I have bought in cooperation Encarta and Britannica for years (EB in printed edition too: 32 volumes, 32.000 sheets). This is my attitude in brief: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) makes appealing to buy in cooperation.TEXT: Britannica is a superb encyclopedia in text (not in visual aid) since 1768 (you know: an article by Einstein and so on...). Text in electronic version differs from printed encyclopedia (extremely generous articles have been shortened). Britannica claims that it has more items than Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Mexico" are only one (including a lot of subdivisions) in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are unconnected, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to a further, which is slow and extremely annoying, especially if you want to copy it in "WORD". Extremely often, the text is not updated.In the other hand, Encarta's text is not bad at all. Most articles have the first name of their contributors (professions, works...): They are not John Doe. You can find generous fragments of literary works, literature guides, a lot of sidebars and thousands of quotations. "Encarta Africana" is included. The Pop-Up (double clicking a word) Dictionary and Thesaurus has sound for correct pronunciation (by the way, it can read aloud, including a automatic and ugly voice, a whole article). The "Translation Dictionaries" to Spanish, French, German and Italian must be improved, because they are minimal. It gives you a lot of "Internet links", even if you are not connected. Including Britannica you must be "on-line" and it searches in an EB Web page.In theory you can bring up to date Britannica over the Internet emancipated for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work: You can not find new files. Encarta can be updated emancipated EVERY WEEK including new articles and additions or corrections to the old ones (till October 2004). Including Encarta updating really works. Technically, is amazing to see the changes in old items.ATLAS Britannica has not a real atlas; only a worlds map whose most detail is the States of USA. Statistics are extremely poor. Encarta's Atlas is like a further encyclopedia, including a great detail (1 cm/ 4 km all over the planet) and 20 types of atlas presentations (statistical ones can be counted by dozens). If you look a geographical article (city, river...) you can see in a corner where it is placed and, including only a click, open the atlas. In articles of cities, if you are on-line, you can see in a further corner the weather of this place in that moment. If it is a USA place, you can read the latest news.MULTIMEDIA: They say that "serious" or "adult" readers do not trouble about "pictures"; that multimedia is only for kids. I do not agree, because I think that, sometimes, "A picture is value a thousand words". Works of art, anatomy, historical maps, diagrams ... Encarta devastates Britannica including 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... It is not only the quantity and feature. It is the easy access you have to all the multimedia, and that text and multimedia are fully integrated. Britannica is not really multimedia. It has photos and videos, but they make the program slow and sluggish. They should edit an alternative version including only text, as they did including the first edition in 1995. It worked fast and easy in old computers.INTERFACE AND PERFORMANCE: This is the worst side of Britannica. Including Encarta you only have to type a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you automatically alternative spellings. Even if you write the first name of a small village lost in any country, you see it in the atlas. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration including Microsoft WORD is perfect. It has additional ways to find content, including subject or multimedia browsing, "related articles" and the standard A-Z mode. The "Research Organizer" is extremely helpful too. Encarta's TEXT FONT is extremely clear (Britannica's...) and you can choose 3 sizes.Navigating including Britannica is different. 2004 edition is better than 2003 one, but subdue it is disappointing. I will only give you an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a first name or word, it does not help you including similar spellings (unless you open a window and fight including it). As I said before, the program's performance speed is extremely slow and sluggish, and it must be dramatically improved. To go "in trade and forward" you do not find any icon and you need to open a "menu".... One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works including Macintosh.I repeat my modest piece of advice: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) make appealing to buy in cooperation.
- Billy Budd "an_encyclopedias_addict"
From 1993, Microsoft Corporation has started the Encarta series.They don't tell us where did the name come from and neither do I know. But I DO know that in this new journal it has a strain-new look. What do I mean? The list now opens up on the Visual Browser, or VB for short, and is now apply on two editions: DVD and CD-ROM. That is, a single DVD or a set of four CD-ROMs. There is a 2005 journal out now on the US, but not yet in Latin America. When the Latin American branch of Microsoft announces so, I'll go and buy Encarta 2005 at my bordering dealer.I now want to tell you something that I haven't told you yet:The CD version has 20 one-hour Discovery Channel videos, while the DVD has 32.For the CD edtion, the order of the CDs is as stay on:CD 1 of 4: Setup and resources discCD 2 of 4: Encarta 2004 Disc 1CD 3 of 4: Encarta 2004 Disc 2CD 4 of 4: Encarta 2004 Disc 3To install the list, just slot in CD 1 of 4 (the Setup an complements disc) and, when the Setup program begins, click Take up again. Accept the EULA (End-User Voucher Agreement), and then choose the components to install. If you are visually impaired, don't agonize, you can install the Text to Speech converted which debuted on the 2000 journal. Click Take up again and you'll be taken to the "Equipped to Install" screen. Just click Install and the process takes place automatically, wtithout further input. When finished installing, click OK at the "Encarta 2004 has been successfully installed" confirmation message. This is the end of the installation process.Quite unadorned, huh?And this is, too, the end of my review.Thanks, Amazon.com teamP.S.: The Setup program will timely you, at certain moments, to slot in discs 2, 3 and 4 into the drive.
- Marcelo Esteban Mauricio
Encarta Reference Library 2004 5 CD LG [Old Version]
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