First off, let me state right up front that this is an absolutely amazing boxed set.

But before I get to how incredibly cool this thing actually is — and how it is absolutely the perfect holiday gift for that special music geek, or "rockologist" in your own life — there is one thing you absolutely need to know:

Make sure you have enough memory to actually run the software that is what really makes the Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years boxed set so special.

You see, it takes a lot of RAM to grant the user instant access to some 1026 issues, and over 98,000 scanned pages of the last 40 years of Rolling Stone magazine.

In geek terms, that means you had better have at least 512 MB of RAM on your machine — and in all honesty, a gig is probably really more like it. Because as many of those computers that are still out there that seemed positively "tricked out" with anything less a few years back — I can tell you that 256 MB of RAM just isn't gonna cut it here. As I found out the hard way on my initial test run, that won't get you past the first install disk.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I can happily report that Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years, represents the most complete historical account of the rock and roll era that I have ever come across. It is also every bit worth going the extra mile to boost the memory necessary to run on your PC if need be.

Because for even the most casual student of rock and roll history, you could literally lose yourself for hours — if not days — in this massive, and easily searchable archive of data. Imagine having the entire history of rock and roll — and for that matter modern culture as a whole — at your fingertips with the click of a mouse. For the music freak in your life, Rolling Stone Cover to Cover represents that wet dream come to life.

Love them or hate them, Rolling Stone is the magazine which most consistently and accurately has documented the most significant musical and cultural events of what is closing in on the past half century — from the rise of the sixties counter culture, through disco, punk-rock, MTV, grunge, and right on up to what some argue is the currently ongoing death of rock and roll music itself.

You wanna talk about "what a long, strange trip it's been"?