Anyone ordering the MR DVD?
#16
If I could get one with the first 25 or 35 years (which I missed/lost to water damage), I might go for it. The rest are down in the basement.
But for $200 (higher in Canada?) I would want a guarantee that the medium would work forever and not become a technological orphan like my 78s.
David
Moderato ma non troppo
Perth & Exeter Railway Company
Esquesing & Chinguacousy Radial Railway
In model railroading, there are between six and two hundred ways of performing a given task.
Most modellers can get two of them to work.
Reply
#17
We have a cell phone in the car for emergencies. Fortunately, I am only charged on days that I use it and I can't remember the last time I did. I turn it on about once a month just to check the batteries. It is a fairly "dumb" phone though, it can take pictures and has a USB connection and I thought that I was really getting with the times until I found that the only thing I could do with the pictures was to send them to someone. :o Oh, the USB connection was only for charging the batteries. 35 Nope, couldn't upload photos to my computer. When I do turn it on, there is usually a couple of text messages waiting, all from the phone company telling me I only have about $7.00 credit and to send them more money. I would text them back and tell them, "heck no, I'm good with just $7.00 in my account", but I don't know how to send one. Nope

Oh yeah, I still have a DVD that MR sent me a few years ago that I haven't played yet. They wanted it back but I lost track of it then and it just recently turned up. :o I wonder if I should call them and ask if they still want it back? Nope I'm not computer illiterate, I've worked with computers for over sixty years, I just can't picture me sitting in front of one for hours on end reading magazines, that's all...
Don (ezdays) Day
Board administrator and
founder of the CANYON STATE RAILROAD
Reply
#18
I agree with Don...Nothing can replace a "hard" copy. There's something "essential" about handling the reading material.

You can even take it to the "loo" if the need arises.... 357
Gus (LC&P).
Reply
#19
That's why I read books on my iPhone. I guess you could say I was an early adopter of ebooks. I am what you might charitably call a voracious reader - remember that Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Merideth? I am ALWAYS reading. I've been using handheld electronic devices to read for years now - so I cna lways have a book right at hand. Waiting for a client to come collect me from the lobby? read a few pages. he integration of the phone and PDA was the greatest thing ever. Now on one deivce, one thing to carry around, I could make calls, read me email, read books - and run my trains. I was using smartphones long before the iPhone, in fact I resisted the iPhone at first because the one I had did everything the iPhone could. I like the convenience factor, no need to carry a book around, or two, if I'm near the end of one. Yes, I am very much like the Twilight Zone character, always looking for somethign to read. Fiction, non-fiction, instructions manuals, labels, signs. Loosing my eyesight would devistate me. Ironic, since my eyes are quite bad, and I've worn coke-bottle glasses since I was 8 years old (extremely nearsighted). ANother example - many years ago, during sumemr break from college, I kept out each book I read rather than replace it on the shelves or in boxes. I could barely walk in my room by the time it was time to pack up and go back to school - and I was working full time the whole summer as well. I don't rememebr the exact count, but it was well over 2 dozen books in the 3 month span.

I'm not old, but I'm not that young, either. When I was a kid, there was no personal computer, I remember the debut of the TRS-80. I was in college before I got an IBM-compatible machine. My first computer was a single board kit I put together myself and it had a whopping 256 bytes of memory - bytes, not kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. I would say I am probably one of the last f the generation to not grow up with a home computer - for example my 20+ year old son, when he was born I already had a 386 level PC. Still, to say I took to computers like a duck takes to water would be an understatement.

Bottom line, reading ont he computer is no bother at all to me. It does help if you ditch the old CRT and get an LCD, and also run it at native resolution - displays can be really fuzzy when not operated at the proper setting, even though some think the text is too small when set properly. The smaller text can be clearer than the larger but incorrect resolution, which like the flicker of a CRT can contrinute to eyestrain and make it uncomfortable to read the computer screen for an extended period of time. Me, I welcome this DVD. Oh, and it's time to go download the latest issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist and read it - free, well produced electronic magazine which I think goes way beyond MR as far as article content these days.

--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad of the 1950's in HO

Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com
Reply
#20
OK Randy, I agree with you on the Model Railroad Hobbyist,I enjoy it. I am not completely in the stone age. I do have DCC although it took sound to win me over and now you can have sound with DC. Plus I am making comments here so I do have a computer. But to spend that kind of money on e-copies of MR, not for me.
Les
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lesterperry.webs.com/">http://www.lesterperry.webs.com/</a><!-- m --> Check it out
http://www.youtube.com/lesterperry/
Reply
#21
Yes, you can have sound on DC but it doesn't work very well. Even the hardcore DC guys will say to use DCC if you really want sound. But then they usually have another reason to reject sound. To each his own, I'll stick with the positives. I can free up some of my shelf space, it's less I need to cart around when I move (and I WILL move again - thus my layout is designed to come apart in easily moved sections), it's indexed so I can find stuff, and less fire hazard. Plus it's the old days of MR, when it was good - when every issue had construction articles, and there were those great design articles by John Armstrong - in short, all the reasons people DON'T like MR today. Plus it's cheap, on a per issue basis - at $2.67 per YEAR, you can't get the paper issues for that, unless you find someone throwing them out and willing to give them away.

--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad of the 1950's in HO

Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com
Reply
#22
I wish this DVD would offer PDFs, but it sounds like it won't; it would be handy to transfer file to the iPad to take to the workbench. That's something the Model Railroading collection lets me do.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)