Rating: 
Summary: Some improvements and corrections are needed!
Review: If you are a serious user of reference books and you intend to buy multimedia encyclopedia because of its text content and not multimedia features such as videos and animations, you might be interested in this brief comparison between Encyclopaedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta (in both cases I've been trying 2002 Standard Edition).One big Britannica's plus
Articles
Articles in Britannica are usually longer and more precise than articles in Encarta, not to mention the overall number of articles (Britannica beats Encarta, especially its Standard Edition). And finally: there are less mistakes in Britannica than in Encarta.
One of the big blunders (in both encyclopedias!) is a false information that Slovenia, a Central European and Alpine country, lies on the Balkans, though the northern border of this peninsula is (in Encarta only) correctly described as Upper Sava River - Rijeka. Slovenia lies north of the Croatian seaport Rijeka and doesn't belong to the Balkans neither geographically or politically!
Another Britannica's slip is its claim that the Slovenian composer Jacobus Gallus was German-Austrian. If editors of Britannica doesn't believe to me (I've sent them plenty of corrections including this one a few years ago), they should take a look at Merriam Webster's Biographical Dictionary (see my review there!) where Gallus is described correctly. Some of the Britannica's minuses
Characters display
Encarta displays practically all foreign characters correct (e.g. Slovenian and Czech c, s and z with a circumflex, other Central European characters, Portuguese a and Spanish n with a tilde, French e with a grave accent, etc.) while Britannica doesn't. In Britannica a Croatian writer Senoa (S with a circumflex) is listed in the very beginning of the A-Z list, and a great Slovenian poet Preseren (again s with a circumflex) is almost imposible to find though he's listed in the Britannica A-Z. A fact that Encarta doesn't list those two men of letters at all is another story (see One big Britannica's plus at the beginning of this review). Interface
Encarta has much more user friendly interface than newer versions of Britannica. In Britannica it's obviously designed for the extinct 14" monitors. Find tool in Britannica has its own window. Therefore you have to make more clicks to choose an article and read it than in the case of Encarta. Thousands of additional clicks mean a lot of extra time. Multimedia content
It's also a (big) plus for Encarta, but for an adult user of encyclopedias multimedia isn't the most important feature. My advice
Probably the best decision is to buy both Encarta and Britannica (of course not necessarily the same year; in my opinion Britannica is the one who should wait until its interface is improved - or even reversed to its '98 version). It may be very useful to have two different sources of information - not only for researchers and students.
If you don't mind about multimedia features and if you'll use multimedia encyclopedia as an authoritative source of facts and information only, you'll probably prefer Britannica. But keep in mind that even in Britannica there are some small and big mistakes, and that its interface and character display aren't as user friendly as in Encarta. PS
I actually gave Britannica 3 stars for its contents and 1-2 stars for its interface.
Rating: 
Summary: Best content / Interesting interface
Review: It's too bad that the interface is so clunky (other reviewers have already pointed out the problems, so I won't bother here). This is at least the sixth edition of Britannica on CD/DVD, and there's no excuse for such poor software. A shame, really, because the text is far better than anything else out there. I'd like to see them work with Microsoft and develop an interface similar to Encarta's. They could call it Encarta Pro, with the same interface as Encarta but with the authoritative text of Britannica. If only.
Rating:
Summary: Great content marred by awful software
Review: It's too bad that the interface is so clunky (other reviewers have already pointed out the problems, so I won't bother here). This is at least the sixth edition of Britannica on CD/DVD, and there's no excuse for such poor software. A shame, really, because the text is far better than anything else out there. I'd like to see them work with Microsoft and develop an interface similar to Encarta's. They could call it Encarta Pro, with the same interface as Encarta but with the authoritative text of Britannica. If only.
Rating: 
Summary: What's Between You and Contents
Review: Let's face it, user interface is awful and the contents of the encyclopedia does not compensate for this because is too hard to use. On my machine (AMD 1.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 & 30 GB 7200 rpm HD, Win XP SP1) it takes 15 seconds to start full install of the hard drive and once it's up it consumes somewhere between 80 and 120 MB of RAM depending on the number of searches performed. Java underneath the software is not capable of mouse wheel scrolling, right click brings up only "copy" context menu, the dictionary and encyclopedia are unified, there's no way to customize the look or toolbars (thanks to Java) and last but not least font rendering is terrible, you have to set it either to medium or squint when reading even if you have 20/20 vision. Atlas is a laugh and one intended for high school kids is far better than the one for grownups. Multimedia is almost nonexistent, but we've expected this from eccentric British. My email to the support hasn't been answered for 4 days. Stay away from EB 2003 URS or be ready for sacrifices if you plan to use it. I plan to buy MS Encarta 2003 and soon I'll be able to compare these two.
