Rating: 
Summary: the britanica on your notebook computer!
Review: The encyclopedia britanica on cd is way better than the book version: The articles and entries are hyperlinked, so you can jump from one entry to another immediately. Search for what you like and then click away on a tangent! You can always return to where you were. I got the britanica for reference, and now it's become reading material!I do not have the 2001 edition: I purposefully bought the 1999 edition and I want to tell you why: Since the 1999 edition, the britanica has been placed on two cd's. It's a fancy package -- with multimedia, pictures, movies, etc, and I would have loved to have had it, but... it's two cd's! This is the one major disadvantage of this offering: Most people don't have two cd players on a single computer. What's worse, notebook computers just don't come with two cd players. This means that you'd need to flip cd's. That didn't make sense to me -- having to carry an extra cd around + having to flip cd's, so I specifically asked for the 1999 edition off of the britanica web site... . Other than that, the search engine's a bit simpler than what I would have liked, but... that's a minor thing. Having the britanica on cd is a unique experience -- authoritative information within seconds, links to additional relevant information only clicks away. No book can compete with this, and really no other encyclopedia -- after all, this is the britanica!
Rating: 
Summary: For those who like quality
Review: The Encyclopedia Britannica has been around for centuries compiling articles. It's no wonder that it has a reputation for quality. I have to admit, the price of the Encyclopedia Encarta was enticing. What tipped the balance in favour of the Britannica was a book I read written by two folks, Shapiro and Varian, published by the Harvard Business School, and called "Information Rules." I'll let them do the talking: "In 1992 Microsoft decided to get into the encyclopedia business. The company bought the rights to Funk & Wagnalls, a second-tier encyclopedia that had been reduced to supermarket sales by the time of the purchase. Microsoft used the Funk & Wagnalls content to create a CD... Britannica started to see its market erode and soon realized that it needed to develop an electronic publishing strategy... Everyone agrees that the quality of the product (Britannica) is high; PC Magazine gave it the top rating in its comparison of multimedia encyclopedias... ... . In any event, Microsoft has improved its product content and quality, but it suffices to say that it still doesn't parallel that of the Britannica. I'm satisfied with my purchase, and I'm using it for my research in graduate school. It includes a bookmark feature for tracking research. It's timeline feature also fuels my interest in architecture and art, among others. If you're a history buff, then this is the perfect product. It's maps are current, and the statistics are right on, one idea of how accurate they are: Canada's new territory (Nunavut) is included in its maps. One of its shortfalls is on policy issues. While it has coverage on the all important Uruguay Round of the WTO in 1993, it has no mention of the agreement on intellectual property rights (TRIPS) that came with this agreement, there's no excuse for this. I tried looking up the H1-B visa issue, but there were no entries, nor was there any information on other U.S. visa issues, but then again, this is such a specific American issue, so can you blame it?
Rating: 
Summary: GOOD, BUT....
Review: Undoubtly Brittanica is a very good encyclopedia, but today, in CD-ROM and DVD version, Encarta is much better... For Britannica fans or pre-owners.
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