Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!darwin.sura.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.ans.net!newsgate.watson.ibm.com!watnews.watson.ibm.com!locutus.rchland.ibm.com!wo0z.rchland.ibm.com!lwloen From: lwloen@wo0z.rchland.ibm.com (Larry Loen) Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom.reviews,alt.cd-rom Subject: Re: CIA World Fact Book...BAH! Date: 27 Mar 1994 10:40:02 GMT Organization: IBM Rochester MN Lines: 62 Distribution: world Message-ID: <2n3nq2$nae@locutus.rchland.ibm.com> References: <19940325125645.rgast@gastpc.dseg.ti.com> <2mvjqo$d6v@xmission.xmission.com> <1994Mar27.062501.27477@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> Reply-To: lwloen@rchland.vnet.ibm.com NNTP-Posting-Host: wo0z.rchland.ibm.com In article <1994Mar27.062501.27477@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>, shaikh@ee470.ee.mcgill.ca (SHAIKH AMIR MR) writes: |> In article <2mvjqo$d6v@xmission.xmission.com>, |> Thayne Forbes wrote: |> >Ronald Gast (rgast@mksol.dseg.ti.com) wrote: |> >:> I just recently purchased the CIA World Fact Book. It is a JOKE! The |> >:> whole program and data is LESS than 5MB total! I couldn't believe it. |> >:> Why bother to put something like that on CD-ROM if all you have is |> >:> 5MB. To lure unsuspecting buyers perhaps? |> >:> |> >:> As for the data, any decent encyclopedia has more detail. CIA...BAH! |> >:> |> >:> Don't waste your money on this. |> > |> |> You think that is a waste? My store carries a CD-Rom called "The Dream Machine". It is an adult-based CD-rom. Anyhow, the point being that the total size of |> the disk is 11Megs ...TOTAL! I get complaints ALL DAY from angry customers |> demanding to know if there is somehow "information missing" or something. |> |> I have no idea why the company that made that game would bother placing it on |> a CD-rom. It would have been a hell of alot faster to read it off the HD. |> You would think that with 660megs to work with, they would pack it with more |> stuff, but noooooo ..... |> |> Anyhow...just my two cents worth... |> I'd like to suggest at least the possibility that it is possible to get one's money's worth with a CD ROM still nearly empty. It is price and value proposition, not a "fill it up" issue. If you are both saying these CD ROMs don't deliver enough value for the price, well and good. But, to complain merely because the CD ROM isn't full to the brim seems irrelevant and short-sighted. There's a lot of reference data out there than I would just as soon not spend hard file space on. Much of this I can quite adequately manage on a one-at-a-time basis (I don't usually need simultaneious access to the New International Version Bible and Plato's Republic). If I get a reasonable amount of stuff for a decent price, I guess I don't care if the CD is 1/2 full or 1/3 full or even 1/100 full. I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount of bucks for the convenience of not loading it in from diskette on the rarer day that I need it and then delete it all off afterward. Note that I can get value for my money even if the raw cost per bit is near the dollars per MB of hard disk. Maybe even above it sometimes. For instance, I just got my CD ROM, so the first thing I did was fish out a carefully preserved postcard and order my CD ROM version of Borland C++. I suspect that the total will be well under 60 MB. But, there's a lot of neat stuff in BC++ (examples, debuggers, performance monitors, application framework stuff) that I have little need for, but would prefer to access from CD ROM now and again. I think I'll be spending about 30 cents per MB here, which is about what it costs on diskette, but the convenience is worth it to me; at the margins, it means the difference between running "stacker" or not. At my CPU's speed, that matters a lot. -- Larry W. Loen | My Opinions are decidedly my own, so please | do not attribute them to my employer email to: lwloen@rchland.vnet.ibm.com