Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Deluxe Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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!

I've bought both ENCARTA and BRITANNICA for years. This is my opinion:
TEXT: The Britannica is a superb encyclopaedia in text since 1768. If only its electronic version were worthy of it! Text in the electronic version is different from Printed Encyclopaedia (large articles have been shortened). Britannica claims that it has more articles than Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Spain" are only one with a lot of subdivisions in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are considered articles, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to other.
In some areas Encarta is better than Britannica. For example consider "controversial events in modern history" such us "My Lai Massacre": In Encarta one large article and a lot of mentions in others; Britannica does not even know the name.
In theory, you can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work. Encarta is updated free EVERY WEEK) with new articles and additions to the old ones. The new articles and additions are included in the next version of Encarta, but this is not true for Britannica. For instance: "Bilbao, Spain": Britannica does not mention the Guggenheim Museum, which opened in 1997, and the population is !!estimated!! of 1982. The same article in Encarta: similar text, 3 photos, 1 map, related articles, sidebar, dynamic timelines and 4 internet pages, plus one specific article "Bilbao Guggenheim Museum". I think Britannica updates its contents very slow, whereas Encarta is completely alive.
MULTIMEDIA: They say that "serious" or "adult" readers do not care about "pictures"; that multimedia is only for kids. I do not agree, because I think that, sometimes, "A picture is worth a thousand words". Works of art, anatomy, maps, diagrams ... Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of photos, paintings, drawings, maps, animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, literature sidebars, new translation dictionaries (not very good though), atlas, 2-D and 3-D virtual tours, timeline, games ... It's not only the quantity and quality. It is the easy access you have to all the multimedia, and that text and multimedia are fully integrated. Britannica's Atlas is a joke and statistics do not exist or I have not found them. Encarta's has a great detail: 1 cm/ 4 km all over the world (though you find some mistakes) and hundreds of statistical maps.
INTERFACE AND SOFTWARE: This is the worst side of Britannica. In Encarta you only have to type a phrase, a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. If you have typed the name of a small village, you see it in the Atlas without clicking again. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you alternative spellings and you find what you were looking for. To go "jumping" from article to article is very easy and quick, because you have a lot of links and the "Related Articles" section. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft WORD is perfect. If you don't understand a word, you can double-click it and the dictionary appears in a window.
Navigating with Britannica is different. You get crazy. I will only give an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with alternative or similar spellings. The dictionary does not permit double-clicking of words in the text of articles for their definitions. Once an article is displayed you cannot search for a word within the article. This is extremely annoying: you have to perform this task yourself. One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works with Macintosh computers.
This is my piece of advice: If you can afford it, buy both. If not... read again this review.

Encyclopedia Britannica has been the 'Gold Standard' of print encyclopedias for some two-hundred odd years, but its electronic incantations have been much less impressive. Dogged by poor user interfaces, high cost, and ineffective software design (related to poor management at the corporate level and bad business and investment decisions in the 1990's), competitors such as Encarta have run rings around this venerable warhorse of information and knowledge.

Britannica Deluxe 2003 improves on its predecessors, and has attempted to address the problems mentioned above, but still suffers from major weaknesses. The user-interface is better designed (it is easier to make searches), the content more comprehensive and accessible, and more research tools have been added in. The written articles are of first class quality, and the inclusion of the current Britannica yearbooks adds to its value.

However, the package still has some glaring faults. The quality is nowhere near that of the Print Set, with many important maps and diagrams in the print version of the encyclopedia simply being left out in the software version. This is especially frustrating when one is reading an article where map references are essential, i.e. the articles on history, geography or on important countries and geographic regions. The encyclopedia has no provision for updates, unlike its competitors, forcing the user to buy a new package every six months to a year. The organisation of the encyclopedia is also somewhat confusing, unlike the excellent organisation of the print version, which has extensive indexes and a guide to navigating the encyclopedia. The World Atlas is far behind Encarta in quality and in simple interactivity, and it is in fact the weakest part of the whole package.

