DISC

The WORD SMART portion of this set is really good. The speakers are pleasant, it moves at a good pace, and the examples are entertaining. However, the GRAMMAR SMART portion of this set is not so good. The speakers (different than those doing Word Smart) are so ridiculous, I had to stop listening after 30 minutes. I was so put off by the incredibly stupid jokes and the blatant reading of a script, that it was too annoying to try to pay attention to the important stuff. The set is definitely worth it for Word Smart, since it is 4 of the 6 CDs in the set. Actually, I think they sell Word Smart all on its own, so that would be a better choice.

I am very keen on enlarging my vocabulary, but I find it frustrating to do so. I have bought almost all Princeton Review vocabulary titles, but I find myself not disciplined enough to work on that regularly. When I first bought Word Smart, I was able to at least learn twenty words a day and up till now, I still can remember most of them and use them in my writing. I have reflected and I believe I must set a time and plan ahead for vocabulary learning. Learning vocabulary at a time best suited for a person is better than forcing oneself to learn when it is not the time. I do agree that the Grammar Smart is not very useful. The introduction to parts of speech is tedious and I believe most people do know that. The Grammar Smart CDs do help a bit, but, as one of the reviews have said in previously, they are not highlighted. The Word Smart series are pretty good. I think if more exercises are provided, it will be more enriching and useful.

Gives good mid-level technical coverage of the MiniDisc system, but unfortunately provides neither the general story of MD's development and marketing, nor the important technical details of the system. Some parts are not completely accurate (such as the description of the MiniDisc UTOC layout).

A reasonable purchase for someone trying to collect all the publicly available information about MiniDisc. Note that the definitive MiniDisc work -- Sony's "Rainbow Book" specification describing the entire system in detail -- is available only to MiniDisc licensees.

Not for the technically illiterate, Jan Maes' "The MiniDisc" is based on a series of training sessions developed for Sony personnel in Europe. The book attempts to explain the technology behind MiniDisc from it's similarities to other optical formats (CD, CD-ROM, CD-MO) to it's distinctions (ATRAC compression, disc size, etc). Persons interested in what makes a MiniDisc system tick will get a lot out of this book. A glossary would have been helpful for those of us without degrees in audio engineering. Probably the only book of it's kind. Overall impression: favorable.

This is a middle of the road NIrvana biography. It offers straight, almost commonly known facts about the band, with little or no insight. This book contains information about Kurt Cobaine's early life, his joining with the band, information about the band, and information about his suicide. In this book a discography and a small time line are also provided. I would recommend this book to a new Nirvana fan who doesn't know much about the band, there are better books with more insight than this one on Nirvana/Kurt Cobaine.

I think this book/CD is worth buying for the book, since the CD isn't the best (it is hard to hear what is being said)but the book gives a good, concise view/story of Nirvana's rise to Grungedom. I think the CD could have been better, but kudos to the writer. 4 stars

Having spent more than 25 years in radio, a good portion of it behind the microphone, I was sorely disappointed by Mr. Lieberman's book. An Englishman, Mr. Lieberman has no experience in radio, other than as a listener. That hardly provides the qualities needed to provide indepth, insightful observation to the mania in the mornings practiced by radio stations all across the country. The taut one line to short paragraph descriptions fail to do justice to the men and women who "cranked up the sun and kicked the rooster" for radio listeners each morning. Perhaps the most grievious of errors is the fact that West Coast personalities get the short shrift in Mr. Lieberman's book. Unless you're a die hard radio history book collector or someone who doesn't mind throwing away $30 on this book, I'd recommend that your money is better spend on other books covering the subject.

I disagree with the other previous review. This book does a great job of covering the wealth of radio air personalities from the 1920's to the 1990's. More well known broadcasters get more in-depth analysis. Overall, this is a wonderful reference work and a must have for any serious radio history enthusiast.

