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I also recently acquired the 1851 Bowditch. I must say that I share Bill's
disappointment with this product.

Not being able to print selected pages is certainly a major drawback. For
example if you wanted to print out the section on lunars and take it with
you on your boat - well you can't.

Another issue I have with this product is that you can't just put the CD-ROM
into your computer and read the file off of it. The only way it lets you do
it is to permanently install about 130 MB of data on your hard drive. This
is big time inconvenient for those of us who have a limited amount of space
on our hard drives. It also makes no sense since for most of us this is a
reference product that will be consulted but occasionally.

I use the term "permanently" in referring to the installation because the
process is so complex that you would not want to regularly remove and
reinstall it. You have to enter a lengthy serial number followed by a code
number and then an equally lengthy key. I felt like I was working for the
National Security Agency! And what is the point of this "Bill Gates"
paranoia? Are they worried someone in China is going to pirate this and sell
thousands of copies?

Bill was luckier than I was. I sent a couple of emails to Starpath and have
yet to receive a reply.

---------------------------------------
Marc Bernstein
PO Box 57
Denver NY 12421-0057
USA

tel 607-326-7582
cell 917-494-7574
fax 607-326-4126
marc.bernstein@att.net
N 42� 13.94'   W 74� 34.32'
----------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Allen" 
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 6:25 PM
Subject: 1851 Bowditch at StarPath


> Hi guys,
>
> I'm sorry to respond to another email with an off-thread topic, but I
> have not yet figured out how to start a new top line thread. (Any quick
> hints?)
>
> Most of you probably already know this, but I just purchased a
> page-by-page scanned version of the 1851 Bowditch.  It is available for
> about $40 or so from www.starpath.com.
>
> I received the CD very quickly (Fedex) and registered it (quite an
> involved registration process) and finally got it open.
>
> It is a very high quality product on a PDF file, although the pages
> tended to load a bit slowly on my old computer.
>
> The big drawback is that you are NOT allowed to print any part of it --
> which caught me by surprise!  (Maybe I'm just behind the times and
> everyone else knows this.)
>
> I would have enjoyed reading the 1851 Bowditch very much, and I applaud
> the effort Starpath put in to create this and the reasonable pricing.
> But I for one am limited in the time I can spend in front of a computer
> because of neck injuries.  So this makes computer-read-only products
> like this practically useless to me (this is the first time I have
> purchased such an item).  With our aging population, physical problems
> from working in front of computers for too long must surely be on the
> rise?  Does any one else have this problem?  Where does that put those
> of us with these disabilities in position vis-a-vis the e-books?
>
> Also, I believe in working methodically through the examples in these
> types of books, which requires pencil and calculator notations.  I was
> very excited at the prospect of having the ability to print pages with
> examples that I could scribble all over and still have the clean text.
> (Right now I have to photocopy pages in my Bowditches, Nories, etc. to
> do this.)
>
> In any event, the 1851 Bowditch from Starpath appears to be similar
> (espeically with regard to the discussion on lunars) to the 1821 and
> other editions that I already own straddling the 1851 date.
>
> David Burch at Starpath was very fair and gave me an immediate refund
> (and turned off my access code, of course).  He mentioned that new CDs
> will clearly warn that the information is not printable.  Looking at the
> CD wrapping for the copy I received, I read:
>
> "Exact reporduction of the 1851 edition of The New American Practical
> Navigator by Nathaniel Bowditch.  Bookmarked and fully searchable."  But
> there is nothing to warn about the NO PRINT and it is equally unclear in
> the web-page ad. (Interestingly, in the web-page ad Starpath offers to
> donate this e-book to any library free of charge, but they can't seem to
> figure out a way to offer a printed copy to those of us who are paying
> customers with disabilities?)
>
> I hope this will be useful to some of the members.
>
> Regards,
> Bill

   

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