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Aqualex Malawisee Cichliden CD - Rom
Andreas Spreinat - CD - Rom mit mehr als 1000 Photos
An excellent work presented in an excellent
CD-Rom which behaves in an excellent way. Andreas Spreinat is will known
for his work on Malawi cichlids (see our book review section to see some
of his book titles), so this was
expected from him. The setup runs smoothly and in less than a minute you
are ready to explore this magnificent CD. The photos are excellent and
presented alphabetically (scientific names) while there are other search
options if your wish (by genus, etc.). The quality of the photos is high
while in most species there is also a photo of the female which - as we
all know - is a great plus. There is information on the feeding habits of
the fish, the tank requirements and its expected behavior in the tank. In
some species there is a slide show available which will show you many
morphs of the same fish. The information is quite accurate and there is an
option (in some species) to see the actual biotope they come from. The
information on tank requirements is elementary and although it can serve
as a rough guide it is not enough to successfully keep these species -
which is a great minus for all CD-Roms of this category. It seems that
space needs are calculated according to the fish size, which is not always
the case. That apart, this CD-Rom is highly recommended to all Malawi
cichlid fans and can substitute an Atlas for those in a hurry.
Minimum Harware Requirements: Virtually any PC configuration
will do. Requires 10 MB free disk space to be installed. Platforms
Win95/98/NT/2000
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According
to the editors of this set of
CD-Roms, "FishBase
is a relational database with fish information to cater to different
professionals such as research scientists, fisheries managers,
zoologists and many more. The FishBase 99 CD-ROM contains
full information on 23,500 species and comes on 3 CD-ROMS." It
can be ordered for 95 US$ including air-mail. As a contributor of
some photos for this databank I got a free set of these CD-Roms
along with detailed instructions on how to set it up. Unfortunately,
despite many tries, setup was never accomplished. The program (a
massive 600 MB to get the bare minimum of comfortable browsing)
requires many steps which always ended in error messages, at least
in my computers. Owning 5 PCs with different configurations I
concluded that this is not my fault. I contacted the editors and I
am waiting for their instructions on how to set it up correctly. In
October 2000, the FishBase2000 version will be released in which
these problems will have been (hopefully) fixed. |
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Minimum
hardware requiremets:
Since the requirements stated in this CD-Rom were met by all my PCs
while at the same time setup of the program was not possible, I will
not list them here. Once the problem is resolved I will list the
ones that really guarantee a successful setup and browsing.
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