standard vs. "professionl"

[Anonymous]

I currently have the standard dictionary. In my 4th year chinese class I'm encountering an increasing number of words and chengyu not contained in the standard plecodict dictionary. Would the "professional" package have an increased volume of entries in all subjects or just specifically for business chinese?

Thanks

 

[mikelove]

The ABC Chinese-English dictionary in the professional version expands the vocabulary for pretty much every subject, and not just for business - it has about 8x as many entries as the Oxford dictionary you have now (200,000 in all). It has more entries for Chengyu than the Oxford has entries period. So it should definitely help with your class, yes.

 

[Anonymous]

Uprade from basic to professional

How do you upgrade from "basic" to "professional"? Do you just purchase the "professional" bundle from the store, or is there some special discount for those of us already on the "basic" bundle?

 

[mikelove]

To purchase the upgrade, log on to My Orders and click on the link to order the ABC+NWP Dictionary Upgrade - that costs $20 less than the Professional version. You'll actually end up with PlecoDict Complete, since you already have the Oxford dictionary from your Basic purchase and we don't take that away when you upgrade to the new dictionaries. If you're already happy with the Oxford dictionary's English-Chinese capabilities (and/or with the extra vocabulary in the free LDC database), you can purchase just the ABC Dictionary upgrade and save yourself an additional $20.

 

[coohand]

Hey Mike, regarding your last post on this thread - I'm trying to pinch my pennies since I just forked out for an x51v and 4GB SD - and was thinking of going the route you suggest of getting the Basic first and then upping to the ABC+NWP dicts for $20, rather than buying the Pro or Complete bundles. Is this option still valid? Since I haven't made my purchase yet (the demo rocks! - thanks for the great program!) I don't have a way to browse thru the My Orders pages.

Regards

 

[mikelove]

I'm afraid you misread that - the upgrade doesn't cost $20, it costs $20 less than the Professional version, i.e. $80. So it's cheaper to buy the Pro or Complete bundle.

 

[Anonymous]

ic, thanks for setting me straight!

 

[raoul]

This has been interesting to read. I'm an almost customer, trying to decide which version to buy. So if I'm intending to need more than the standard package, why would I buy Complete over Professional? What is the benefit? It looks redundant to me?

Cheers

 

[mikelove]

Well in some respects it is redundant, pretty much all of the words in the Oxford dictionaries are also in the ABC/NWP, but the Oxford ones can sometimes be a bit more detailed, and in trying to understand the meaning of a new Chinese word it's often very helpful to have more than one dictionary's take on it. (which is part of the reason we're now preparing a Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary for release with a future version of PlecoDict; again, it won't add many words that aren't covered by our existing dictionary, but it'll provide a lot of extra information about words that you wouldn't get from the dictionaries we have now)