Shopping for multimedia CD Roms

I just recently made a fool of myself by buying, on the spur of the moment, a CD ROM for my 5 year old grand daughter without really knowing what was in it. It was in a display in a major national discount chain. It turned out to be absolutely horrible starting with the first requirement of setting back your computer to support only 256 colors. The only interactivity in sight was that of clicking to go to the next page. I bought this CD after having gotten her one, Arthur Reading Race, that she positively adores. She liked that one so much, surely she would be delighted with the one that sounded the same on the cover. Well, you see how haste made a real mess of things here. The moral is to not forget to do your basic home work. Although the price of CD ROMs has indeed come down, if we use the basic $3.00 per hour on a $15.00 CDROM it still should provide entertainment and even education for 15 hours. This first CD ROM mistake provides only frustration. There are several sites online that purport to evaluate CD ROMs by age. By all means consult these. However, beware that many are now connected with the actual suppliers of CD ROMs that they are supposedly evaluating. I don't think any of the sites would tell me that the user would have to go into their control panel and change the number of colors supported. This is totally unsuitable for a young child or that young child's very busy mother. Here are some evaluation criteria. These still are useful criteria. It is worth taking the time to think through some criteria before making my mistake of picking up a fancy box in this holiday season of shopping.

Evaluation Criteria for CD TITLES or CONTENT

EVALUATING MULTIMEDIA CONTENT Behind the hype, glitz, and glitter It is a good title? How do you decide what is good? How much should you be willing to pay? Some evaluation criteria Add some of your own Running environment required Cost for equipment with reasonable performance Scaleable to lesser cost or even better performance Cost vs quality trade-off Content questions Bread and Butter or flash and sizzle Interesting Compelling Lively Action oriented Correct (don't laugh, this is important) Appropriate age level Types, options, quality of interaction Navigation options Is personalization possible Conveniences Bookmarks Notepads for clipping Adding automatic citations,

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