Encarta Premium Suite 2004 DVD Edition

You'll start at Encarta's homepage where searching for a specific word or phrase brings up a list of suggestions in the left hand column. Click on one of these and the item itself appears in the main window. For example, searching for Vancouver Island returns a selection of articles on the subject itself, related articles on temperate rainforests, deforestation, lumberjacks and Sir Francis Drake, as well as a key event list for Captain Cook (who visited the island in 1778). Cross-referencing is particularly strong, and as well as Web-style links within the text that let you jump to other parts of the encyclopaedia, many articles list associated multimedia elements, such as sound and video clips, as well as links to those websites that have been assessed by Encarta's editors. (Where no Editor's Choices exist, you can easily do a general Web search.) Articles can also be browsed in alphabetical order or by country and by clicking the Article Outline you can see the main headings of longer articles and jump straight to the sections that interest you. You can also browse maps, multimedia, statistics and around 18,000 websites in the same way.

Navigation is excellent, thanks to the familiar Web browser-style controls for moving back and forth between recently viewed screens or going straight to the program's opening homepage and there's a useful drop-down "history" menu so you can jump straight back to any of the last 29 pages you've visited. You can also build a list of "favourites", which is useful if you're researching a subject over a longer period of time. Encarta makes it easy to copy both text and pictures into a Word package, such as Microsoft Word and adds the relevant copyright notices automatically.

This edition improves on Encarta Encyclopedia Plus 2004 in a number of significant ways; by adding a world English dictionary and thesaurus, bilingual dictionaries (French, Spanish, German and Italian) thousands of quotations, a huge world atlas, a collection of study aids to help with homework, six "virtual" aeroplane flights over different continents, and a selection of videos from the Discovery Channel; in all, it has around three times as much content. --Robb Beattie

Having bought both - based on the previous reviewers comments - I find that I cannot recommend Encarta UK and can recommend Encyclopedia Britannica. Encarta is the encyclopedia that is in fact more USA focused, as it has more U.S. content and provides much less real information for other countries. Britannica, which doesn't have a "UK edition" but a good encyclopedia should not need country-specific editions, was published in Scotland for its first nine editions (120 years) then jointly London and New York until the 1940s. How an encyclopedia that has spent more years of its life being written in the UK, and is littered with articles that make continual comparisons with Scotland or the United Kingdom, can be called "USA-focused" eludes me.

Britannica is a vast store of information, its articles are long and authoritative, and navigation through those articles is very easy. Britannica's choice of font is superb, as it really enhances the sense that you're leafing through a book that contains hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge. On the other hand, while it might be slightly easier to find information in Encarta, the articles are strewn with distractions (default font size too big, sentences double-spaced, photos that can bear little resemblance to the information you're reading) and there is no navigation at all within an article. Compare, for example, the articles on the history of the United Kingdom. Encarta presents this as a few sections covering rough highlights of some key events on one long page that you must scroll through. Britannica organises the information into sections on many pages and includes every major historical event that has ever occurred, with plenty of navigation tools for moving around the article and reading related material, with many tables and graphs of statistical data (missing from Encarta). Encarta rarely identifies the source of their information, Britannica always names the author of the article (and they are always a specialist in the subject).

The only benefit I can find with Encarta is their selection of maps, and their navigation system for the maps. But I wouldn't buy Encarta just for the maps (if you want real maps, they're not detailed enough). The installation of Encarta forced me to install IE6, and required a reboot as a result, neither of which I wanted (and is a typical Microsoft strategy).

Britannica does have a sluggish interface, but this might not be surprising due to the huge amount of information which it is making available to you (vastly bigger than Encarta). Britannica doesn't have so many pictures or videos, but the use of these in Encarta is distracting and rarely "on subject". It looks like Encarta has just had pictures thrown in to help market the product by claiming it "has more pictures".

In conclusion, Encarta is a glossy magazine, not an encyclopedia. If you want an encyclopedia, a source of knowledge, there is only one choice - Encylopedia Britannica.


Articles not up to scratch   July 6, 2004
5 out of 10 found this review helpful

The articles are just not up to the standard of Encyclopaedia Britannica, they seem to lacking in relevancy and the search functionality is poor.
I would rather use Britannica any day.


