Huzzah! It must be mine!
OUP: The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition) on CD-ROM version 3.1
The full content of the Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition), the three Additions volumes, and now almost 2,000 new words and phrases from the OED’s ongoing research programme.
This just arrived today, and I couldn’t be happier. Yeah, it don’t take much, do it?
Unfortunately, it’s not available for the Mac, so I had to install it on my Windows box, even though I do almost all my writing on my cute little Powerbook. I plannned for this eventuality, though, and last week I installed some remote desktop software on my Windows system so that I could control it and use my lovely new dictionary from afar. I just tested that, and it works perfectly.
Also unfortunate is that, although you can load the whole dictionary onto your hard drive (requires 1.7 gigs free), their software protection scheme requires that you reinstall the software every 90 days. That’s what it says anyway, although I’m hoping they mean you have to demonstrate that you still have the install disk every 90 days, not that you have to go through the whole installation process. I mean, granted that the Oxford University Press probably has good reason to suspect that their primary customers, mostly academics I imagine, can’t be trusted, what about us honest blokes who just happen to like a good dictionary now and then?
Update: After about the third 90-day reinstall, the damn thing just stopped working and no amount of uninstalling, scrubbing the registry, and reinstalling managed to fix it. I do not recommend this product, not matter how nifty it would be if it worked.