Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on DVD-ROM

by Pearson Software

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000067OSU
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 9, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,309 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Filled with knowledge on every subject, the Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD delivers the 32-volume Britannica collection and more to your desktop. Brimming with more than 75,000 articles, this award-winning home reference library makes finding information easy for every member of the family, from grade school to graduate school and beyond. With three reference libraries--one for every age and reading level, Britannica's Ultimate Reference Suite offers just the right encyclopedia, dictionary, atlas, thesaurus, and timeline for every family member. It's all the knowledge anyone needs, and it's all on one DVD.

For students in upper elementary, middle, and high school, this collection adds the Britannica Student Encyclopedia, with 15,000 entries geared to school. Britannica's Elementary Encyclopedia is written for children in the early grades and designed to instill a look-it-up habit. Also added are two Merriam-Webster dictionaries and thesauruses, with nearly 555,000 definitions, synonyms, and antonyms that users can access from encyclopedia articles with a single click.

Additional tools include an updated world atlas, timelines, and more. Take a tour of the world through more than 1,300 clickable maps linked to articles. People, events, and discoveries of the past come to life on 25 timelines with 6,900 points linked to related articles. Britannica's exclusive KnowledgeNavigator tool, an interactive browser, is perfect for creative brainstorming, discovering new ideas, and exploring different topics. Rounding out the collection are some 21,000 images, videos, audio clips, and animated maps, as well as a clever research organizer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did I get a different version?, December 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on DVD-ROM (DVD-ROM)

I don't often write reviews, but I strongly disagree with a number of the negative reviews that have been posted regarding this product.

CONTENT (the most important part): Frankly this product is untouchable by anything on the market for both the amount of content and the editorial quality.

- It contains three (3) complete encyclopedias each for a different age level. Elementary, Student and the full Encyclopedia Britannica.

- It contains both the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary / Thesaurus and the age appropriate Student Dictionary and Thesaurus.

- It contains 3 age appropriate atlases (although it is more like a country browse).

- It contains 3 age appropriate timelines

- It has an image and multimedia searching ability

- It links to additional on-line content including Web sites and Magazine articles (again age appropriate depending on the `library' you choose.

INTERFACE: Britannica has gone in a different direction then the other CD/DVD encyclopedias and it is one that is quite useful and has tremendous potential.

- There are three libraries that you can work from each targeted to a specific age group. Every feature in the product except for the Knowledge Navigator (not sure why not) is available in each library. Material from the three libraries can be mixed and matched in a kind of work area. This includes pictures, media, article, images, and so on.

- The interface is all on a single page. There is no need to flip back and forth through a lot of confusing screens. This makes the product easy to navigate and use. Granted not all the `fluff' (animated icons, big splash screen, etc.) that you see in other projects is here

- You can open, view, read and organize multiple pieces of content at the same time. I believe this is the first encyclopedia that allows this and it is a feature I use a great deal. You can open a series of picture, article, and other related material and organize them within you work area. You can even save the work area to pick up where you left off. Within the work area you can automatically cascade the windows, you can minimize them (which shows a clever mini-view or the large window), etc.

- The product does maximize the space on higher resolutions screen, and although it works fine in an 800x600 view it is better in 1024x768 or higher where you have more space to open windows and organize your content.

- The product still contains some classic feature from the 2002 version like the Research Organizer that allows you to generate reports, etc. and the Knowledge Navigator which allows you to visually browse through the Encyclopedia Britannica articles and draws some interesting connections..

Although there are still improvements that can be made, and other reviewers point some of those out, this is already an incredible value and a 5 star product.

I hope that Britannica will stick with this direction and continue to improve and add some of the important features like Bolding, Find text, etc. that are lacking this year as well as continuing to improve the load times, memory usage, etc. I am very happy with my 2003 version and am looking forward to seeing the 2004 version.

If you like a lot flash and fluff without much substance or utility then stick with Encarta, World Book or Grolier's. If you want reliable and complete content, a no-nonsense user-friendly interface, and a genuinely usable and useful tool then Britannica's Ultimate Reference Suite is for you - and your whole family.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing!, August 23, 2002

By 

markhab - See all my reviews

This review is from: Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on DVD-ROM (DVD-ROM)

There is a serious flaw in this DVD (Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite): searched words are NOT highlighted in the articles that contain the word, nor is the word placed at the top of the article's window. One must scan through the article to find the search word - a very time consuming task. In addition, the interface consists of dull blue/grey colors, there are almost no web site references (World War II has no "Online Content" hits), the Knowledge Navigator is a joke, and the World Atlas stops at a map of the United States as a whole, without bringing up state maps. My summary: this edition is a serious disappointment.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Britannica 2003 worst edition yet, November 14, 2002

By 

Peter Birrell (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on DVD-ROM (DVD-ROM)

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!