"Ron Bean" wrote in message
...

Randy Replogle writes:

Everyone realizes that the catalog is online, right?

Their online catalog is a little weird. It works, but there are times when
the only way to get back to a particular item is to go back to the
homepage and go clicky-pointy through the options until you get back to
where you were-- there doesn't seem to be a way to deep-link to a
particular search result. Sometimes taking a different route through the
options seems to end up finding different items (this is partly a matter
of experience with knowing what to search for in the first place--
something that printed catalogs seem to do better than search engines).

Multi-tabbed browsers can mitigate this somewhat, because I can keep one
result page open while I'm doing another search. But I'm never
completely sure that I've found everything in the database that matches
what I'm looking for (as opposed to what I searched for).

Is the CD version just like the online version, or does it have PDFs of
the catalog pages?

I've never actually used the CD version. I get a new paper copy every few
years. Between those and the online I've not had the need. I believe the
CD version is identical to their website (but can't confirm). The fastest
way to run the CD version would be to copy it all to the hard drive and run
it locally.

In any case, the online mcmaster catalog is pure torture over dialup, which
many (some?) still use in this group.

StaticsJason