Home Improvement 1-2-3 is brought to you by the folks at Home Depot and Multicom Publishing and offers high-tech solutions to the low-tech remodeler. The main screen is up like a two-story house. Each room represents aparticular facet of home improvement. Clicking on a room will allow the user to enter into the basics of Exterior Maintenance, Plumbing, Electrical, Wallpapering, Painting & Staining, and Planning & Design. You can also click your way through Ceilings and Walls, Doors & Windows, Cabinets & Countertops, and Shelving & Storage. Lost? Just click on the chimney, which acts as a table of contents.
The options screen takes the form of a tape measure, which appears on
every screen. Click on it and out slide the menu bar options: help, index,
print, sound, and quit. Click it again and the tape retracts.
This how-to guide is heavy on images and light on sound, with over 2,000 full-color illustrations and videos and animation that show you the path to the cheaper dream home. Sound, however, is limited to the video clips of on-screen narrators who introduce each section or "room." The disc opens to the din of sawing, sanding, hammering, and measuring . But that's pretty much what you'll be getting once the work starts-except for the swearing.
If you're remodeling your home, you're probably more interested in skylights and closet space than you are in Macs or PCs. No problem: This CD-ROM is Mac-compatible and does Windows. You may need more power and memory than the product literature recommends, though. The sound and video can be jerky, and the wait time for loading can be excruciatingly long.
The multimedia guide is good as an overall roadmap to prepare you for the work at hand. To actually get down and dirty, a book seems more practical. Fortunately, the disc comes with a 480-page book. It ain't high-tech, but it's a lot easier to read under the sink. The shiny compact bears the image of a rotary saw blade. For the gullible, the company issues a warning: "Warning: Do not install this disk in a power saw."
Brett Allan King is a freelance writer who lives in Madrid, Spain, where he writes for several publications.
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