Webster's New World Dictionary and Thesaurus (Jewel Case)

Rating:
Summary: A great product!
Review: - Installation is quick and easy
- The disc does not have to be in the CD-Rom to run the program
- Instant access to definition/thesaurus just by clicking the word from any application
- 500,000 definitions, synonyms and antonyms
- Easy to understand definitions
- Inexpensive
- Great bonus CD included (Visual Dictionary & Letter templates)

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: EDIT: I have found that this works okay for me in Windows XP Pro. Some problems with the point-and-define thing, but I had those in Windows 2000 too.

In the most important ways, this is pretty good. No word processor macros are included but the program can run in the background and respond to a certain key combination, providing dictionary and/or thesaurus info for the word under the mouse pointer. This doesn't work consistenty in my web browsers but it seems to work a little better in my word processors. The interface for the dictionary program is pretty good, the window size is not resizeable but boolean wildcard searches of the dictionary and thesaurus contents are available, which is a nice feature.

The dictionary/thesaurus itself is stored in a somewhat standard Windows helpfile, which might be useful for people in other programs.

The package includes a couple of bonus programs, one is a bunch of sample fill-in-the-blanks letters which someone must have thought would be useful for some strange reason, the other is a "Visual Dictionary." This is a sort of interesting program which matches words to pictures for no apparent reason. It wants to install QuickTime 2.03, a six year old version of QT, which is probably not worth the trouble for most people. Amazon is wise to not make a big deal about these bonuses in the product listing.

This dictionary appears to be a repackage of something sold by Macmillan several years ago. The most recent copyright in the program is 1998 and the README is also dated 1998, on the box the date 2003 is printed. Probably Topics Entertainment bought this title from Macmillan but it's not listed on their website. Don't expect any meaningful support in the event you have problems with the program.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't play well with XP
Review: I originally bought this software when I had Windows ME. It worked really well and I loved it. It's simple to use--click the icon and you are ready to look up words. When I got a new computer which came with Windows XP, my original software would not work. I bought a new version thinking my old version just was not compatible. As it turns out, there is some issue with all versions of the software working with XP. Topics Entertainment is aware of the issue, but unable to resolve it. Topics Entertainment had a relatively friendly and helpful technical support department (though somewhat slow) and they offered to take the software back after the problem failed to be resolved. But that still leaves me without my much-missed dictionary program. If you don't have XP, then I highly recommend this program. If you have XP, find an alternative (which I am searching for presently.)

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: In the most important ways, this is pretty good. No word processor macros are included but the program can run in the background and respond to a certain key combination, providing dictionary and/or thesaurus info for the word under the mouse pointer. This doesn't work consistenty in my web browsers but it seems to work a little better in my word processors. The interface for the dictionary program is pretty good, the window size is not resizeable but boolean wildcard searches of the dictionary and thesaurus contents are available, which is a nice feature.

The dictionary/thesaurus itself is stored in a somewhat standard Windows helpfile, which might be useful for people in other programs.

The package includes a couple of bonus programs, one is a bunch of sample fill-in-the-blanks letters which someone must have thought would be useful for some strange reason, the other is a "Visual Dictionary." This is a sort of interesting program which matches words to pictures for no apparent reason. It wants to install QuickTime 2.03, a six year old version of QT, which is probably not worth the trouble for most people. Amazon is wise to not make a big deal about these bonuses in the product listing.

This dictionary appears to be a repackage of something sold by Macmillan several years ago. The most recent copyright in the program is 1998 and the README is also dated 1998, on the box the date 2003 is printed. Probably Topics Entertainment bought this title from Macmillan but it's not listed on their website. Don't expect any meaningful support in the event you have problems with the program.