Alphabetically-arranged brief biographies of the biggest names in rap and hip-hop, with photos. No real analysis and little else to remommend it. Good for teens and as a quick reference, but if you're looking for more meatier fare try try "The Hip Hop Years" by Alex Ogg, "The Vibe History of Rap", or Nelson George's "Hip Hop America."

ohh yea, this is a great book about the history of rap music. there's almost every famous rapper, producer and dj until this time. it's telling about all the pioneers in rap' it's tells their life story and what they did for the rap industry. it's a must have book for all the fans of rap music.

take me 15min to browse thru the bok and I pratically didn't learn anything new. If you are new to PC and want to burn your first CD, you may learn more by just tinkering with the software you already got. This book does not go into any detail on the stucture of the file format, TOC or anything. It touches many topics and then go to the next. Read the help file or manual on your burning software and that's pretty much what this book is about. Here's some examples: HFS (file format): "short for Hierarchical File System. This is the file system used on the Mac. Although it's being slowly phased out, HFS is still important in the mac world." What kind of crap is this!? There are a couple of paragraphs on mixed mode disc and then it give tons of reason NOT to use it.
On top of all these, this book is outdated, EasyCD and Toast are old versions and it did not really say anything about VCD or DVD, stick with the help files in your burning software!

I give this book 4 stars. It has everything you need to know to install and record music CDS. I also learned more about making data CDS in this book than anything else I've read yet. A good pick.

I just finished reading Hewlett-Packard's OFFICIAL RECORDABLE CD HANDBOOK written by Mark L. Chambers. I received an HP CD-RW drive (8200i) and tried to learn how to operate it on my own. I promptly ruined 4 new R-W disks. After reading the HANDBOOK, I now have backed up all my files, my operating system and working on a family album. This book certainly improved my learning curve and allowed me to "get right to it" after only several hours of reading. My thanks to HP and Mr. Chambers for this helpful book.

My only Spanish background was in 7th and 8th grade, yet I found this coursebook helpful enough to advance me out of the Adult Continuing Ed Beginning Spanish, directly into Intermediate. The tapes are worthless, as the previous reviews state, but if you spend a lot of time on the coursebook it will give you a good head start on a self-teaching program. Be warned, though, there are some mistakes in it. I am now in a class, and also using course material from the class along with watching Spanish soap operas and listening to Spanish radio, but I still find myself using this coursebook frequently.

I have the five-CD version of this course, so I thought I'd post it here under the three-CD version, since I couldn't find it listed on Amazon.

This is considered one of the better all-audio courses. It doesn't seem have the big-name recognition of the well-known Michel Thomas or the Pimsleur audio courses, but it's a fraction of the cost of those, and it's fine for building basic conversation skills without getting too immersed in the grammar.

However, I strongly recommend you supplement the audio course with a good grammar book, as it's impossible to really get a good grasp of Spanish without some grounding in the grammar, since there are too many things that are different from English, such as the subjunctive mood, and the fact that the tenses for the conditional and future tense, along with the subjunctive moods, are mostly formed in the Latin manner with suffixation, which has disappeared in English in favor of auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries, although English has it for the basic imperfect and preterite tense.

Also, although there are pauses in the audio material so you can try to imitate the native speaker, there's no feedback so you don't really know how well you're doing. I also have the 8-CD Instant Immersion Spanish computer-based course, which has a digital speech analyzer that allows you to record your own pronunciation and compare it to the native speaker's. This is very helpful and I would really recommend, especially if you're studying on your own without a teacher, to get a course that does that in addition to an audio course such as this one. I also have the Complete Spanish Learning Suite in five CD's by Transparent Language, which has similar capabilities. Either of these courses are a good choice for this, and they also include many other multi-media features that are impossible to implement in an audio-only course.

I also have a couple of the other more traditional audio courses, such as the Foreign Language Service Institute's Level I and II Spanish classes, and they are also excellent. The big difference between them and the present course is the Living Language course doesn't come with the 650+ page manual that allows you to follow along with the spoken dialog and also explains the grammar as you go along. However, again, the Living Language course is almost one-third the cost of the FLSI course with its 12 tapes and big manual/workbook.

I mention the pronunciation issue because of the following problems. Spanish has only two levels of syllabic stress, as opposed to English's four. Also, English does not have the same pattern of what's called minimal vowel contrast under weak stress that Spanish does. These are considered very serious pronunciation errors in Spanish and can result in your not being understood, not just sounding like you have a strong accent. So it's important to correct these errors right from the start. However, the FLSI course is the only one so far (and I've looked at about a dozen Spanish courses) that actually discusses it, although again, it doesn't have the digital speech analyzer since it's a tape or CD-based course like the present one.

