Visitors offered virtual tour of White House

These days, a lot of people are wondering what you have to do to really get inside the White House

These days, a lot of people are wondering what you have to do to really get inside the White House. A newly-released White House CD-ROM recreates the experience of touring 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, allowing virtual visitors to move around the buildings and gardens, clicking on paintings and furnishings to call up copy blocks of historical information.

The tour, says the CD package, "is your special invitation to tour the White House in a completely unique and exciting way". The White House Is Our House was developed by the White House Historical Association and the American Architectural Foundation.

You can zoom in on things you want to study, like a likeness of Abraham Lincoln, and hear part of the Gettysburg address. You can pretend you're actually sitting at the president's Oval Office desk - no, you can't peek behind that doorway leading to the notorious "private study." And the First Family's residence is strictly off limits.