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<blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 465090" data-attributes="member: 2013">I have purchased nearly 200 of them, and here are some of my observations (in addition to those already made):1.) ESDs that were released earlier are, in general, much higher quality - they made an effort to reproduce the original in top-notch quality, by putting in text plus graphics on each page.&nbsp; This makes the file size MUCH smaller.&nbsp; Usually the OCRs were checked for spelling, pagination, and so on so they come out well in terms of copy/paste picking up the actual text.&nbsp; That's products that were released early as ESDs, not products that were printed early in print.2.) Later ESD's are basically an OCR rendition with a scan of each page slapped on top of it.&nbsp; This makes the file size jump from &quot;reasonable&quot; to &quot;frickin' huge&quot; - and at no increase in quality.&nbsp; There was no editing of the OCR so the text has a TON of errors and garbage characters.&nbsp; As mentioned, the scans include dog-ears, torn pages, and sometimes are not rotated correctly or have scans of the &quot;edges&quot; of multiple pages where the original was not lined up well for scanning.&nbsp; Nice for a collector who's going to read it off his screen or has the money to print a lot of them, I guess, but the quality is very poor compared to earlier ESDs.I like them as a collector because they take up much less shelf space, but the newer ones are EXCEEDINGLY limited in utility.&nbsp; It's disappointing given that early ones were given love and TLC and later ones seem like they're just doing them to be done with them and don't give a darn about quality (or lack thereof).Oh yeah - the fact that nothing new has been released in three months kind of upsets me (I want my Elves of Alfheim and Dwarves of Rockhome, dammit!)--The Sigil</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Sigil, post: 465090, member: 2013"] I have purchased nearly 200 of them, and here are some of my observations (in addition to those already made): 1.) ESDs that were released earlier are, in general, much higher quality - they made an effort to reproduce the original in top-notch quality, by putting in text plus graphics on each page. This makes the file size MUCH smaller. Usually the OCRs were checked for spelling, pagination, and so on so they come out well in terms of copy/paste picking up the actual text. That's products that were released early as ESDs, not products that were printed early in print. 2.) Later ESD's are basically an OCR rendition with a scan of each page slapped on top of it. This makes the file size jump from "reasonable" to "frickin' huge" - and at no increase in quality. There was no editing of the OCR so the text has a TON of errors and garbage characters. As mentioned, the scans include dog-ears, torn pages, and sometimes are not rotated correctly or have scans of the "edges" of multiple pages where the original was not lined up well for scanning. Nice for a collector who's going to read it off his screen or has the money to print a lot of them, I guess, but the quality is very poor compared to earlier ESDs. I like them as a collector because they take up much less shelf space, but the newer ones are EXCEEDINGLY limited in utility. It's disappointing given that early ones were given love and TLC and later ones seem like they're just doing them to be done with them and don't give a darn about quality (or lack thereof). Oh yeah - the fact that nothing new has been released in three months kind of upsets me (I want my Elves of Alfheim and Dwarves of Rockhome, dammit!) --The Sigil [/QUOTE]

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