I thought the main advantage of using OED2 was speed; comparing it to later versions is rather like comparing XyWrite and MSW. Also, later versions don't just have new words, but revised definitions and different quotations, and who knows? a few errors corrected. An enormous advantage of the online edition is its integration with HTOED.
At 2/13/2012 08:56 PM, you wrote:
--- On Mon, 2/13/12, Michael Norman <michael.norman@xxxxxxx> wrote: > V4 gives you the 7,000 words they added since > 1.1, but, as Robert > points out somewhere, 1.1 is the core of the dictionary. I > don't want to get > into an argument on lexicostatistic provenance or supremacy. > Old, indeed, is > sometimes better Michael, I was not referring to content -- the most important part of which I understood to be rather static between versions -- but only to the software / hardware usability issues. With different later versions, there were things they required or forbade the user from doing, impediments introduced (mainly of the copy protection variety), etc. I was looking to keep all that to the bare minimum, with whatever version I got. The older versions seemed to turn up for sale very rarely, at least at any of the places I kept looking. Jordan