When I was looking at available catalogs for Canada I found that Scott has published an abstract of their Volume 2 containing only the material for Canada. At $15 to license it I figured I couldn't go wrong. After paging it through it for a few days I thought I share my thoughts.
I did my test drive on my Linux desktop system with a 24-inch monitor and with my 10-inch android tablet. In each case I used the Chrome browser.
The major Pros are it is inexpensive and contains all of the information you would get with the paper version.
The major Cons are the content is not reformatted for the computer screen and it cannot be used (currently) without an internet connection. I also ran into some issues using the Chrome browser with my extensions activated that disappeared when using the native Chrome browser.
The lack of reformatting is the greatest problem in my mind. The constant scrolling down/up left/right is a pain. Add to this that you must zoom in several levels to get the text to a reasonable size makes the problem worse.
The requirement for an internet connection may be fixed in the future. There is a
Make available offline button and pressing it gives the appearance that something is happening but apparently not. I sent an email to Scott about this and they replied that The software vendor for the reader is working on the issue. <insert emoji for holding breath>
Okay, with all that said I would have to say that the product is well worth $15 just to have the most recent catalog values. I've used it to verify CV claims in
ebay auctions and think that alone would justify the $15.
If you are interested, this eCatalogue and others can be found at
http://www.scottonline.com/Terry
Posted 07/01/2015 5:00 pm
