Encarta Reference Library 2004 DVD
This reference tool offers comprehensive homework and research tools with dictionary and thesaurus, literature guides, homework starters, interactive world atlas, dynamic timelines, chart maker, and more. Also included is Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004 software. A wealth of knowledge in one box!
Encarta Reference Library 2004 DVD Accessories
 Encarta Deluxe Encyclopedia 2004
SELECTSOFT USA The Pop-up New Oxford Dictionary of English (Windows)
DK 3D World Atlas
Encarta Reference Library 2004 DVD Reviews
Would have been 5 stars if not for the huge percentage of African and African American material. I have nothing against it, but my interests are more diverse.
Statistics are very poor. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft WORD is perfect. I do not agree, because I think that, sometimes, "A picture is worth a thousand words". With Britannica you must be "on-line" and it searches in an EB Web page. It worked fast and easy in old computers. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you automatically alternative spellings.
As I said before, the program's performance speed is very slow and sluggish, and it must be dramatically improved. I repeat my modest piece of advice: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) make interesting to buy both. The Pop-Up (double clicking a word) Dictionary and Thesaurus has sound for correct pronunciation (by the way, it can read aloud, with a robotic and ugly voice, a whole article). Works of art, anatomy, historical maps, diagrams. The "Research Organizer" is very helpful too. Most articles have the name of their contributors (professions, works.).: They are not John Doe. TEXT: Britannica is a superb encyclopedia in text (not in visual aid) since 1768 (you know: an article by Einstein and so on.).
Technically, is amazing to see the changes in old items. MULTIMEDIA: They say that "serious" or "adult" readers do not care about "pictures"; that multimedia is only for kids. Encarta's Atlas is like another encyclopedia, with a great detail (1 cm/ 4 km all over the world) and 20 types of atlas presentations (statistical ones can be counted by dozens). I will only give you an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with similar spellings (unless you open a window and fight with it).
Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of photos, paintings, drawings, charts & tables, animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, 2-D and 3-D virtual tours, 360-degrees views, timeline, games. and you can choose 3 sizes. If you look a geographical article (city, river.). They should edit an alternative version with only text, as they did with the first edition in 1995. It has photos and videos, but they make the program slow and sluggish. It has additional ways to find content, including subject or multimedia browsing, "related articles" and the standard A-Z method. Encarta's TEXT FONT is very clear (Britannica's.). In theory you can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work: You can not find new files.
you can see in a corner where it is placed and, with only a click, open the atlas. This is my opinion in brief: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) makes interesting to buy both. With Encarta updating really works. It is not only the quantity and quality. ATLAS Britannica has not a real atlas; only a worlds map whose maximum detail is the States of USA.
The "Translation Dictionaries" to Spanish, French, German and Italian must be improved, because they are minimal. It is the easy access you have to all the multimedia, and that text and multimedia are fully integrated. Navigating with Britannica is different. Britannica is not really multimedia.
You can find large fragments of literary works, literature guides, a lot of sidebars and thousands of quotations. Encarta can be updated free EVERY WEEK with new articles and additions or corrections to the old ones (till October 2004). In the other hand, Encarta's text is not bad at all. To go "back and forward" you do not find any icon and you need to open a "menu". "Encarta Africana" is included. In articles of cities, if you are on-line, you can see in another corner the weather of this place in that moment. You can copy them in your hard disk. It gives you a lot of "Internet links", even if you are not connected.
¿DVD or CD. With Encarta you only have to type a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. I have bought both Encarta and Britannica for years (EB in printed edition too: 32 volumes, 32.000 sheets). 2004 edition is better than 2003 one, but still it is disappointing.
Britannica claims that it has more items than Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Mexico" are only one (with a lot of subdivisions) in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are unconnected, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to another, which is slow and very annoying, especially if you want to copy it in "WORD". INTERFACE AND PERFORMANCE: This is the worst side of Britannica. One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works with Macintosh. If it is a USA place, you can read the latest news.
Even if you write the name of a small village lost in any country, you see it in the atlas. Text in electronic version differs from printed encyclopedia (very large articles have been shortened). Very often, the text is not updated. Both editions are actually the same.
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