Rating: 
Summary: The crumbling remains of a once-great reference
Review: As a reference, less than useless. Less than useless because it is grossly deficient in genuine information and routinely indulges in baseless opinion. Imagine a so-called "encyclopedia" with not even 900 words on India! My old '94 version of Compton's CD offers 7,000 words on the country, its people, customs, economy, religions ...Britannica indulges in opinion without offering a word of support for it. . The CD version of Britannica is a comedy of interface blunders. Load the glacially slow program, then you must click on another "opener" to get to a search window. The text of articles defaults to a sidebar, while the search results, most of which are irrevelant to the search term entered, occupy the bulk of the page. You must click on "full page view" after EVERY search to read the articles brought up -- unless you're content to read them in a three- or four-word column. Search for "Paul Gallico" and the first entry brought up is "Golden Gloves." What's the relevance? Of Gallico, Britannica says, "New York organizer [of the Golden Gloves] was Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News." Britinnica is unaware of Gallico's fame for his enduring stories. Wilbur the pig philosophied in "Charlotte's Web" that something could be less than nothing. Britannica has proven him right. World Book is IT in computer-based encyclopedias.
Rating:
Summary: The crumbling remains of a once-great reference
Review: As a reference, less than useless. Less than useless because it is grossly deficient in genuine information and routinely indulges in baseless opinion. Imagine a so-called "encyclopedia" with not even 900 words on India! My old '94 version of Compton's CD offers 7,000 words on the country, its people, customs, economy, religions ... Britannica indulges in opinion without offering a word of support for it. . The CD version of Britannica is a comedy of interface blunders. Load the glacially slow program, then you must click on another "opener" to get to a search window. The text of articles defaults to a sidebar, while the search results, most of which are irrevelant to the search term entered, occupy the bulk of the page. You must click on "full page view" after EVERY search to read the articles brought up -- unless you're content to read them in a three- or four-word column. Search for "Paul Gallico" and the first entry brought up is "Golden Gloves." What's the relevance? Of Gallico, Britannica says, "New York organizer [of the Golden Gloves] was Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News." Britinnica is unaware of Gallico's fame for his enduring stories. Wilbur the pig philosophied in "Charlotte's Web" that something could be less than nothing. Britannica has proven him right. World Book is IT in computer-based encyclopedias.
Rating: 
Summary: re-rated
Review: Been in touch with the Tech support from Britannica and they came up with a suggestion to overcome the lack of a contents page. The suggestion was to run searches for( ab*, ac*...za*..) on the titles instead of entire articles. It isnt a perfect solution but it helps.For being the best encyclopedia and its extensive articles I think it deserves to be re-rated. Falling short of perfection with the lack of a contents page, which I hope will be corrected. In addition the tech support from the web sites was very prompt and professional.
Rating: 
Summary: Satisfying Product
Review: Everyone knows that Britannica was the first publisher of encyclopedias. This product did not fail my expectation. I have use this many times to do research and project. One big plus over Microsofts Encarta is the articles. The articles is much more in depth and longer than Encarta. Encarta users (like myself) will find Britannica to have a very different format. It is certainly less eye catching and lacks many of Microsoft's multimedia features. However, what it lacks in snazz, it makes up for in content. I like both Encarta and Britannica because of these differences, and I will continue to use both. As far as information is concerned, Britannica is the grand-daddy of encyclopedias. The content is identical to the company's online version, but for users concerned about downtime and slow downloads, the CD-ROM version is a life saver. Also, the offline version allows parents of young children to access the content without supervision and without installing Internet filters. I recommand you buy this great product.
Rating:
Summary: best encyclopedia ever
Review: great interface, works just like the internet, has everything a high school student needs
Rating: 
Summary: Good Research Tool,Sucks as an encylcopedia
Review: I know the 2 star rating is harsh but the CD is a classic example of poor software functionality. Everyone knows about Brittanicas past as a reliable source of information and comprehensive articles and I did find that to be true, although there were instances where some searches could not bring any result. But the low rating is purely because the CD assumes that you know or atleast have an idea of what you are looking for. You need to enter a query to get at an article and there is no alphabetical contents. I agree that the content pages are going to be large but I am sure there is a way to present it to the user. The whole effort is frustrating cause I know the encylopedia has over 43 million words of useful article but if I need to get at it, I need to think up of the right query. Most of my time spent in reading the printed version of encylopedias would be browsing through the contents until I find an article I dont know anything about or something which I hadnt thought about in a while but suddenly seems interesting. This is how knowledge is increased and unless you gear up and think up of what to search for the CD is quite frustrating. The good thing is that it can be fixed pretty easily. Alas I already own the CD, maybe they can come up with a software patch!!
Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Money
Review: I love references and have frequently enjoyed looking things up or just browsing Britannica. At last the entire text of this wonderful encyclopedia was available loaded on to my hard drive so carrying around disks would not be necessary!...With great anticipation I purchased, loaded and opened the Encyclopedia Britanica. Within thirty days I had discarded it as useless. Why? 1. The encyclopedia feeds you only pieces of articles, paragraphs at a time requiring a frustrating series of clicking even to read one article. 2. Even when you are "allowed" to get a larger segment of an article, the viewing box is NOT resizable, requiring constant scrolling. 3. Searching is based on finding text in titles or the body of the article. This may be good as a last resort, but the wonderful and complex index of the book version is NOT AVAILABLE! 4. It comes with Merriam-Webster dictionary. Of course "Webster" is not copyrighted and any garbage dictionary can use that word, but I know Merriam-Webster to be of very high quality. Unfortunately, you cannot load the dictionary unless you also load the encyclopedia. You must search the dictonary with the same useless search mechanism of the encyclopedia and of course the tiny dictionary window is NOT resizable, forcing you to scroll for the smallest definitions. 5. Six months later, I'm still waiting for my rebate. A Waste of money. I'm still waiting for a useful encyclopedia that can be independent of disks.
Rating: 
Summary: Get passed the install and you have a good product.
Review: I remember as a kid using the Encyclopedia Britannica for many research projects and never thought I see the day when the whole thing fit onto a tiny disk. Now my children can have the entire set without having to take up a bookcase for the books. The install was a little tough since it locked up twice before I finally got it to work. Remember to disable any virus or SQL software you have running. There are 3 install types, typical which will require the other 2 discs in order to run. 1 disc and complete which requires 2GB of disk space but eliminates the use of the cd-roms. I finally got it to run under 95/98 and ME and quality of the images and sound required fairly decent hardware. I did like the ability to interact directly from the program to the internet but you must have internet access before you begin. You have over 7,000 pictures, over 83,000 documents, video clips, audio clips, some 1500 plus charts and maps and Webster's Dictionary included. Without the initial hiccups this software is very good and would rival anything else out there.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid This Like Broccoli
Review: Putting the merits of the content aside (though I tend to agree with other writers that the content is shallow as a coy pond), this product has a poorly conceived interface that works only intermittently. Couple this with the poorest support effort around, and you will be pulling your hair out every time the kids say "Daddy, the encyclopedia doesn't work again." Most irritating of all is the [price]per call 900 number that Britannica uses for telephone support. Save yorself the aggravation, avoid it!!!
Rating:
Summary: An excelent product, educating and user friendly
Review: The Britannica CD's is one of the best of it's kind, and for the purpose of concise very updated and responsible information -without the need to tour in big books - it does the work on the best way.
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