For $100 you can buy CDs that contain all the National Geographic magazines since they started over 100 years ago. Basically, they make a fantastic present. Why do I know? I have one.

Now you’d imagine that they have a pretty slick operation around this so that I can keep my software up to date. And even subscribe to updates.

Well think again. From the support web site…

Updates and Replacements
There have been four previous iterations of the National Geographic Complete package (108 Years, 109 Years, 110 Years and 111 Years), and each was released by different companies. All are incompatible with each other and act as stand-alone products. Some were 16-bit (and thus incompatible with our current 32-bit version), others were just constructed differently by the companies contracted to produce them over the past few years.

Unfortunately the only solution for this is to purchase National Geographic: 10 Legendary Years. This will bring any version you own up to the year 2000. However, this too will be a stand-alone program (the 10 Legendary Years). It will not be accessible via your older National Geographic program.

So for example if you have the National Geographic 108 Years—it ends at 1996. For any years up to 1996 you could use your original program, but to view the years 1997-2000 you would need to open the 10 Legendary Years program separately. And yes, since the 10 Legendary Years product also includes the years 1990-1996 there will be some overlap.

The only way to have a complete and fully integrated product is to purchase the current full set, National Geographic 112 Years. We apologize for any inconvenience.

National Geographic Magazine CD-ROMs: Technical Support, Help