So overall, a good course for the relatively modest price although you will need the grammar as I said and also the digital-speech capability to aid with the pronunciation.

I took about 12 hours of Spanish in college, but haven't used it much in the last 10 years or so and wanted to refresh my memory. The idea was to review the book for a few minutes each day, and then practice pronunciation with the CDs in the car. This course has worked out quite well for that.
Having said that, I offer this caveat: the CDs will not be much help if you do not study the book (the audio is all in Spanish and works on the "total immersion" theory). If you just want to learn a few conversational phrases to "get by" on vacation, there are probably easier ways to do it. If you want to read, write, and speak Spanish properly and grammatically, there are no shortcuts: any effective study method will require time and effort.
If you are an absolute beginner, this course progresses rather quickly and may be hard to keep up with at first. The trick, I think, is to review often and repeat each section as many times as necessary. Be consistent, and don't get discouraged. I am currently using the same system (Living Language Complete Course) to learn Portuguese and French, both of which I am starting as a complete novice. The basic structure of the courses are the same for each language, and the first few chapters (pronunciation rules and very basic vocabulary) will give provide a good foundation for the rest of the course, if you take the time to study them carefully.

Buena suerte!

I threw my tapes out after listening to them twice and being unable to believe that someone could put out a Spanish instruction tape who spoke Spanish so poorly himself. If I remember correctly, the guy who did the tapes bills himself as an effective high school Spanish teacher. His accent is very Anglo and his grammar is not always correct. His method may be a cute gimmick, but his students are going to sound funny to somebody who knows the language.

I had such hopes for this series, but was agast at the glaring errors it made in just the Elementary edition. For instance, the verb "estar" is used in place of the verb "hacer" to convey the weather (e.g. "esta frio" instead of "hace frio"). That ended my faith right then and there as I do not want to sound like a dumb American when traveling. The editors should be ashamed that the linguistic background of the author is so lacking that he'd make this error and who knows how many others.

I allmost didn't buy this cool CD because of a listener that left a bad review Toro NYC. He said something about "hace frio" is correct and "esta frio" is wrong. I bought it anyway and nowhere on the CD does it say either of these words. I guess he has a right to say anything he wants. Actually at my level of Spanish who cares. Either way a spanish speaking person will figure out that I am cold.

I used this book to study first year Arabic at the University of Utah. My teacher, a native Arabic speaker, often stated that this was the best Arabic learning course that he had ever seen. After studying Arabic for three years, and trying some other books, I must agree. We used the audio and video cassettes to enhance the learning process, and these were very helpful. (You could probably get by without the video, but it would very difficult to go without the audio cassettes.) While this course is great for studying Modern Standard Arabic (the formal written text used in the Quran) it isn't very helpful for spoken Arabic. I would suggest this course for classroom, group or tutoring use in which a native Arabic speaker is present. If you are using it for self study, I highly recommend that you find a native speaker to help you out with pronunciation and conversation. THE GOOD: It is set up like other good language learning programs. It incorporates multi-media and all language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) to help students learn vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. While this may not seem incredible, just try some other Arabic learning courses, and you will see that this is a major benefit of this course. THE BAD: 1) This book assumes that you have already gone through Alif Baa' (the first of three books in this series), and therefore learned how to read and write Arabic. It builds on the foundation started in that book. If you haven't gone through that 6-week course yet then I strongly recommend that you do it first. 2) While the "guess the meaning from context" style of learning is helpful, it can be a bit much in this book. If you do not have the answer key, or a native speaker to help you with the answers, you may not be able to figure out the meanings of some items. 3) Looking back on this book now, I think that the absolute worst thing about it was that it teaches too much Modern Standard Arabic. While this is nice if you plan on studying the Quran, it is not very good for conversing with native speakers in everyday colloquial Arabic. As the series progresses I became very frustrated by the fact that I had studied all this Arabic for all these years, yet native speakers had a hard time understanding me, saying that I sounded like the Quran, or an ancient author. If you supplement this course with conversation (and tons of it) with a native speaker you will benefit MUCH more from the system, and you will probably even learn Arabic! OVERALL: If you are going to study Arabic, then this is the course to use - no doubt about it! If you incorporate the audio and video cassettes, and go through all three books in the series, your Arabic will be MUCH better than if you just use this book alone. Yet the book relies on the multi-national "Modern Standard Arabic", and doesn't give enough support for the colloquial language that is used everyday by native speakers. If you have a native speaker to practice with, I think that you will get the full Arabic experience that the authors had in mind when designing this series.

