Fine Woodworking on Disk

[Windy Wood]

Has anybody sprung for the $150 for the Fine Woodworking complete collection on CD rom? I'm tempted but I've got about half of the issues going back to #3. Windy Wood

[David Clarke]

I have this on disk - one thing to note: It's not the complete collection. Rather, it's a best of. I haven't used it extensively yet, but the few times I have used it I was able to find an article that answered my questions.

It seems very well put together with several different indexes:

Articles by Topic (with category & subcategory) Index of articles by title and author Methods of work by title and issue date

It's all acrobat based and also makes use of acrobat's search functionality.

Dave

"Windy Wood "

[Test Tickle]

I have it and enjoy it very much. As someone else said, it doesn't have every artickle from FWW, but it does have an awful lot. Some reasons are obvious -- a fifteen year old tool review no longer has much value. I think I'm only missing two issues from the whole run, but find the CD to be very worthwhile.

tt

PS Some things are complete, such as all of the "Methods of Work" columns.

[Mike Alexander]

What about the project plans? Are they all there, or just a best of?

...Mike

[Brian Henderson]

It's not a complete collection, it's "selected articles" and, at least IMO, not worth the price.

[Test Tickle]

So far, all of the plans I've looked for have been there. But, it is frustrating not knowing what is missing. If they could include a Table of Contents, like they do on their website, so you could see which articles are included and which aren't, it would be very welcome.

It's alot of money, and I waited and looked around at libraries and such, but I finally broke down and bought it. I'm happy, but your mileage may vary.

tt

[Jim Wilson]

Maybe not completely worthless. It might be good for a newbie to see the reviewer's evaluation methods. Could be useful for folks buying used tools, too.

Jim

[Test Tickle]

True enough.

tt

[William]

would any of you who have this disc be willing to somehow send me a table of contents of an index of these 600 articles??? i would rather pony up for the whole set if this is rather thin...

william

[TomL]

Well, you COULD pony up a few more bucks and buy the entire set of issues in an EBay auction. Upside is you get to look at the pretty covers and get all the articles including the adverts. Oh yeah, and disk is pretty much useless while you're sitting on the crapper.

TomL

[Wood Butcher]

Humbug! That's what craptop computers are for. They'll even let you read the disk in the outhouse, but are kind of useless when you're out of paper.

Art

[Larry Jaques]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:44:49 GMT, TomL brought forth from the murky depths:

Woodworking-related ads are the one type I actually READ in a mag. But an incomplete set of FWW on the disc? That's assinine! What were they thinking, and at THAT price?

WHAT? You don't keep your laptop in the throne room? Whassamatta you?

---------------------------------- VIRTUE...is its own punishment

Website Applications ==================================================

[BRuce]

[Tim Douglass]

This approach puzzles me with collections on CD. It really doesn't take much more work to put the entire magazine on there, ads and all. From a historical perspective that is one of the best things about old magazines - the ads for stuff we wouldn't even consider ponying up money for. For many years I saved one of my early Byte magazines, where you could mail order a 5 *megabyte* hard drive for your Apple II, as long as you were prepared to shell out about $8,000!

Tim Douglass

[TomL]

Guess this approach keeps the prices up on the original hard copy mags.

TomL

[Creamy Goodness]

6 computers in the house, and 1 laptop for the crapper. Yes I'm a computer geek. Best one I ever put in was the one "integrated" into the workbench. Got access to the web, my music, email, NG, everything.

Mike Rinken

[Mark Jerde]

How many are actively used? I have 7 but the old 80486-33 and Pentium 166 haven't been powered up in months. I should get rid of at least the 486 but it would feel a little like shooting an old relative in the nursing home. ;-) Gateway's 2nd of the top of the line, first model with a fast graphics slot, MS Access 2.0 programming *rocked* when I upgraded from 8 to 12 MB of RAM...

-- Mark

[Doug Winterburn]

I'm down to three machines since the thinkpad died. One is a desktop 486 firewall running linux. When I had broadband available, it also ran a mail server (sendmail) and webserver (apache), but since I moved and dialup is the only option, it just does firewall duty and I got a hosting company for email and web server. My "screamer" is a upgraded 286 chassis with a AT2 MB and a pentium 233MMX running Linux (also is a file/print/scanner server for the OL's machine), and the OverLords machine is a Cyrix 333 (I think really a 266MHz) running Windoze 2000.

Yup, right on the bleeding edge....

-Doug

[Doug Winterburn]

Well, I really was trying to explain my minimalist setup, and how far out of the times I am.

Firewall: 486 DX100, 64MB mem(maxed) 512MB-Ide, RH6.2

My Desktop: pentiumMMX 233MHz, 256MB mem(maxed), 8GB SCSI/60GB-IDE, RH9/XDE2

OverLords Desktop: Cyrix 333, 256MB mem(maxed), 8GB-IDE, MS-Win-2K

I have plenty of room as I keep archives on CD-R/RW. Probably using 30% of disk space.

-Doug

[Test Tickle]

How about disc space? I bet mine is bigger. In my primary desktop I have a 30GB, 80GB, two 120 GB, and three 160 GB. And I still find I have to move stuff around to make room.

tt