Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on DVD-ROM

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

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.

While the content may be great, the interface is a joke. The whole application is done 100% in Java. This has some very negative side effects. The worst problem is that the Java makes the entire interface extremely sluggish, even on a high end machine. Additionally, standard Windows interface features don't exist, like the ability to scroll text with the mouse wheel. Also, there are no configuration options whatsoever, except the ability to change the text size to one of three sizes. The font used is blurry. All fonts are my computer are crystal clear, but this one is blurry. Therefore, the only way to read the articles is to set the text size to medium. Also, the pictures tend to be too small. The interface itself is horrid comared to even MS Encarta 1995 edition, which is sad. That's too bad, because the content is head and shoulders above Encarta, and there is an article on just about everything you can imagine.

First of all no encyclopedia in the universe that I am aware of beats the Britannica in terms of content. However,the thrill of knowledge ends with the electronic version of the Brittanica due to the fact that even though the information is all there, the way it's presented to the user makes it a gruesome adventure. For example, type in a word or phrase and the amount of articles that you may get a hit is astounding. The only problem is that you can only view them in chunks of 15 and the article that you may be interested could be article 5487 in the list. There is no way to get to the middle or end of the hit list without pressing next every single time. Another worthless feature is the Browse by Letter function which starts from the beginning of the letter and it goes down the list in alphabetical order. Again it presents articles in chunks of 15.Imagine if you are browsing the letter "F" and "Flora" might be an article that may interest you,does anybody realize how many times you have to hit the NEXT button. I could go on but I will stop right here, I give the content 4 stars and the user interface 1 star.

I recently received Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on dvd. I read all the problems people had with it, but decided to purchase it anyway because of the content. I had no problem downloading it to my hard drive and the user interface is straight forward. I don't know why people are having so much problems with the software. It may be because they are using Windows instead of OS X.

Although it is easier to look an article up in the book version of the encyclopedia, it is a lot more economical to buy it on dvd. You receive 3 volumes of encyclopedias, a dictionary, a thesaurus, atlases, quick time movies and much more ..., plus you can download updates. You can't do that with the print version.

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.

I have owned and used the Printed EB for years and have enjoyed, learned from and liked it. I also installed the 2003 Encarta recently, and love it (Great Product). So I was excited when EB 2003 DVD came out and ordered it at once. What a Major Disappointment. Some things don't work at all eg:
Under Interactive Time Lines: Data files are not found e.g. (Daily Life) - ( EBDailyLife.txt) not found! (Music) - (EBMusic.txt) not found! (Have sent two messages to EB, but no answer or help from them!)
Other major drawbacks:
(Under Annoying)- 1. Mouse wheel does not work for scrolling when viewing Articles. 2. No forward arrow to move to next item in the articles List of Contents. 3. Back & Forward Buttons (on Keyboard) don't work either. 4. Each article opening in its own and same fixed size window forces you to have to a) Close the previous window (or you end up with dozens of open windows)and b)enlarge the new window.

In addition, Contents in the electronic version are different from Printed Encyclopedia, e.g. take article (selected at random) on Zeolites: The two versions are a world apart.
Go for Encarta 2003 DVD instead.

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.