Scott Catalog 2015 Digital Plans

I can open Stamp Collector Database files in Access, but Roger has so many fields in each record that it requires substantial effort to get just what you want from the file. It's best to use his program as supplied.

He's done an excellent job of taking the Scott catalog and turning it into a database, AMOS would be wise to buy this product and use as the basis of their own internal database.

In my opinion the design of these tables is not well suited for a robust relational SQL database.
Don

True. But it's more than they have now...

I spent some more time playing with the product, and it is abundantly clear that the folks at Amos are an analog mindset having a difficult time understanding the digital world.

The navigation at scottonline.com into and out of your account, to find the materials you have purchased, view them, and then go back, is obtuse and clumsy. In fact, once in the Olive Reader on my iPad, I could find no way to get back to the website or list of publications available. I had to open a new tab and manually go to the website. They apparently did no user testing prior to rollout... another website or piece of software whose interface was designed by programmers.

But by far the biggest joke, and no I'm not kidding:

They have a tutuorial on setting up an account and buying ebooks... but you have to set up an account and buy the free ebook in order to view it.

OH COME ON NOW!

Latest email from Amos. Offline access will not be available in the 2015 version of the digital catalogue. They're hoping to have it available for the 2016 release.

Sigh...

Amos still has not provided the tutorial about registering and downloading the catalogs unless one registers and downloads. The tutorial is seven pages long. They really need to simplify the procedure as well as provide it directly at both scottonline.com and linns.com.

While I am sure this 2015 Scott Specialized eCatalog is very nice for many people, I personally purchased the regular soft book edition- I just feel it easier to use and don't see myself ever changing as long as the format is available.

I don't really need the US Specialized. So I went and bought the US section of Volume I. Which worked well, because it was cheaper. But then there was no offline access.

Next time I am buying the pages from CHIROKMD and just scanning them to PDF.

There are about 30 or so countries that I collect casually and one seriously (Germany). While I don't mind using the printed catalog, having all six Scott Standard volumes on my iPad would be better. And really, with the number of printed pages not being an issue, the electronic catalog could potentially have a picture of every stamp, rather than just one from a (sometimes very long) series.

More from Linn's Stamp News about the Scott eCatalogs:

http://linns.com/news/editorial-ins...a-heavy-book

The biggest problem I have with the new e-book version is that the resolution is complete CRAP! The type is of such a tiny font that when zoomed in, it looks like garbage. Completely unusable by anyone with vision issues.

At its core it has a fundamental problem of not being an actual e-book, but simply a bunch of pre-rasterized images of printed pages.

With the iPad version, at least the text was vector-based so it would re-render at each zoom level, thus preserving readability.

This e-Book version is garbage from a quality perspective.

Need to follow MICHEL's lead. Watermarked PDFs are the way to go.

The Scott ecatalogs look just fine on my desktop 20-inch widescreen monitor at 1600 by 900 resolution. There are seven zoom levels in the app from full page to very close up. The second-level up from full page seems to be the best for viewing full screen. The up and down arrow keys allow me to move through the pages easily. I can also read the pages on my iPad easily. It's completely unreadable on my iPod Touch. The screen there is much too small to support a full page; the previous iPod Touch app showed just one column of a page.

I've read all 11 pages of this interesting topic. Years ago, I purchased the 2008 series of CDs, downloaded them into my laptop and use them all the time. Since I travel a lot, I can work on my collection without lugging 6 volumes around with me. I'm only a casual collector, but I really like being able to do searches and to print pages. I'm used to and like the Scott format. I don't want to give up on Scott numbers because that's how my collection is organized. I'm small-time; imagine Dealers having to all change their business organization if we give up on Scott numbers. This all comes up now because my 08 values are waaay out of date and I started looking to replace the CDs with updated editions. With this forum's comments and other similar opinions I've found elsewhere, I won't be spending any money with Amos until they get their act together. Meanwhile, I'll continue to use my 08s and find my values elsewhere (so, two actions for every stamp now). It's unfortunate but what else can I do?