Honey, I shrunk the library! - Software Review - ten reference CD-ROMs - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1993 by John R. Quain, Carol Ellison

Remember that irritating kid in the Britannica commercials--the one who whined about his science report until an encyclopedia magically appeared on his bookshelf? He had to get up from his computer every time he wanted to look up an item. Well, he doesn't have to anymore, and neither do you.

A single CD-ROM (compact disc-- read only memory) can bring hundreds of thousands of pages of information to your screen, from entire encyclopedias to the complete phone directory of the United States. CD-ROMs, which look like standard audio compact discs, have an average capacity of 630MB (or approximately 438 3.5-inch, 1.44MB floppy disks). And with CD-ROM drives now priced at less than $200, software publishers are issuing hundreds of new DOS, Windows MPC (Multimedia PC compatible), and Macintosh titles covering everything from clip art and font libraries to entire applications like CorelDraw.

ARE BOOKS DEAD?

In this roundup of 10 titles, we focus on CD-ROM reference tools--the most useful and popular encyclopedias, atlases, phone directories, and other business-oriented compilations. Mankind has been perfecting the art of printing books for more than 500 years, ever since Gutenberg. In comparison, CD-ROMs are a young and immature form, so you'll sometimes have to make allowances for these electronic reference materials. Many early CD-ROMs were culled from the original paper versions through computer scanners. Consequently, some text-based CD-ROMs for DOS, such as U.S. History on CD-ROM, contain distracting typos and incomplete indexes.

Other CD-ROMs--particularly those that were designed for Windows (or the Mac), including Microsoft's Encarta-- have completely overhauled the original hardcover materials they are based on, adding cross-references (or hyperlinks) and colorful animation, sound bites, and video clips.

DRIVING YOUR CD-ROM

A number of computers sold today include a CD-ROM drive or offer one as an option. And replacing an entire shelf of reference books with a single disc is just too tempting a proposition. CD-ROMs allow you to hear words pronounced correctly in a talking dictionary, search through volumes of data within seconds, and copy quotes, maps, and graphics directly into reports--skills that not even the best paper-based references can match. And all you need to begin building your own CD-ROM library is a CD-ROM drive.

Most CD-ROM drives will play audio CDs and CD-ROMs, which use a standard called ISO-9660. Although several other CD-ROM standards--such as the CD-ROM-XA, Kodak's Photo CD, and Sony's MMCD (MultiMedia CD format for the company's own handheld CD-ROM players)--are available, there is very little software in these formats. All the CDs in this review are ISO-9660 compatible, so all you really need to know is whether the disc you want is for DOS, Macintosh, or Windows MPC.

MPC compatibility applies to PCs running Microsoft Windows 3.1. The original MPC specification called for CD-ROM drives with a 150 kilobyte per second (Kbps) sustained data transfer rate. These single-speed drives can handle all the titles reviewed here, but the time it takes to access a CD-ROM's files on a single-speed drive may make you wish you'd gone to the local library. Furthermore, video snippets and animation played back on standard CD-ROM drives can be jumpy and grainy.

So now there's an MPC 2 specification, which calls for 300Kbps CD-ROM drives. These drives, pioneered by NEC but now available from a variety of companies (for as low as $250), are called double-speed drives because everything but standard CD-audio is played back at twice the standard speed.

Although double-speed drives will make motion video clips play back more smoothly, you still shouldn't expect television-quality video anytime soon. Video on CD-ROMs needs to be compressed. Without compression, only a few seconds of full-motion, broadcast-quality video can fit on a disc. Currently, the major contenders in the video-compression arena--Microsoft's AVI (Audio Video Interleave), Intel's DVI (Digital Video Interactive), Apple's QuickTime, and Philips's CD-I (CD-Interactive) video-compression standard--all lack the ability to play back high-resolution, 30-frame-per-second, full-motion video from a CD on a PC.

GOING MPC

If multimedia CD-ROMs are to your liking, plan on getting a sound card for your PC; all Mac systems have sound capabilities built in. To hear JFK speak or a sample of Verdi's Aida--audio that's typically saved as WAV or MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files--PC users will need to hook the sound card to the CD-ROM drive and get a pair of speakers. The only audio you can play directly through a CD-ROM's headphone jack or audio output is Red Book audio. But most CD-ROM offerings use Red Book audio sparingly because such files take up a lot of disc space.

You should also make sure you've got a big enough hard disk: Many CD-ROM titles take IMB to 4MB of hard-disk space to store graphics and navigation files and improve performance. Some, like Encarta, take as much as 8MB.