Welcome to the launch of The Complete National Geographic Customer Support Hub.  The CNG Support Team publishes this blog to keep you informed of important information so that you will get the most out of your experience with The Complete National Geographic 120.  Here you'll find updates, news, and answers to your questions.  We're hoping that a lot of sharing will take place, too. We'd love to hear about your favorite articles, photos or maps. We'd love to hear your thoughts about them as well.

Some of the first suggestions we'd like to make relate to the experience you'll have as a member of the Customer Hub Community and other areas of The National Geographic's Web site. 

• Make sure you upgrade to the latest version of your  browser.
• When letting us know of an issue, please provide as much information as possible.  Details such any error messages you receive, your operating system, what you were doing when the problem occurred. For those of you who take screenshots -- send them on!
  

We are looking forward to supporting you.

Readlists are compilations of photos, and articles taken from the archive of The Complete National Geographic. You can save lists of articles, maps and photos for easy access in the future. You can export readlists from The Complete National Geographic to your local hard drive and email to friends for their use with The Complete National Geographic. In addition, The Complete National Geographic comes with over 30 readlists embedded from some our notable editors and explorers to take you on themed journeys through the National Geographic archive.

The Complete National Geographic includes a built-in trivia game. Each question relates to an article from our digital archive. Test your knowledge on a range of subjects covered by National Geographic through the years, get your ranking and explore the articles from where we derived the questions. Take new versions of the quiz each time you play.

The Complete National Geographic cannot read any content from a DVD until the computer can recognize the DVD. To be sure your computer can recognize the DVD inserted, go to My Computer>DVD Drive Letter: The Complete National Geographic. Until the DVD drive says "The Complete National Geographic" or "insert Mac name here," the application will not be able to display the requested content.

The ability to copy DVDs to a local hard drive is not enabled on some versions of The Complete National Geographic. Please upgrade your software after November 1, 2009 for the ability to copy the DVDs to the hard drive of your computer. Each DVD can take up to 20 minutes to copy to your hard drive.

This message occurs if you have the Sonic DLA system installed on your computer. Sonic DLA is a CD/DVD burner that was pre-bundled with many PC systems. It has since been discontinued, but can interfere with your copy of The Complete National Geographic. To solve the problem it is recommended that you uninstall Sonic DLA.

The Complete National Geographic is not a movie and will not play in a standard DVD player. It is a DVD-ROM product and will not work in a computer with a CD-ROM player. To insure that The Complete National Geographic will work on your machine make sure it has the DVD video symbol, seen below, displayed on it.

Content updates for The Complete National Geographic will be available after the print editions of the previous year have been published. The 2009 digital archive update will be available for purchase and download via the Internet in the spring of 2010.

From time to time, updates to The Complete National Geographic software are made available for download over the Internet. Updates will be made available, for free, to improve the user experience.

You can check for updates using the Check for Updates Now feature in The Complete National Geographic under the Preferences tab. You can also opt to have the software automatically check for updates on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

There are several methods to browse through The Complete National Geographic:

• By year
• By Issue Cover
• By Article

You can browse any year from 1888 to 2008 and be taken to the magazine cover carousel for January of the year selected. Once you're in the magazine carousel, you can browse issue covers by month and year. Within an issue, you can browse the article abstracts from the table of content. In any of these scenarios you can link from the issue cover view or the article abstract view directly to a full view of the magazine starting at the cover of the first page of an article within an issue.

While reading an article, you can print the current spread (the two displayed pages) or just the left or right page. Pictures embedded in an article page cannot be extracted and printed separately. Beginning in November, National Geographic will enable a "print article" feature in The Complete National Geographic, which will allow users to print a full article.

The first disc contains software required to install The Complete National Geographic. The software allows you to browse, search, and play the trivia game. Whenever you click on an issue cover or article abstract, a DVD is necessary to read the content. The content is split chronologically between six DVDs. Starting in November, National Geographic will enable a "full install" feature in The Complete National Geographic, enabling the user to copy all the DVDs to their hard drive.

The Complete National Geographic contains all National Geographic Magazine issues published through December 2008. An update for the 2009 issues of National Geographic Magazine for The Complete National Geographic will be available for purchase in spring 2010.

Some features of The Complete National Geographic, such as Geobrowse and software updates, require an Internet connection. But you don't need an Internet connection to use many of the other features, including all standard searches, or to browse through the pages of National Geographic Magazine.

For users with Mac OS 10.4.11 or lower, installation problems may occur with the DVD product. To install your The Complete National Geographic, visit the link below for the alternative installation:

Complete National Geographic Web Installer

Once you've completed the installation of the software, the DVDs can be used to run the product and access articles.

The Complete National Geographic uses a technology called Adobe AIR, which allows the same The Complete National Geographic software to run on various computer operating systems. The Complete National Geographic runs on Windows and Mac computers with the following system requirements:

An Internet connection is required for access to some of the features of The Complete National Geographic, including Geobrowse and software and content updates. The primary functions of the product are available without an Internet connection.

Although it contains the same magazines cover to cover, along with all the years since through December 2008, The Complete National Geographic: 120 Years is a different product from that which was released between 1997 and 2003. The new version of The Complete National Geographic is run on an entirely different, more sophisticated platform, Adobe AIR, which utilizes higher resolution pictures and text, and advanced search functions.

Welcome to The Complete National Geographic Customer Support Hub page. Take a tour of the page to familiarize yourself with all our options for support from our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), to the QuickStart Guides for DVDs or Hard Drive products. 

Of course, this blog is a resource as well. It will be an organic and evolving source of information as you and others comment on blog entries and CNG fans' comments, questions, or suggestions. Here you can also share your favorite CNG features or content with all of us.

Remember, if you don't find what you are looking for you can use the Ask The CNG Support Team link and send us your questions.

We look forward to getting to know you.

You are invited to submit comments on the articles in the Complete National Geographic Customer Support blog. Your comments will be posted after they are reviewed by our moderator.