The Great Kat's Digital Beethoven On Cyberspeed

This certainly isn't your average CD-ROM about clasical music. Alongside the audio CDs put out by The Great Kat, this has a definite edge & angle all of it's own.

A hybrid dual platform CD-ROM is always an advantage for both consumers & producers of these products & this one is suitable for Macintosh & PC users alike, with the requirements bing fairly low for most users, especially as it was produced in 1996 for a 40MHz 68040 Mac processor or 33MHz PC, alongside 8MB RAM & double speed CD drive.

The only minor glitch I found while checking out the CD-ROM was that one area actually wouldn't load on a Power Mac, while the 68040 based Mac loaded the section with no problem, though otherwise no problems were encountered. Perhaps this is showing the age of the product.

Once you get the CD-ROM loaded up, you're presented with an On/Off switch which when pressed presents you with 5 options & a quit button to take you to the various sections of the CD-ROM, with a couple of areas dedicated to The Great Kat herself & some rather interesting snippets of video clips along with a bio section & quite an amazing amount of information on various composers.

One of the most interesting areas is the one which lets you know about various musical instruments & this is perhaps the most useful for educators to entice music students into learning about the wide variety of instruments & a comprehensive guide to those covered, which include keyboards, wind instruments percussion & more.

Another section is the quiz area which has a number of reasonably difficult questions which can be quite a challenge, especially if you're not into classical music, while others are centred around The Great Kat.

A very good bio & outline of The Great Kat's influences & career background, though gven the age of this CD-ROM, the information contained is starting to date somewhat in this area. Where the normal audio CD has a limited capacity to show where an artist is coming from, this CD-ROM adds an element of interaction & also has some educational appeal while being in an environment that actually encourages you to enjoy yourself.

For further information on this CD-ROM, contact Thomas Public Relations or visit The Great Kat website