I would personally recommend that along with Britannica, the Encarta package should be purchased as well. Encarta has 'lighter' content than Britannica but has a first-class atlas, whilst Britannica has a first-class encyclopedia but a second-rate Atlas. The weaknesses and strengths of the both packages tend to complement each other, hence one would be better off with both than with one alone.

Test System: PowerMac G4 AGP 400 MHz with 896 MB RAM and a Radeon 8500
OS: Mac OS 10.2.3 (build 6G30)

While Britannica 2003 runs on OS X, it is not truly native. Rather, it is a Java based application designed on the Windows platform. Java is cross-platform, but without some minor changes to optimize an application for the Mac the experience may be poor. Unfortunately, Brtiannica did not make that effort... and it shows.

Installation was a hassle. The first installation program you see (and the one the readme tells you to use) fails, you have to open the folder "Extract" then "MacOSX" to find a working one. The full install requires that you switch CDs midway and ejects the first disk, but fails to unmount it in the Finder. It also ejects the second disk when finished without unmounting. The installer suffered an unexpected quit as it finished too. Attempting to unmount the ghost disk icons hangs the Finder and requires a relaunch (not a restart).

The application took 19 seconds to load, but once loaded performance was generally acceptable. Slower than a native application, but faster than a broadband internet connection and this is on a 3 year old computer, albeit with lots of RAM.

Unfortunately, the interface is completely non-Macintosh. The menu bar is not utilized, instead File, Edit, etc. are stuck in the application. "Britannica Help" under the Help menu does not work. Additionally, key equivalents are still mapped for Windows, so some standard command-key combination won't work and control instead of command must be used for those that do. These are serious oversights and violate Apple's interface guidelines.

Rather than letting the OS draw the windows, Britannica decided to create it's own windowing system within the application, complete with desktop. This system is inferior both functionally and graphically to Aqua. Additionally, this means the application's window takes almost the whole screen and is not resizable. This makes working with multiple applications needlessly cumbersome.

While text can be cut and paste into other applications, pictures and multimedia cannot. This needlessly restricts content when working on a report in anything but the limited sub-application Research Organizer.

Searching is decent, but is not very forgiving with spelling. A spell check button is available that opens an application modal dialog with pull down menus of suggested replacement words for each one you entered. But it isn't that good for spell checking. For instance, typing "attak" gives you attack, but also 90 other seemingly random words covering the gamut between "Athos" and "wadi."

The Knowledge Navigator has potential to be a useful search/browse tool but, like much of the interface, is poorly implemented. It is a data association program which starts with a ring of 10 topics. Clicking on one moves it to the center and surrounds it with up to ten related topics, this can be repeated to refine a search or simply browse ideas. Unfortunately, the designer decided that it needed each topic needs to float out from the central one and individually take its place in the ring. The effect is up to 17 seconds of animation each time you change topics. The eye-candy gets old real fast when it interferes with your work.

The interactive timeline is a nice feature that lets you view key events in 14 subjects chronologically and provides links to more information. It took 8 seconds to load, but (much more aggravating) 10 seconds simply to view all timeline subjects you may select by scrolling through a list at the bottom at a fixed, sedate speed.

The Atlas is similar to a globe in detail. Maps only go to the country level with more detailed maps for US states and the occasional random area. Clicking on major cities and regions gives a brief article.

The program includes Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, but their entries are accessible only through the main encyclopedia search, no separate applications.

The text of the encyclopedia itself seems good. Multimedia is weak. There are only 55 Quicktime files, most fewer than 20 seconds and only one exceeding one minute. Some of the video is poor in quality and the typical resolution is only 160x120 for video and 320x240 for animations. Additional multimedia content on Britannica's website is oddly available only in Windows Media or Real Player format.

This encyclopedia does have some good information and, despite it's many flaws, may offer you more rapid access to some reliable material than the internet. However, the interface is very poor and non-standard and may prove frustrating. With a little bit of effort Britannica could have made this a far better Macintosh product. It is not horribly expensive, but I would be inclined to pass on it. World Book 2003 Mac OS X - Jaguar Edition is the competing encyclopedia for the Macintosh OS X and, while more expensive, is probably worth a look.

