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23 February 2008

I Got The Bundled, Electronic New Yorker Archive This Week...... [More:]

I'd like to know if any other Mechas have taken the plunge on this, and what your experience has been with it?

For me, and this may sound mawkish, but it's enormously comforting. To think for the price of a night out ($40.00) you could have their entire back catalog is astounding.

I feel almost honored to be able to own such a thing, as I think the New Yorker is the penultimate American magazine.

Your thoughts?
Oh yes, I got that for Christmas year before last. It's been quite enjoyable. I mostly find I read various authors or search various subjects as opposed to reading a specific issue of the magazine. I haven't bothered to buy any of the post-2006 updates because frankly I've now got more New Yorker than I'll ever be able to read. Plus which I prefer the much older, lighter, less political days of the magazine anyway.

Back in the 80s I took a graduate literature class centered around The New Yorker, and we went up to their offices and they gave us a tour. Great fun -- Roger Angell took one look at us and fled in the opposite direction.
posted by JanetLand 23 February | 11:58
And by 'penultimate' LT recognizes that he means the 'ne minus ultra' of American magazines.

He meant to say that it kicks ass.
posted by Miko 23 February | 12:38
It's $40? With the exchange rate, that's amazing value. I mean, it's great value anyway, but wow. IIRC the New Yorker goes back to pre-WW2 and there's articles written in the 30s and 40s about the rise of the Nazi party and so on. My parents get the New Yorker sent to the UK every week and now that my dad has retired and invested in a shiny new iMac, this might be a worthy purchase for him.

What's the presentation like? Is it PDFs or something else? Navigation good?
posted by TheDonF 23 February | 15:25
Can you 'clip' the cartoons and attach them to your emails to annoy everyone you know? Because that's what I'd do.
posted by wendell 23 February | 15:44
There's a video demo here, TheDonF.

I'd totally go for this if I had a big enough hard drive to copy all the DVDs, and if it didn't cost $80 with international shipping (which is still cheap, but not cheap enough for this impoverished student). Enjoy it!
posted by matthewr 23 February | 15:48
Thanks matthewr - I'll take a look.
wendell - I think, in the couple of years I've browsed my parents' NYs, that I've seen one cartoon that made me laugh. They're absolutely terrible!
posted by TheDonF 23 February | 16:36
If The New Yorker is the penultimate magazine then I'd like to know what the ultimate is?
The Atlantic?
The Economist?
National Geographic?
Scientific American?
2600?

Q: What is the format of the New Yorkers on disk? HTML? PDF? JPEG? Something proprietary?

I few years ago I purchased one of those sets of CDs with the complete National Geographic on them for 50.00 or so. It turned out that it consisted of just low resolution, poor quality jpegs of each page of each issue. The index sucked, as did the application by which you could select an issue and view the jpegs. It was readable, but just. Even for 50.00 for all issues up to 1999 or so, I felt cheated. They're still on my shelf.
posted by DarkForest 23 February | 17:49
I think it's a fantastic investment, y'all.

As far as the index goes, it's slightly balky, but that may be how I loaded it and not how it actually works. I think the folks at the NY'er did their absolute best in presenting it: there's two views (either double-page or single-page view, you can index by author, cover, article, even cartoon if you want).

The PDF's are as clear as they could possibly be considering that they are reduplicating issues that are several decades old, and have obviously been cleaned up prior to release.

If you don't like the slight inconvenience of loading individual disks to view the contents, the NY-er also has a stand-alone hard drive with everything on it also. Don't know if this is necessarily a better way to go, because you'll still have to shlep the disks or the drive to your local cafe.

And I DID mean ultimate, instead of penultimate when I originally posted this - I do this from time to time. It still kicks ass.

This is a worthwhile investment for anyone interested in this magazine, and for the price, you'd be a fool not to go for it in my opinion. And outside of my iPOD, it's one of the things I'm happiest about owning.

I feel really connected, somehow. Like I just walked into a room where all my favorite friends are having a great party and they didn't up and leave until I got there.
posted by Lipstick Thespian 24 February | 12:43
If The New Yorker is the penultimate magazine then I'd like to know what the ultimate is?

MAD, which is also available as PDFs on a DVD. Highly recommended.

potrzebie
posted by jtron 24 February | 17:02
POTRZEBIE!

Oh man, jtron, I dinnae know ye, but right ON.

Potrzebie! woo woo!
posted by Lipstick Thespian 24 February | 22:59
Istanbul's 7-story UNDERWATER hotel! || Powerisers or bust!

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