I had been trying to learn Arabic for a few years and not getting far when I finally was pointed toward this book. Wow -- our small study group made amazing progress. We're in the final couple of chapters and already bought Book 2 in anticipation of starting it immediately afterwards.

The textbook is set up like a workbook, so with the exception of essay-type exercises you do the writing in the book itself. There's a good balance of all 4 skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) so it's not just focusing on reading/writing like other Arabic textbooks do. It assumes you already have basic reading/writing skills, plus know a few vocabulary words that are taught in _Alif Baa_. From the beginning they incorporate real-world reading from newspaper & magazine articles. There's a big focus on educated guessing and using context & other clues to get the meaning. This is extremely useful.

You have to get the cassettes if you're serious about studying, but we managed fine without the video. Near the beginning of the book, the speakers on the cassettes stick pretty close to MSA, but near the end you will hear the Egyptian accent much more -- get used to those g's!

The culture sections at the end of the chapters are actually interesting -- Fairuz, Umm Kulthoom, Nizar Qabbani, etc.

The textbook is meant for a classroom, but we are using it in a small study group. Once we got about halfway, we found it useful to have a native speaker tutor join us for our study group to correct our exercises & do the spoken drills with us. Now that we're near the end of the book, it's almost essential to have that kind of support. Without it you'll have no idea whether your answers are correct on the more difficult exercises.

When you get partway, there will be dictionary exercises. It's important to get the right kind of dictionary, because not all of the Arabic dictionaries you find at the bookstore will work for these. I already had 2 sets of dictionaries, neither worked. Get the Hans Wehr dictionary, which has words arranged by roots/patterns.

I have studied Arabic at a variety of schools (graduate, undergrauate, professional programs) with different text books, and I found this book the be the most help. Most Arabic text books are preoccupied with wasting chapters on describiing school life and leaving very little time to develop vocabulary for adult/non-student situations, such as talking about personal lives, jobs, political and eocnomic situations, and comprehending news stories.

In this series you follow people through daily lives, not only students, but people who speak about immigrations and failed relationships and fellowships and jobs and moving and being lonely. It's an awesome scope of context for vocabulary development, and the stories are linked in a way that provides a good basis for retaining the vocubulary accumulated.

This is also an easy book to follow on its own, in the absence of an Arabic teacher; if a course is not avaiulable near your or too expensive at the momment. The audio cassettes/cd are vital but the video cassetes are not, and the stories told on video tapes are the same used for the oral comprehension exercises form the video tapes.

Other Arabic series I tried (or were forced to use in classes) were Ahlan wa Salaam, which had an abyssmal vocabulary, focused entirely on student's perspecitves and gave almost no information about the gramtical structure; and the Cambridge (orange book) textbook for Elmentary Arabic, which lacked oral exercises. Both books provided answers, but due to poor editing, many erors were in the provided answers, which caused much confusion for students until a teacher was available for a dialogue(the Cambridge book was much worse in that apsect, but covered more grammatical details).

80% of my collection was not even listed in this book. I became very frustrated when they didn't even list the complete bands discography. To top that off, most were singles that were listed.

Admittedly, some of the pricing is way off and could use a refresh. But this field of collecting is so new (even the author points that out) that it is very difficult to establish pricing. For overall layout and identification of early CD's, there is simply no other guide out there. Great coverage of things like the "Edison Sampler", which was the first compact disc ever pressed in the U.S. As a bonus, Laser Discs are covered as well.

This is the best book on music collecting I have ever seen. The two prior reviews couldn't be more WRONG! This guide has tons of color pictures of collectible CDS and information on just about every aspect of the compact disc and CD collecting. The book also has a huge listing of collectible CDs from around the world (more so than most record guides). This is a book that I have read over and over again and always find something new. I give this book five stars and is a must for every CD collector. (Plus it only cost me the same as a CD.)