Article 15214 (15 more) in alt.cd-rom: Path: agate!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!news.delphi.com!usenet From: Robert S. Pataki Manager of the Photo Graphics Group on DELPHI Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom Subject: Walnut Creek CDROM: Libris Britania Date: Sat, 9 Oct 93 16:15:33 EST Organization: Delphi Internet Lines: 93 Message-ID: <931009.58533.PUGDOG@delphi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: delphi.com I recieved a copy of the "Libris Britannia" Shareware CD ROM, from Walnut Creek CDROM, apparantly the US Distributor of this English disc. The disc is well put together, and contains about 600 MB of files. It comes with a softcovered book with a full 'shareare catalog' style description arranged by category. Sample topics are EDUCATION (with breakdowns by age range and teachers tools), BUSINESS (with various sub categories), Graphics (with clip art, raytracing, and various other categories) HAM RADIO (several categories) and many, many more such as Religion, Program support, Windows, Utilities, Astrology, Desktop Publishing, Word Processing, Hobbies, Programming, Games, Music, Special Needs, etc. Basically the expected range of topics you'll find on a ShareWare library disc. The separate Ham Radio topic suprised me, but not in the context of Walnut Creek publishing the QRZ Ham Radio disc :). The organization of the disc is cryptic. The files are coded by the PDSL code numbers, for their cataloging system. To that end, the front end provided is *mandatory* to use, unless you want to try to locate the numbers from the manual. To the plus side, the system works. It's easy, if not somewhat limited. It allows you to select and expand one program group at a time, which can make testing/trying several programs quickly more of a task than it should be. The front end gives a list of directories, and the description of each, and allows you to select that, and recieve a line description of each file. It would have been nice to get the full descripton of each file, making the use of the included reference book unnecessary. Perhaps the designers of the disc will realize that the effort to put the index on the disc would be more than offset by not having to print the book. While the book is an interesting idea for shelf sales, I'm *TOTALLY* electronic, and would like all the information available on-line without having to seek out reference books. To it's credit, the book provides an introduction to the disc, and the various 'shell' and archive managers available, and offers a few tips. But, who's going to read it?? My biggest problem with the disc is age. It's a problem that affects all the shareware discs. The disc appears to have been mastered in 2/93. Many of the programs date back earlier than that. In the interim, new versions of the programs have come out, and might be more useful. Specifically the Health/Medical programs were somewhat dated. Several have had two or three new releases since this disc was printed. The Special Needs area was very small, but the utilities there for the visually impaired are some I've come across in the past, and believe do work. The Graphics area which I'm much more familiar with, had many good programs and clip art availble. While the clip-art does not go out of date, many of the programs have been updated, and interestingly many of the more poular ones seem absent. The inclusion of VPIC and CSHOW in the same archive had me a bit curious. So I looked. The ZIP actually included 3 ZIP files. GIFDESK32, VPIC50, and CSHOW843. The most recent version we have of CSHOW is 8.60 and I think that may be out of date, since it's from Feb 92, though I get the mailings direct from Bob. VPIC is up to version 6.1 or higher, depending on what you consider an official release, and GIFDESK is up to version 4.5. This is according to our own libraries. The new versions of all these programs provide SIGNIFICANT functionality improvements over the previous, and are much better for the users. I find I agree in principle with the ASP about the damage that old shareware can do. Programs more than 2 years old may not work on current systems. The new systems require programs to be well behaved, many old programs broke the rules to do 'extra' things. Everyone wants the bottom line, so here it is. I think for the price this disc is a fair value at this time. An updated version, hot off the presses, would be a very GOOD value. This is issue 2. If the PDSL could update their archives, and print a disc and get it out immediately, it would *VERY* favorably compare with the the new offerings from the ASP. My next review will be the CICA MS Windows CDROM which was also sent by Walnut Creek. It is a collection from the CICA archives, and as such has a range of golden oldies, and enough new material to be of interest. Release date was Aug 93, so should be pretty current. More later. -r- NOTE: I'll handle specific questions about the disc via E-mail, and summarize the good stuff for the group.