ENCARTA UK versus BRITANNICA (only USA edition)   June 20, 2004
Billy Budd (Boston, MA USA)
20 out of 24 found this review helpful

I have bought both Encarta and Britannica for years (EB in printed edition too: 32 volumes, 32.000 pages). This is my opinion in brief: Encarta UK is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (USA focused and sometimes outdated) makes interesting to buy both.
TEXT: Britannica is a superb encyclopedia of text (not in visual aid) since 1768 (you know: an article by Einstein and so on...). Since 1901 is published in USA (University of Chicago) and is VERY USA FOCUSED. Unlike Encarta, EB has not a UK edition. Contents in electronic version differs from printed encyclopedia (very large articles have been shortened). Britannica claims that it has more entries that Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Mexico" are only one (with a lot of subdivisions) in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are unconnected, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to another, which is slow and very annoying, especially if you want to copy it in "WORD". Very often, the text is not updated. Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite has "3 encyclopedias in one: Elementary, Student and Adult".
On the other hand, Encarta's UK text (Premium Suite) is not bad at all. Most articles have the name of their contributors and their professions, works...: They are not "John Doe". You can find large fragments of literary works, literature guides, a lot of sidebars and thousands of quotations. "Encarta Africana" is included only in USA version. The Pop-Up (double clicking a word) Dictionary and Thesaurus has sound for correct pronunciation only in USA edition (by the way, it can read aloud, with a robotic and ugly voice, a whole article). The "Translation Dictionaries" to Spanish, French, German and Italian must be improved, because they are minimal. It gives you a lot of "Internet links", even if you are not connected. With Britannica you must be "on-line" and it searches in an EB Web page.
In theory you can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work. Encarta can be updated free EVERY MONTH (USA version every week) with new articles and additions or corrections to the old ones (until October 2004). With Encarta updating really works. Technologically is amazing to see the changes in old items.
ATLAS Britannica has not a real atlas; only a worlds map whose maximum detail are the States of USA. Statistics are very poor. Encarta's Atlas is like another encyclopedia, with a great detail (1 cm = 4 km all over the world) and 20 varieties of atlas presentations (statistical ones can be counted by dozens). If you look at a geographical article (city, river...) you can see in a corner where it is placed and, with only a click, open the Atlas. In articles of cities, if you are on-line, you can see in another corner the weather of this place in that moment.
MULTIMEDIA: They say that "serious" or "adult" readers do not care about "pictures"; that multimedia is only for kids. I do not agree, because I think that, sometimes, "A picture is worth a thousand words". Works of art, anatomy, historical maps, diagrams... Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of photos, paintings, drawings, charts & tables, animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, 2-D and 3-D virtual tours, 360-degrees views, timeline, games... It is not only the quantity and quality. It is the easy access you have to all the multimedia, and that text and multimedia are fully integrated. Britannica is not really multimedia. It has photos and videos, but they make the program slow and sluggish. They should edit an alternative version with only text, as they did with the first edition in 1995. It performed fast and easy in old computers.
INTERFACE AND PERFORMANCE: This is the worst side of Britannica. With Encarta you only have to type a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you automatically alternative spellings. Even if you write the name of a small village lost in any country, you see it in the atlas. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft WORD is perfect. The "Research Organizer" is very helpful too. Encarta's TEXT FONT is very clear (Britannica's...) and you can choose 3 sizes.
Navigating with Britannica is disappointing. I will only give you an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with similar spellings (unless you open a window and "battle" with it). As I said before, the program's performance speed is very slow and sluggish, and it must be dramatically improved. To go "back and forward" you do not find any icon and you need to open a "menu".... One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works with Macintosh.
INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: Encarta has a lot in different languages. The four I utilize (United Kingdom, Spanish, French and Italian ones) are adaptations of USA version, which is inexorable talking about History, Geography, Literature and other topics. The MISERABLE thing is that articles that equally concern any human being (Health, Mathematics and the rest of Sciences) are a VERY RESUMED translation of USA edition that is, of course, the best of all. Why Microsoft follows such a policy?
I repeat my modest piece of advice: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) make interesting to buy both.


Reasonable product   April 10, 2004
3 out of 9 found this review helpful

It's a fair product and makes good use of web access so that you can pursue further research. Maps and pictures could be a bit better though!


Good for what it is...   December 31, 2003
56 out of 58 found this review helpful

Encarta is an American encyclopedia, and in that capacity is a very complete and very detailed piece of software - it covers American history, American entertainment, American public figures and so on in great detail. The main encyclopedia is even divided into two clear sections - the regular one ("Encyclopedia Articles") and an "Africana Articles" to cover what they view as African-American interests.

While this is well and good, do bear in mind that if you're hoping for a similar level of coverage for the rest of the world (as I was!) you'll be a bit disappointed - Encarta's coverage of culture outside of the US is really quite limited in depth. People/places aside, Encarta's other subjects such as global geography and history are very well covered, albeit naturally from a US perspective.

Attached to many of the standard articles are essays on the subject and "Sidebars" - features which are an absolutely excellent way to explore a subject in more depth. In addition Encarta's standalone Dictionary Tools, the Dynamic Atlas and the Online Update feature make Encarta 2004 a superb reference tool and excellent value for the money.

The only things Encarta could improve upon are the slender pickings of video clips attached to articles (there are hardly any! And I have the full Reference edition!) and a lack of depth (rarely beyond GCSE level and hardly ever up to A level) to the science articles.

In summary, a great all-round piece of software and an excellent way to learn more about all those things that come up in conversation and you realise you really should know!!!