Other reviewers have covered this, but wanted to reinforce their points.

1. No other software encyclopedia I have seen has articles whose scholastic quality is anywhere in the ballpark of Britannica's. I use it every day, for serious research, and have looked up everything from physics to impressionist painting to American history. The articles are TOP NOTCH.

2. The software interface, images, and charts leave much to be desired. The interface is brutal, and searches slow. Not that a ten second wait is a big deal, but. . .with the entire thing on the HD this seems excessive. You also can't search within articles, which is maddening. It is frustrating to read a whole article to find a keyword that other programs like Encarta automatically highlight.

I have used Encarta and other products. Encarta is a superficial Encyclopedia that is excellent for children, or the typical individual looking for simple, quick summaries. I didn't realize how meager Encarta's entries are until using Britannica. This is not a simplistic bashing of Encarta: I think the products have two different goals, and audiences. I think Encarta is a good product, but not for scholars. However, finding a list of all Presidents, or other such info--a simple task in Encarta--is impossible in Britannica. Its articles are great, but if you need anything but an article, which I often do. . .

The shoddiness of the interface is GLARING. Using things like the atlas is a royal pain in the buttocks. If Britannica had a better interface, and more chart/graph features (lists of things, broad overview charts, etc.,) it would be almost perfect.

Even with its shortcomings, I would still reccomend it. I use it every day because the thoroughness and quality of the articles makes the other headaches bearable. You can reference most any topic, and be assured that you are recieving a fairly thorough overview from an EXPERT. Once you grow accustomed to this scholastic quality, Encarta articles seem like something written for a child.

The software problems of earlier versions have been completely corrected:
The software installs easily if your antivirus software is disabled first.
The CD version can be completely transferred to the hard drive so that Britannica can be operated without a runtime CD in the drive.
The Britannica display window now can be sized to take advantage of larger monitors.
The text if very legible and I'm using the smallest size text available on an 18 inch display without any problem.
The search routine speed is dependent on the amount of ram memory you have. The more memory, the faster the speed. With a mere 512MB of ram the search routines are blindingly fast.
The Search routine allows Boolean operators (explained in the help file) so you are able to narrow down the search results to the desired data almost instantly.
As always, the Britannica content is the most complete of the available encyclopedias.

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.

Tried installing on two ( 2 ) excellent PC's running Windows 98 with no success other than ruining one hard disc drive - Britannica website support was POOR and troubleshooting section was no help - Major problem appears to be a goofy Java loader called "InstallAnywhere" that locks up your machine and often destroys CLOGS UP your HDD with junk that can't be removed by any of the procedures Britannicas POOR instructions - Hope that Britannica can stop using goofy and buggy zerog.com software so they can provide a good product that actually works ! ??

I have recently purchased both the Encarta Reference Library 2003 and the Britannica Deluxe 2003, and while I acknowledge with wonder and some minor reservations that the former is a remarkable and impressive piece of work, I feel compelled to express my admirative appreciation of the latter, which is in every way (yes as regards the interface as well when properly utilized) a thing of outstanding quality and merit. The quality refers in particular to the content, which is unbelievably rich, even richer than that of the other abovementioned and duly praised encyclopedia. What is more, the way to this content is rather simple, though intelligently diversified, in my opinion, providing of course one learns to use this way effectively - which should take a few minutes, not much more. In sum, I positively disagree with the negative reviews that have tarnished the image of Britannica on CD rom.

P.S.: Prior to the installation of Britannica 2003, it is imperative that you follow intructions to the letter and close all programs, including those in the background whose icons are located at the right of the toolbar (in Windows). Also pay close attention to system requirements. Much ram is needed (256+ is recommended).

I've found the articles in Britannica to be immensely informative, but the software is horribly slow. I used to have the Britannica 2000 DVD, and still would if it worked under XP. 2000 ran off the DVD and was still much, much faster in loading and searches than 2003. This program runs from the harddrive, and even with a high end computer (incl. 512MB DDR RAM), the searches are unbearably slow.