Why was CNG released before all it's features were finalized and working?
I woould like to copy to an external drive that can carried around easily and keep the DVD's safe.
I have been an NGS member since 1964. This program is NOT NGS quality.

Good job support team. Over all concept is awesome and looking forward for updates and everything. One request for you: I understand that average user is not technologically savvy and they would need some kind of application from you to copy all the disc contents to the hard drive. But can you please provide a separate instructions for technical users on where to copy what contents then we will not have to wait for the update. Like I am a snow leopard user and I can't copy thing with the application on the website.
Thanks again.

Mark -- check our updated FAQ document (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/completeng/faqs.html). The last item in the FAQ provides the workaround instructions (Option 2) for Snow Leopard copy to hard-drive functionality.

The support team says we can search for the link to the manual install - why not include a proper link or does the team think that life is a Dan Brown novel.
Please treat us with some sense of respect and publish how to do this in the absence of any code for Snow Leopard.

I also found you do not have to copy the entire set of DVDs to ~/Library/Preferences/com.nationalgeographic.products.cng120.(long nonsense string)/Local Store/cache if you don't want - you can pick and choose which DVDs you copy.

@George Wilde: Thanks for the blurb about symbolic links. I thought they might work, but hadn't the chance to try them out.

Folks, we've published entries with the instructions for copying the DVDs to local hard drives for both Mac and PC systems. We'd put the links in this comment response, but they would take up a lot of room, so just search using the search box below and they should pop up for you.

@CNG Support Team:
Thanks for the effort you are putting into CNG and letting everyone know what the story is.

As another commenter said, not being able to choose where to copy 50GB is pretty harsh.

I realize this is probably due to copyright concerns but will there be a future update to allow us to choose an external drive?

@Ryan (all caps): I use a mac. Calm down.

With Snow Leopard I was able to use the Finder to copy the folders disc1 through disc6 from the National Geographic DVDs to a hard drive (other than my boot drive) on my system. I then inserted symbolic links to these folders into the Local Store/cache folder as described by brianw previously in this thread. The Complete National Geographic now runs on Snow Leopard without needing to insert any DVDs and without taking any additional space on the boot drive, and it runs much faster since it doesn't need to access the DVDs

It is very important to use symbolic links (and not plain aliases). Automator actions are available to easily create symbolic links.

brianw, you're a genius! I was very disappointed that the latest build still did not offer the copy-to-hd for Windows. So I tried your method and it works! The folder you mentioned is under %appdata% for Windows and Robocopy does a decent job of copying the discs. It works! No need to use the DVDs anymore. Thanks!

(This Comment is for anyone who's reading this blog except for "CNG Support Team" who must already know :-)

I got fed up with CNG DVD Installer hanging repeatedly in the middle of the second disk and did a little investigating to see what it was doing. It evidently copies a folder from each DVD into ~/Library/Preferences/com.nationalgeographic.products.cng120.(long nonsense string)/Local Store/cache. (The (long nonsense string) on my Mac is "68B1CC4249876152EBE333BD4B7514ADB4D94062.1"; I guess that's some sort of product ID or key; doesn't really matter - when you look it'll be pretty obvious.)
For instance, the content of the first DVD contains a folder called "disc1" and CNG DVD Installer copies it to the folder I named above ending up with ~/Library/Preferences/com.nationalgeographic.products.cng120.(long nonsense string)/Local Store/cache/disc1. That's all it does for each of the DVDs with the folder name matching the DVD number ("disc2", "disc3" and do on).
The CNG viewer uses whatever it finds in cache instead of asking for the DVD.
You can do this copying yourself using Finder drag-and-drop. It's twice as fast as the CNG DVD Installer and doesn't hang. And you don't have to wait for the Snow Leopard version. Who knows? - this sort of trick might even work on Windows :-).
HTH.

I was considering purchasing a number of copies of CNG for holiday gifts, but not allowing users to designate the location for 50 GB of DVD data is just shoddy programming.

I see that Mac users are out of luck (double whammy for Snow Leopard folks), but before I write off the CNG altogether, I thought I'd ask: Will the PC version allow the user to designate the location for the DVD data?

Thank you.
El

Bernd, the application won't allow users to identify or change the copying location. That's why it won't work.

Tony, you're correct that the 1.22 update doesn't resolve the "copy-to- harddrive" issue. Where in the FAQ did you see that it did. Just looked and didn't find it. They're working on the PC version of the feature now.

Copy to hard drive works fine.
BUT:
How can one tell the program where to copy it to?
I had asked it to put it onto an external drive in Install Options, but it puts it into the LIBRARY of my mac.
I then copied it over to where I told CNG it would be, and it seized to work.

I'm a windows user having the same problem - update 1.22 doesn't resolve the "copy to harddrive" issue, although the FAQ incorrectly indicates it does.
The sooner the better please - I'm super excited to explore the content but manually placing dvds plus the speed factor makes it cumbersome.

Jen, we'll have to do a search and find the map of Thor's Left Armpit -- what issue is that in, btw? ;-) Be back with that info as soon as possible.

Ok. The first disk is done, and it's in the middle of the second. Where, by Thor's left armpit, are the files going? They're certainly not going where I *told* them to go previously, using the software's interface.

Not happy with 6 dvds worth of stuff stuck willy-nilly around my computer.

Also: Chill, Ryan - Windows users almost always get things before OSX, so deal with it.

Elias -- see the responses to DB and Ryan about forthcoming updates. Hang in there!

DB, see my comment to Ryan. The development team is working hard to get an update released for Snow Leopard users.

Ryan, we've been told that they hope to release the PC copy-to-hard drive functionality updates within the next two weeks. Stay tuned here for news of the availability. For refunds you'll have to contact the store from which you purchased the software. We apologize for the frustration and inconvenience you're experiencing due to having to swap discs -- we know it's tiresome and unpleasant. The development team is working as fast as it can to deliver an update that will work without problems on PCs and Macs with Snow Leopard systems.

When do you plan to release copy to hard drive for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?

I'm so glad National Geographic made the CNG copy-to-hard drive update available to MAC USERS first since about NOBODY USES MACINTOSH COMPUTERS! I know no one who has a Macintosh! National Geographic should make the update available to the majority of the population who uses PC not to the minority who uses Macs. I'm very upset with National Geographic for making me pay $60 bucks for software that doesn't even work the way they promised it would on my PC. I want a refund for this garbage National Geographic!

Dang! I have Snow Leopard!! When will this be available?? Thanks!