Review: Threads Magazine Archive DVD: 1985-2009

I finally bit the bullet and bought this for myself.  AWESOME!!

This DVD is awesome because:

1. It saves space.  1 DVD or 24 years worth of magazines?  Easy decision.
2. Cheaper than a 24-year magazine subscription.  Penny pinchers take note!
3. It's searchable!!  I searched "button" and immediately found 2 great tips for sewing buttons on faster and stronger.
4. Search terms are highlighted.  Much easier to see at a glance if the article is what I needed or if it only mentions my search term once and for a completely unrelated reason.
5. Search titles and/or keywords.  Not a novel concept yet many programs won't let you distinguish between the two.  If I search "buttonhole," I want an article about buttonholes not every article that ever mentioned a buttonhole.
6. You can zoom in and read.  I prefer to read paper and not computer screens but the zoom feature makes it easy to read on the screen.
7. You can save your favorites.  You can't name your favorite article but you can create folders for your favorites to organize them easily.
8. You can print.  If you must, you can easily print the article.
9. It's all relevant.  The fashions may have changed but they still had fitting issues and interfacing questions in the 80's.
10. 80's fashion!!  Those pics are hysterical.
11. You can flip through an issue.  It's just like having the magazine.
12. Knitting and crocheting are included.  I haven't seen much of this in the past few years but earlier issues contain some great articles about knitting and crocheting as well as sewing.

The only downsides I see so far are that you must download this onto your computer (you need 3GB) and I can't take this with me to work.  If you don't have permission to download a program onto your computer, you can't use this DVD.  Once it is downloaded, you are done with the DVD.  I would love to do some light reading on my lunch breaks but Big Brother at work takes away all the fun (no photo-sharing websites, no YouTube, no downloading fun games and no forwarding jokes).  

At $150 USD, this was a good investment for me.  If you like to buy sewing books, you probably spend that much in a year just buying books.  You could save some money and buy this DVD and never be able to read all the articles in a year.  Just my 2 cents.