Better Concepts, purveyors of quite a few original CD-ROMs of the font, music, clip-art and adult variety, have decided to delve into the realm of the online collection of Aminet with their BCINet CD.
BCINet's material is "...hot off the archives of the Internet!" To get this out of the way:
Aminet is a separate entity, and its moderators weren't involved in the compilation of this CD. The material on BCINet is significantly "different" from a direct Aminet compilation.
Now to the point: BCINet is a collection of hundreds of megs of, essentially, all around good, up-to-date software. The material is archived in directories resembling the Aminet hierarchy, and can be accessed directly as such, or with a graphical front-end program.
If you choose the direct route, you just do a lot of un-LHAing. The graphical front end offers a more automated way of copying and/or accessing what you want. I found the graphical front-end a nice idea, but a bit awkward to work with: for example, if you left-click on a directory (as you would normally do on the Amiga), you will always be asked if you want to select the entire contents of the directory. Right-click avoids this, but I find that a bit backwards, since left-click is the more "instinctual" of the choices. The interface program also seems to have trouble with the first mouse click you issue to it if you've switched screens. In short, it's a good effort, but unless you're doing some heavy-duty moving around of files, a directory management program like DirWork will probably suit you just fine.
As a general-purpose compilation of useful software, BCINet succeeds. The software is a great selection, all up-to-date and functional, since Aminet is screened rather well. (Sadly, the Deluxe Galaga archive on the disc is corrupted, though)
Its recommended price of US$15 puts it about dead-center between Aminet Share and Gold CDs. Future BCINet CDs are planned to keep the material up to date.