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In March 2001, all members of the Catalina 34 International Association
were sent without charge, a CD containing the full Tech Notes, FAQs
and Projects pages from this website as of February 2001, as well as a
copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0. This CD
will also be available for all new members of the Catalina 34
International Association who join prior to December 31, 2001.
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Using the CD
The CD was created for ease of
use. It should load
automatically when inserted in the CD drive of a computer.
If your CD does not load automatically, follow the instructions in
the included readme files. The
only software needed to use the CD is an internet browser such a Microsoft
Explorer or Netscape, and Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0, an installation version of which is included on the CD.
As you
browse through the files on the CD, you will find that some of the links
don’t work, and that some of the pictures don’t show up.
This is because the files were taken directly from the website, and
in some cases the links and pictures are hyperlinked to pages on the web.
Hopefully, this will not prove a major inconvenience, and this
should be fixed in future versions of the disk.
The Decision to Produce and Distribute the CD
Two years ago when I bought Bear
Territory, the only way to obtain back issues of Tech Notes was by
purchasing fuzzy paper copies at a cost of over $30. Sometime later, clean copies became available on the website.
While a great improvement from the fuzzy paper copies, getting
these Tech Notes required access to the web, and were therefore not available
to members while cruising.
Recently,
your Board of Directors started discussing the idea of producing and
selling (at $15 to $20 a copy) the Tech Notes on a CD.
This would be a significant savings from the fuzzy paper copies,
and handy for cruisers with laptops.
However, investigation of the cost of CD replication showed that
substantial saving could be obtained by producing 1,000 CDs, enough to
make and mail one CD to each of our 605 paid-up members, and still have
additional CDs available to new members.
This made it feasible to give these CDs away to our members, rather
than to sell them. Since a CD
holds a large amount of data, we decided to include the popular Projects
and FAQ pages from our website, as well as the Adobe Acrobat Reader necessary to read the Tech Notes.
The Making of the CD
Making
the C34IA 2001 CD was not quite as simple as first envisioned.
The web pages need to be modified to work from a CD, new pages need
to be created, the CD had to be made self starting, the graphics had to be
created, and CD replicators needed to be shopped. Nevertheless, the project was an enjoyable learning
experience. If you find this
CD useful and if you would like it updated in future years, please let me
know. Please also let me know of any problems which you encounter (other
than non-working links and pictures) and suggestions for future CDs.
Dave
Smith
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