Rating:
Summary: What's Between You and Contents
Review: Let's face it, user interface is awful and the contents of the encyclopedia does not compensate for this because is too hard to use. On my machine (AMD 1.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 & 30 GB 7200 rpm HD, Win XP SP1) it takes 15 seconds to start full install of the hard drive and once it's up it consumes somewhere between 80 and 120 MB of RAM depending on the number of searches performed. Java underneath the software is not capable of mouse wheel scrolling, right click brings up only "copy" context menu, the dictionary and encyclopedia are unified, there's no way to customize the look or toolbars (thanks to Java) and last but not least font rendering is terrible, you have to set it either to medium or squint when reading even if you have 20/20 vision. Atlas is a laugh and one intended for high school kids is far better than the one for grownups. Multimedia is almost nonexistent, but we've expected this from eccentric British. My email to the support hasn't been answered for 4 days. Stay away from EB 2003 URS or be ready for sacrifices if you plan to use it. I plan to buy MS Encarta 2003 and soon I'll be able to compare these two.
Rating:
Summary: bogus brittanica
Review: my brittanica will not load. my e-mail requesting assistance remains unanswered (one week). the pay-for-help line has been
busy for one week. if there were a lower grade than 1 i would assign it ti brittanica.
cliff sanders
Rating:
Summary: (Mac OS X 10.2) 2002 Interface was much better
Review: The interface in the 2002 edition was much, much better. Simpler and more elegant. The 2003 interface is too busy and gets in your way. Whereas the 2002 edition had a complete A to Z list of topics in a quick-scrolling list, the 2003 edition makes you page through the list in small chunks of ten or so topics. Yuk. There are other UI problems. It's basically a geeky Java Swing UI. Lots of windows opening that you have to close. Using
it isn't as smooth as using the 2002 version. In terms of technology, the text is rendered on my iBook in an unpleasant, jaggy, non-antialiased font. This is a big step down from the 2002 edition, which renders its article text smoothly on OS X and is far more pleasant to read. Disappointing. Hopefully the 2004 edition will move back towards the 2002 edition's quality. I can spend hours effortlessly wandering around the articles on the 2002 edition. I expect my 2003 edition won't get used much, if at all, due to the UI problems. As yet, I can't say if it's as poor on Windows.
Rating:
Summary: Britannica 2003 worst edition yet
Review: The new Britannica 2003 is one of the most disgracefully dysfunctional electronic encyclopaedias I have encountered. It is so poor compared with the 2002 edition (which Heaven knows had its problems - e.g. failure of the DVD to load to hard-drive)that one suspects were Encarta agents sabotaging the design and production processes they could scarcely have made the product more unsatisfactory! It is much, much slower in its searches than the 2002 edition (don't believe a previous review's claim about the need for sufficient RAM to achieve lightening speed - I have loads, yet the 2003 is still between 5 -10 times slower than the 2002 depending on the type of search). The dictionary does not permit double-clicking of words in the text of articles for their definitions (the 2002 edition did). The new interface is more awkward to use than its predecessor. Need one go on? Have Britannica released a dodgy beta version for the holiday season or have they quite lost the plot? My advice to potential purchasers is to skip the 2003 offerings and to buy the 2002 Deluxe edition on CDs (it loads to your hard-drive, unlike the 2002 DVD version) and hope that next year Britannica gets its act together. The Britannica is a superb encyclopedia in range and content. If only its current electronic incarnation were worthy of it!
Rating:
Summary: Don't forget the Macintosh...
Review: This is a great resource for students and adults alike and I heartily recommend it. And despite Amazon's splash page display on this, it will run on a Macintosh. It thinks it's odd that you have to burrow into the site to discover it is Mac capable.
Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on DVD
Review: This is not what I would expect from Britannica. It was very difficult to install. After several failed attempts I e-mailed tech support and described the problem. They never responded. I finally found a toll number to customer support. Called them. They sounded amateurish. After trying numerous fixes the guy told me I needed a file from Sun microsystems. He said he would e-mail the link to me. He never did. After another hour on Sun's site I found the correct download and installed it. None of this was documented. My machine is a recent (6 months) high end Dell.
The interface with Britannica is poor and hard to navigate. This is unfortunate because the content is quite in depth; which is why I purchase it in the first place. I will certainly hesitate before purchasing another product from this company.
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