Columbus . . . day by day

Contents

Columbus . . . day by day is an encyclopedia of information about early exploration in what came to be called the Americas: the explorers themselves, the times in which they lived, their ships, the royalty who sponsored them, and the natives they encountered. Basically, it is divided into three parts: Search, Timeline, and Picture Gallery.

An accompanying pamphlet offered basic directions for loading Columbus . . . day by day and system requirements. Once the CD-ROM was loaded on the computer, online help was available through an "Open Me First" folder which contains a "Read Me First" file as well as an online manual file. The instructions for installing were detailed. Unfortunately, the design of the program requires the user to already have a version of hypercard or load a different version from the CD&# 045;ROM. Certain versions of audio and video applications are also necessary. These may not coincide with the versions already on the computer hard drive.

I had trouble with the Search function of Columbus . . . day by day. When the program was running from the CD-ROM, the Search function was locked in "read only" mode. Only one topic, "Spain", would appear, and I could cho ose from only the cards listed under that topic. When I tried to type in another topic, I got a "this stack is read only" response. When I ran the program from the hard drive, I was able to type in my own search topics, but the stack always re verted to the Picture Gallery, never the Timeline. For my review, the Search function, therefore, did not meet expectations.

The pamphlet accompanying the CD includes teaching suggestions for both middle school and high school use. It also includes a registration card to use for requesting 1 year of free technical support. Due to the problems I encountered, I would strongly r ecommend applying for the technical support as soon as the CD-ROM arrived.

System requirements

The publisher recommends running Columbus . . . day by day on a Macintosh 68030 computer (or higher) running System 7, with a 13 inch RGB monitor, hard drive and at least 2 Megabytes of RAM (More is strongly recommended). Apple recommends using a CD-ROM player with a search time of at least 400 milliseconds. A Macintosh LC can be used if the VRAM upgrade has been added.

For MS-DOS users, the publishers recommend using the fastest IBM class computer with 640K of conventional memory and at least 1 megabyte of Expanded Memory which supports LIM 4.0; a VGA or Super VGA video adapter and monitor; the fastest CD player av ailable (with a search time of at least 400 milliseconds); a mouse supporting 640 x 480 VGA video resolution; Microsoft DOS 5.0; and pcx and dBASE compatible software.

Other Reviews

M. Zapisocky writes "A Timeline, movies, and Gallery, with notes on events, maps, ships, people, and tribes, are featured on this CD-ROM that examines the voyages of Christopher Columbus."New Media Canada. 9:10 (July/Augus t 1995) 13.