...especially if you paid your subscription for part of that 75 years. Again, I think the price is justifiable, but if it was a tad less a lot more people would pull the trigger.
Also noticed they're taking pre-orders. Sheesh, is there anything in the MRR industry that's NOT pre-ordered these days?
If it's "fully searchable" I can see it being worth two hundred bucks. At a minimum, that means they scanned it through a program that can recognize text, and perhaps had a team of chinese sweatshop laborers double-checking to ensure the machine scan was accurate... Plus stacks of old MRs are MUSTY. (I should know, I have several). Over a lifetime you could easily save $200 in allergy and sinus medicine...
If any of you here own Apple iPads, I'd like to know if you are able to load the contents of the MR75 DVD in somehow. Now THAT would rock!
In fact, from what I've read, the MR DVD will NOT work on any of the latest reader devices, which I'd say is going to limit its worth in the eyes of a lot of folks. NYW&B
The fine print at the bottom of the ad: "Model Railroader 75 Years: 1934-2009 will not run on tablet computers, stand alone DVD players, media players, e-readers or smart phones." [to be fair, it was the same sized font as the rest of the ad] Would be nice to have all those articles easily accessible. $200 is a bit steep for me, though.
Interesting that it won't work on iPads and such. I assumed it would be in standard PDF format but come to think of it...maybe it won't be to prevent piracy. Perhaps you have to have the DVD in your computer to use it. Otherwise one club with 50 members could split it and everyone load it individually. Oh well, there's still MRH to keep my frequent flights more enjoyable.
Doesn't the iPad specifically not support PDF, Flash, etc? I was under the impression Steve Jobs has a longstanding fatwa against Adobe.
My initial reaction is posative...... But, that is a pretty steep price. I'll have to wait until a review or two comes in before I commit. There are a lot of things to consider, if we can get the best of both the magazine index and good looking articles and pictures plus the ability to share articles by printing or copying, then it will be worth the price. I'm sure there will be glitches, it just depends on how "user friendly" they make it. 2slim
^ If it's like the Trains version, you'll be able to do all those things. Expensive, yes. Great library of info, ABSOLUTELY!
The Trains DVD Search function appears to be able to search for specific words within the text, such as town names. Depending on the type of search the user selects (title, railroad, keywords, or full-text), the search returns thumbnail images of a single page within each of the issues containing the search term. Resting the cursor on the page image will bring up a six-digit "issue number" and "page number", but not month and year of that issue. For instance, I searched for an article about the L&N along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I thought the article had been published sometime in the 70's, but I was mistaken. It took me nearly ten minutes to double-click hit or miss style on random issues between the 70's and 90's before I found the article in the January, 1987 issue. Had I been given the date of each issue, that would reduced my search time considerably because I could have homed in on a specific date range, rather than bouncing around from the late 90's to the early 70's trying to home in on the assumed date. Otherwise, I think it's good product.
Have you tried the online magazine index? Hank, Based on the info you provided I did a search using the magazine index on the MR site. I first entered "L&N" and got a lot of articles none of which seemed like what you were after. So I thought and entered "Mississippi Gulf Coast" which returned no results. Then I shortened it to "Mississippi" and got 2 pages. On the second page near the bottom was the January 1987 article you mentioned and other keywords were "L&N", "Alabama", "Louisiana" & "Mississippi". You can access the index from the MR site, (In the blue field at the bottom of the homepage) they have MR & Trains issues plus other non Kalmbach publications, (not all but a fair selection). Now I was hoping the search engine on the DVD would be similar to the online search engine but from your description it isn't. In fact it sounds pretty cumbersome. AFAIK the online index is available to anyone subscriber or not, so I guess you could use it in conjunction with the DVD index. Still sounds like a PITA though, but at least it's a work around!! 2slim
