National Lampoon [Old Version]

NatLamp was by far my Holy Grail in 1970s-1980s. Nothing brought me more laughs while also motivating me to keep up with current events at the time. The other reviews here cover all the shortfalls of this collection but, for me, having this massive amount of material digitized is utterly fantastic. As to missing content - I will keep my eyes open through Amazon, EBay, etc. for the individual issues. At the price offered the size/scope of the collection is unbelievable. If you enjoyed the Lampoon BUY THIS!Hopefully this will also be of help if you have technical issues with the DVD. When it arrived I popped it right into my laptop pc running windows 7. It couldn't initiate autorun and I was unable to access the disk as the laptop was unable to recognize it at all. I tried a half-dozen times but had no luck. I then put it into my 2010 Mac desktop and it showed up immediately. The autorun did not start but I could easily go directly into the DVD and access the files. I then copy/pasted them to the Mac's drive and was able to transfer them (via flash) over to the laptop. They are PDF so no problem once they were accessible. Hopefully anyone buying the DVD will be able to do something similar, it is well worth the effort.

After reading the other reviews, I decided to try this even though other reviewers had some gripes about it. I'm glad I ignored the negative reviews! I am a huge fan of the magazine, and now I will be able to read all of the issues in the entire run! PDF format makes it very portable and easy to use. Well worth the money if you enjoy the magazine - don't believe the negative reviews this product is awesome!UPDATE 5/27/12 - I recently got an Ipad, and wondered if I would be able to read these on it. I'm happy to say that I was able to import these into Itunes with no problem, and read them on the IBooks reader. This works great! I will say that when you read these on the Ipad, a 'national lampoon' watermark appears on the page. I never saw these when reading the issues on my laptop, I guess it's some sort of DRM. Doesn't really bother me, but I've seen people complain about watermarks in other reviews, so I thought I would acknowledge it.Still a great product if you are a fan of this magazine.

Buyer Beware!!! I was only able to access 1970-1979 on this DVD. I received a note from the support line (noted on the Disc) who replied as follows:"We've seen some conflicts with some third-part cd-burning software. Some third party cd-burning software( Roxio, Nero, Sonic, etc...) contain their own default pdf viewer which conflicts with viewing the comics in Adobe Reader. Uninstall this component or the entire cd-burning suite from your system and try the disk again. If you have access, attempt to use the disk on another computer."I tried it on 3 computers and the result was the same.From what I was able to access, the program is very counter-intuitive, and consisted largely of going through each and every issue to find what I was looking for. After locating it, I did a search and according to the results, what I had just found did not exist?!Bad Design.I really want to keep this but couldn't for the above reasons. I hope the producers will repair the problems and reissue it.

First let me comment that I was a tremendous Nat-Lamp fan when many of these issues - generally the ones from the 1970's - were current. Thus, I am a sympathetic reviewer to the content. It is both gratifying and frustrating that these issues are available again, especially to those like me who recall how great they were, but have long since lost track of the Lampoon collection we once possessed. As some have noted, at least we have most of these issues for us to read again. But as many of the reviewers have remarked, this compilation was obviously created through scanning issues of the magazine, and I have seldom seen a more erratic, amateurish job of scanned documents. I swear in some cases I could do a better job on my home scanner, while intoxicated!OK, in fairness, there is some "garbage in/garbage out" to be considered, and I suppose whatever so-called master set of mags that were used were likely of highly differing quality. But that doesn't explain it all... it looks hastily done with little or no effective image enhancement being performed when needed.Less forgivable is the fact that the issues do not appear in all cases to be complete. Like another reviewer, I was especially looking for the special cartoon section in the "Self Indulgence Issue" from 1973. This was perhaps one of their best efforts, containing self-lampoons of the various Nat-Lamp editors and writers from that time (the self-parody of Michael O'Donohue, "Poon-Wise" being especially hilarious). Alas, this whole section is not present, and I agree with the other reviewer who surmises that the centerfold cartoon section was likely previously ripped out of the scanned copy. Obviously, this means those who created the DVD did not verify the material to ensure completeness (or didn't care), and it can't be assumed that this is the only omission.So, everyone will have to judge for themselves if this DVD is worth buying for what you DO get. I noticed that the price went down from when this DVD first appeared in Amazon, and I'm glad I refused to buy it at the original, outrageous price. As it is, I feel it's a partial rip-off. The makers of the DVD really ought to be ashamed of such a shoddy effort. The material deserved much better.