Encore THE BIG BOX OF ART 410 000 ( 460001 )

I have been trying to view images for over an hour, but the "Easy Keyword Search Engine" does not seem to work with my Windows XP. Another reviewer had the same problem. The "Help" information is useless. The manual is only 3 pages long and the size of a CD case and spends more space talking about legal uses of the art than anything of help or value. There is no book, so if the "Easy keyword Viewer" fails to work the clip art discs are worthless. I wish I could rate this ZERO Stars, but one star is the minimum rating. My advice is to spend the extra $40-$50 and get clip art with a book.

I ordered this box set, opened it and there was no registration card so I could get the serial number to install the software. I didn't bother to just insert the first disk and sent it back to Amazon for a replacement. Amazon was fast in sending me a replacement, but Encore or Hemera did not respond to me at all. I sent Amazon an email on July 5, they shipped on July 6, I received the new box set on July 9th!

Anyway, when I got the replacement, there was no registration card again. I was slightly frustrated, then I thought to just insert the first CD to see what would happen....it installed without a serial number!

Seems like they would just say that instead of causing their customers a bit of inconvenience of sending the product back to Amazon thinking that the serial number was missing.

I like Hemera, but they could be better with their customer service.

Anyway, so far I am satisfied with the box set, but just wanted everyone to know that you could just install without the use of a serial number.

One thing though, I noticed that while installing, it was saying that it was registering the product. I am not sure if this happened because I have a cable modem and my internet is always on. Basically what I am saying is if the software does not install, turn on your internet to see if it will install.

Good luck.

For $[...], I think it's a pretty good price for 410,000 graphics. However, most of the animations/web graphics are pretty dated looking, and really not very interesting (and are not indexed or searchable). The indexing terms for the database (for the rest of the CDs) is not very good and quite limited, and really they should let you ammend them (I didn't see any way to do this.) And, you cannot search for terms like "get well". Much of the graphics are really unusable because they are just so odd or unatractive, uninteresting and quite ridiculous. Some shots, the kid's eyes aren't even open, or the quality of the shot is just not there. My take is that they're definately predominately amateur shots and not professionally art directed shots. It has a lot of cute clip art though. I will have to say I wish everything was on one CD, because swapping out between 11 CDs is cumbersome, even though they say it's not. I know it's not possible (yet!) We bought it twice and both times it did not contain the registration card which is supposed to have the serial # on it (we took back the first one because of this.) And in looking on their website, it costs $[...] to get a replacement serial #.. A scam I wonder? No way I could see to email them. Despite all this, for under $[...] (and I see amazon.com has it for $[...] with free shipping now), I still think it's a fun product for home and maybe some business use.

I use this clip-art at work. The selection of art is great. We have several other clip-art collections but I mostly use this one because it is so simple to search for what you need. Some of the photographs that I have wanted to use for backgrounds have been too small to convert to 300 dpi, though. But other than that, I really like this clip-art.

it will not work in my Windows XP. I have repeatedly asked for help;no one answers. Finally, I was told to look it up on a databank. If you have nothing but time on your hands maybe this is for you...but if you work for a living, you've been had by this company Encoreusa.