Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 DVD

Rating:
Summary: Encarta, brand-new every year, again in 2003.
Review: I buy ENCARTA every year, and BRITANNICA from time to time. This is my opinion:
TEXT: Britannica's writing style is more sophisticated, and its authors are very well known. However, Encarta is not bad written at all, its authors are good and the contents are more or less the same, or better in the last versions.
You can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year, but only quarterly (4 times). Encarta is updated EVERY WEEK with new articles and additions to the old ones.
MULTIMEDIA and FEATURES: Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, literature sidebars, new translation dictionaries, Atlas, 2 D and 3 D virtual tours, timeline, games ... It's not only the quantity and quality. It is the easy access you have to all the multimedia, and that text, multimedia and features are completely integrated.
NAVIGATING: Encarta wins again. You only have to type a phrase, a word or de beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contains it. If you have typed the name of a small village lost in Senegal (e.g.), you see it in the Atlas without clicking again. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you alternative spellings and you meet with what was looking for. To go "jumping" from article to article is very easy and quick, because you have a lot of links and the "Related Articles" section. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft's WORD is perfect.
Navigating with Britannica is different. You do not get crazy, but ... I only say that, if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with alternative or similar spellings.
My computer is Pentium III 1000 Mhz 256 RAM, and I have copied Britannica into the hard drive (the same with Encarta). The fact is that it is very slow, and that takes a lot of RAM (50 % more or less). If you have other programs open, perhaps Britannica does not work. With Encarta, you do not have any problem.
I hope my opinion is helpful for you.

Rating:
Summary: Love the content but it locks up constantly!!!!
Review: I have been a Microsoft Encarta users for years now. Always buying the upadtes every year. For some strange reason Encarta locks after I look up 1 or more pieces of information.

I love the program but I have to restart it every minute or so. Very annoying!

Other friends of mine complain about it being very slow on their system.

Maybe I have an isolated problem on my machine. I hve the latest software updates and a very new Sony laptop. I canït figure out what is wrong.

I say buy it and try it yourslef on your machine. If it locks up take it back and consider another company. Donït go through years of hoping Microsft will getting around to getting rid of the bugs in it.

Rating:
Summary: Kind of disappointed
Review: I thought it'd be a complete one but it turned out to be something filled with outdated data. If you read a review about a country (that you know well) besides USA, you'll be disappointed easily.
So, I don't recommend this product. Bad!!

Rating:
Summary: Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003
Review: I'm sorry my english is very little, but I need buy the "Enciclo
pedia encarta deluxe 2003 in spanish, a friend recomended this
product, I need send to Nicaragua but write in spanish.

spanish: Me gustaria saber si tienen esta enciclopedia en español

Thank you: Sincerely Ronald Perez

Rating:
Summary: The best software you can buy for yourself and the family!
Review: I've been a user of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedias since 1997, and I think that the Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 DVD is a dream come true product! The 97 edition of Encarta was impressive however very limited by the small amount of storage space the regular CD provided. In their 2000 edition they committed the horrid mistake of expanding the encyclopedia into two CDs. Articles are stored on both CDs so you didn't have to switch them if you're just reading text, however if you wanted to open a multimedia attachment most probably you would've had to switch CDs. That was very frustrating and I hated the Encarta and stopped using it. The updates were a bit worthless as well because they weren't integrated into the encyclopedia's articles, but instead were provided as a separate section called updates! Very useless!

But in 2003, all those mistakes were overcome with intelligence and style! The DVD provides a vast amount of storage space that you rarely find an article of significant importance without a couple of multimedia attachments. Only now I realize how the need to switch CDs did impact the appeal of the previous encyclopedia, for now whenever I'm bored I just slip the DVD in and browse.

The updates are just wonderful! Almost every week you have about 500K of new updates available for download, and they integrate seamlessly with your existing articles. This is a REAL up-to-date encyclopedia. For example, only one week after the Columbia shuttle disaster, I opened the Space Shuttle article in my encyclopedia and found a whole section about the Columbia disaster and its possible effects on space exploration programs! That's what I call an updating encyclopedia! And for those interested to know what updates they have downloaded so far there is still that section where it will provide you links to updated and newly added articles.

