Complete Illustrated Guide to Woodworking
aussiemat
| Posted in General Discussion on
I purchased this series of books on DVD some time ago. I assumed that I paid primarily for intellectual property. The collection on DVD is now non usable as a result of operating system upgrades much as is the case with archives.
I have contacted customer service with no satisfactory outcome.
Surely as I have paid for the intellectual property there should be a nominal fee to obtain a new interface (it seems only on USB now) that will give me access to the books.
I know some will say it is all available online in the complete package membership but this is not a suitable alternative for me and also dictates that I subscribe to this package for life to give me access to what I have already purchased.
Mathew
Replies
Have you tried them in a dvd player?
I bought all of the series as hardback books, many years ago. Whilst physical books are less easy to search, they do tend to last longer and are a discrete item needing only your eye-brain and maybe a bookshelf to work.
Also, you own them and can even lend them to others without a lawyer threatening to have you gaoled. Well, you can in Europe.
The magazine copies that used to come on a DVD had a bit of clunky software fronting the actual magazine contents stored as PDFs. The clunky software provided a search facility (of sorts). When that software goes phut! on getting a new O/S, you can still get at and use the PDFs. It may be so for the Complete Illustrated Guide.
*********
Many organisations providing information are realising that they can get their customers to pay multiple times for the same information. Consider the gradual move of music through 78s, 45s, CDs, Super CDs, Minidisc, various electronic file players to .... streaming. The same is done with much other information types.
Streaming and it's ilk are the worst of the lot. No access unless you continuously rent it. You never own anything except that momentary access right.
Electronic information costs near-nothing to maintain and publish after its made. Also, you have to supply the reader or viewer, unlike with a book. Yet they charge the same (or more).
The same will soon be true for everything, including the oxygen. Get some hard and save-able / ownable version whilst you can. Do they still sell the books?
Lataxe
MJ - no it doesnt work in a DVD player.
Lat axe -As it happens I do own a few of these books in hard print. So I have already paid twice for this intellectual property.
user-2384454: "I have contacted customer service with no satisfactory outcome."
Lataxe: "Many organisations providing information are realising that they can get their customers to pay multiple times for the same information.... The same will soon be true for everything, including the oxygen."
I'm afraid Lataxe is correct. We are mere serfs to the corporate digital overlords. Does anyone read or even understand the multiple service agreements they clicked "Yes" to? There is a good article about this very topic in the March 15th issue of The New Yorker magazine (What's Mine Is Mine). I'm sure you could read it online -- for a fee, of course.
Just to add some clarification. You are actually purchasing "use of" some intellectual property "in some format". You do not own in any way the intellectual property just because a DVD was purchased in this instance. For example, if I bought a CD of the album Nevermind by Nirvana I don't own any of that intellectual property - just a plastic disc that allows it to be reproduced in my CD player. It is an important distinction. If you have a reproducing product that is now obsolete you may or may not be given some allowance to be able to access your content by the owner.
Yeah, I don't think you can expect that just because you bought something in one format, it is owed to you in other formats.
I mean, all things of this nature are eventually going to be outdated and obsolete.
That being said, surely there is a way to access the info and rip it.
You mean, when I bought my Bee Gees Greatest Hits on CD, I should have harassed the record company to send it to me free, since I already owned it on vinyl?
And yes, anything on these Taunton DVD and thumb drives can be copied as pdfs and used on newer devices. All you will lose is the interface software that was written for Windows 95 or whatever, and that won't work on Windows 10 -- as an example.
I assume the disks were designed for something on the order of Windows 98 so the solution could be as simple as setting up a virtual windows 98 machine on your current computer. You can Google this or better yet find the local 14 year old computer wizard and ask them to do it for you. All virtual machines are ways to run alternative OS's on your current machine often used for just this purpose to gain access to older software programs.
Here is one set of instructions from a reliable source, but I don't endorse or recommend any particular software package I'm simply saying there are ways around this problem. Google, YouTube the answer is out there you just need to find it.
https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-get-the-windows-98-experience-on-todays-pcs
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled