Comments on: Getting the Real War onto CD-ROM

By: Charles Bowery

Charles Bowery — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:53:37 +0000

Is anyone aware of a Macintosh compatible version of the CD-ROM OR? I think a company called H-Bar used to make one, but stopped.
Charles

By: Mark G.

Mark G. — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:11:05 +0000

Same thing for me in the fifth grade. If we got done with our in-class assignments early, we could get a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia to browse. By the end of the school year I’d read them all. With the possible exception of history, most of what I know comes from that experience.

By: K.A. Smith

K.A. Smith — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:10:47 +0000

Mark G., I stumbled upon your site by accident, but smiled when reading of your confusion over ‘Ibid!’ Your experience with the massive bound volumes reminded me of the days before video, and rain kept us locked indoors. I usually pulled down a volume, at random, of our encyclopedia and began to flip pages aimlessly. I can still tell you some of the things I learned ‘by accident’ that way. I’m sure you found the same to be true of your Civil War volumes. Ah, children today don’t know what they’re missing… ks

By: Mark G.

Mark G. — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:02:13 +0000

If you already have the OR and ORN, you may have as much as you want. For me, the Medical and Surgical History and the Southern Historical Society Papers are the most valuable extras. Some of the other resources (like the Campaigns of the Civil War series) are worthwhile in themselves but more easily used in book form. As you'll see on the site, the Medical and Surgical History is exclusive to "The Complete Civil War." The SHSP can be purchased separately (and indeed, I already own the CD and have actually managed not to lose it. So far the search and bookmark capabilities seem identical to what I recall of the original OR CD.

By: Scott Smart

Scott Smart — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:37:42 +0000

Thanks for the heads up on this. I bought the Guild Press OR and ORN many years ago (I think they have Win 3.1 and Win95 version search engines). So the question would be the value of the “extras”. The real question is if the search and bookmark capabilities are any different than the original CDs?

scott s.

By: Eric Wittenberg

Eric Wittenberg — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:58:14 +0000

Mark,

I did exactly the same thing with the OR’s, at about the same time. It wasn’t more than six months later that it became available on CD-ROM. I thought my wife was going to blow a gasket.

To this day, I still prefer the books, just to be able to look for obscure stuff. Where the CD-ROM is most valuable is when I need to copy-paste a large chunk of text, rather than having to re-type it.

The Guild Press CD you describe is the same one I have. I bought it in the little visitor’s center on the battlefield at Cold Harbor.

Eric