I'm an average user who has an interest in almost every science on earth. I read a lot and I'm not usually satisfied with short essays or fragments of information. This encyclopedia provides me everything I'm looking for! The essays are comprehensive and the search tools are very efficient and helpful. However if you're a NASA scientist and is looking for an integrity assessment of the ecncylopedia's quantum physics articles then I can't really help you with that! You might want to read what your colleagues wrote about this product.

And if you're among those who claim that multimedia content is for children only then you probably haven't used this encyclopedia and you're still reading from your old fashion 200000000 pages dust-collecting books! You probably haven't used the 3-D virtual tour of Abu-Simbel shrine in Ancient Egypt where you can observe the scripts on every wall in complete detail. You probably haven't enjoyed the beauty of the 2-D pictures of Pompeii where you can even lie to your friends and tell them that you were actually there. I can also bet that you haven't tried the time-line feature which is nothing less than a spectacular tool for history buffs like me.

Another feature that I discovered recently is the World Atlas. In previous encyclopedias, this used to be a boring feature that merely provided limited geographical information. This however is a treasure of information! It will provide you visual maps or charts of all statistical studies and known facts you can dream of! Everything you wanted to know about global climate, population, economic, political, or religious data is available in detail and up to date!

In short, I received this DVD a month ago and until now I keep discovering new features that make me appreciate it even more and feel better and better about the money I spent on this invaluable software. I wholeheartedly recommend buying it! Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Subject to Failure
Review: I've bought both ENCARTA and BRITANNICA for years. This is my opinion:
TEXT: The Britannica is a superb encyclopaedia in text since 1768. If only its electronic version were worthy of it! Text in the electronic version is different from Printed Encyclopaedia (large articles have been shortened). Britannica claims that it has more articles than Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Spain" are only one with a lot of subdivisions in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are considered articles, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to other.
In some areas Encarta is better than Britannica. For example consider "controversial events in modern history" such us "My Lai Massacre": In Encarta one large article and a lot of mentions in others; Britannica does not even know the name.
In theory, you can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work. Encarta is updated free EVERY WEEK) with new articles and additions to the old ones. The new articles and additions are included in the next version of Encarta, but this is not true for Britannica. For instance: "Bilbao, Spain": Britannica does not mention the Guggenheim Museum, which opened in 1997, and the population is !!estimated!! of 1982. The same article in Encarta: similar text, 3 photos, 1 map, related articles, sidebar, dynamic timelines and 4 internet pages, plus one specific article "Bilbao Guggenheim Museum". I think Britannica updates its contents very slow, whereas Encarta is completely alive.
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, maps, diagrams ... Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of photos, paintings, drawings, maps, animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, literature sidebars, new translation dictionaries (not very good though), atlas, 2-D and 3-D virtual tours, timeline, games ... It's 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's Atlas is a joke and statistics do not exist or I have not found them. Encarta's has a great detail: 1 cm/ 4 km all over the world (though you find some mistakes) and hundreds of statistical maps.
INTERFACE AND SOFTWARE: This is the worst side of Britannica. In Encarta you only have to type a phrase, a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. If you have typed the name of a small village, you see it in the Atlas without clicking again. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you alternative spellings and you find what you were looking for. To go "jumping" from article to article is very easy and quick, because you have a lot of links and the "Related Articles" section. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft WORD is perfect. If you don't understand a word, you can double-click it and the dictionary appears in a window.
Navigating with Britannica is different. You get crazy. I will only give an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with alternative or similar spellings. The dictionary does not permit double-clicking of words in the text of articles for their definitions. Once an article is displayed you cannot search for a word within the article. This is extremely annoying: you have to perform this task yourself. One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works with Macintosh computers.
This is my piece of advice: If you can afford it, buy both. If not... read again this review.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best encyclopedia available, but...
Review: the World Atlas is magnificent!

You can spend countless hours browsing through the entire world and learning a lot about every place on earth.

The atlas database is impressive. It contains even minuscule towns all over the world. The statistical maps are also very informative and very interesting.