Few insights of new Kaplan's GMAT

Well, I just started it, but already can give you some insights on it.

First of all, the first yellow pages' instructions, which ask you to register your online companion -- they don't work. I mean, it looks like they have recently released the new 2010 edition of the book (huh, few words about that a little bit later on), so serial numbers of 2009 edition doesn't work. Nice.

I went ahead and contacted their Customer Support for the issue. The response came within 3-4 hours, I should say it was rather quick for such type of an issue. ;) However, they have asked me to:

1. manually create an account at their system with all fields mandatory in their profile (yep, to trash me with their deals and ads)
2. an ISBN of the book I'm referring to (huh, don't you know the ISBNs of your own books?)
3. give them an exact spelling of the name of the book (doh, can't you lookup the ISBN?!)

I should say it's pretty mixed experience. No explanation was given, as well as it looks like they're pretty lazy -- my original request had all information (full book name, ISBN and even a serial number of the book!), but the username on their system; they replied to that message asking for this information again. Feels a lot like "yeah, we know we have to support it, but we hate that so much".

In about an hour or so they have activated my account with service available for 6 months, until Jan 28, 2010. I will have to take a look on what is actually it, so it makes such a hassle to get it on. :)

The next thing, is how the material is presented in the book. I like it. It reads better and covers more interesting points (keep in mind that I'm talking just about the intro piece of it). However, they provide a percentile for GMAT scores, which mean that as much people as ..% have scored this score or less on exam. Well, less then that makes sense, but as much as does not (for me). Whatever.

I found one confusing piece of it here. I remember reading one of the books that says that GMAT takers are limited with scratch paper so you need to learn to use it wisely. Kaplan's book says that we can ask for a new set of scratch paper and it's a good idea to do this over the break. What is more correct?

I liked the part of using the part of your scratch paper for drawing a grid and using it when you eliminate answers. Sounds pretty useful. For many people, like myself, it's easy to scratch out something while you thinking, and actually get the rid of consider some answers.

Well, getting closer to GMAT checklist actually confused me a little bit. All the links in there are having 2006 in them, like mba.com/mba/TaketheGMAT/Tools/2006TestCenterList, 2006CountryCodeList, 2006AppointmentScheduleForm, etc. Is the book really so outdated even that it dated 2009 (huh, guess so!) ?