Rating: 
Summary: It sucks
Review: I through it out because it is so bad. Where should I start? The dictionary navagation is not user friendly. The media has nothing that is informative and is of poor quality. I have 21" Sonly Trinitron Monitor with a 128MB video card and 2.8 processor. I feel much of information on Africa and Pan Africa is racially slanted.
Rating: 
Summary: EB 2004 - The most OUTDATED encyclopedia available
Review: I use almost all important encyclopedias available. And comparison of the multimedial editions of American Britannica & Encarta (both 2004 edition), German Brockhaus (2002 edition), French Hachette (2002 edition) etc. shows that famous Britannica is the most outdated of them. Only some obscure and cheap encyclopedias can compare with Britannica's outdatedness.EB 2004 does not deserve to be called updated and its title (2004 edition) is very misleading. Yes, they've updated some major articles and buried many dead people, but that's far from enough. There are many other articles and facts that should be thoroughly revised and updated, e.g. population figures (many of them are from the 80's!). Encarta and Brockhaus has most of the population figures from around the year 2000 or even later. Why not Britannica? EB 2004 is outdated even in comparison with Britannica's concise printed version (Concise Britannica), which was issued two(!) years ago. Examples:
- Encarta 2004 and Concise Britannica say that Mobil and Exxon are former names (companies) and that the new company is named Exxon Mobil Corp. (since 1999). But Britannica 2004 (Deluxe) says Mobil and Exxon are still independent companies (the last date mentioned is 1972 for Exxon and 1988 for Mobil).
- Concise Britannica say that Merida, Mexico, had a population of 557,000 in 1990 (Encarta 2004: 705,000 in 2000). But Britannica 2004 provides only an information for 1980(!) (i.e. 400,142) Another example of Britannica's outdatedness is a name of the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne: how is it possible that Britannica is the only major encyclopedia which still hasn't noticed that it was renamed Chalons-en-Champagne years ago (according to Hachette in 1995)? Etc, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Decent encyclopedia, lousy atlas, sluggish performance.
Review: If you're thinking about upgrading from the 2003 version, don't bother. This one is equally slow (even when all of the files are fully installed on hard disks) and the content appears to be virtually the same. The interface is more attractive, but just as inefficient and difficult to use. The articles are well written, but fragmented and not as complete as one would hope. All in all, a disappointment. Judging from the other reviews on this page, that view is widely shared.
Rating: 
Summary: insightful articles, at times difficult and academic
Review: It has some good articles... but at times it is hard to read, like a textbook written in greek, rather than in plain simple english. also, while I was looking as Nash Solution in Game Theory, I found that the tables are missing! How could that be! Then I joined the 90 day online trial, which required a credit card... depending on people to forget about the subscription and earn money from that... what a good and not so moral strategy... interestingly, the online content contains the missing tables... and it costs $25 per year. So it might be better just to subscribe to the online version, and be able to find articles any where you are with an online computer. also the DVD-ROM version doesn't let you copy the whole article to Word or Notepad with ease. You need to do it screenful by screenful. The online version is just a webpage and allows easy copying to Word or Notepad.
Rating: 
Summary: The best encyclopedia for those who want to learn!
Review: It is all around the best available encyclopedia. There are other, but Encarta represents exact Microsoft's incline to put in more buttons and few knowledge. This is not only the best encyclopedia but it is the best Britannica. The quality of materials you get in enormous. The cross-reference are logical and helpful, the article well written and intriguing. It appears to be Java app, so it runs smoothly on any platform. I have it on my lovely two Apple machines and could not be happier. Britannice made the real leap from 2003 release to this one.
Rating:
Summary: Unusable on-screen fonts
Review: Why can't an application like this let you choose the font used to display articles? I'd like to use Arial 8 but the program limits you to choosing from three sizes of its own built in fuzzy-looking font. Britannica should forget about creating software and just license their content to Microsoft.
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