Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite

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

 

 

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: Quite frankly this product is untouchable by anything on the market for both the amount of content and the editorial quality. Some points:

- 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. Some highlights:

- 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.

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 the design and production processes being sabotaged by Encarta agents, they could scarcely have made the product more unsatisfactory!

It is much, much slower in its searches than the 2002 edition. 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!

Being a previous owner of an earlier version of Britannica on CD, I was absolutely amazed by the 2003 Ultimate Reference CD.The CD seemed innocent enough once the program loaded and I was presented with a search box and a few other buttons. But don' t be deceived by the simplicity. As soon as I entered a few queries, I suddenly realized the enormity of the data contained in this product. It reminded me of the first time I ever browsed through the print version as a kid--you almost cannot believe how wondrously complex the world can be. I found myself skipping from topic to topic going through history as a wide-eyed observer...and at the end of my first session, I actually felt smarter!

I have a recent version of Encarta installed on a machine at work and I can tell you that with Microsoft's backing, it has some really excellent graphical features. While I can see the appeal, I never felt compelled to LEARN. It was if I was playing a video game, and the content was secondary.

Overall,I 'd recommend this CD to anyone who is genuinely curious about the world we live in and has a healthy thirst for knowledge.

This 2003 Britannica CD is a wonderful reference tool for users of any age, now that it contains three different encyclopedias. So much information is provided at the touch of your keyboard and the Britannica application contains the same information as the leatherbound version. The features that I find most useful are: Interactive Timeline, Knowledge Navigator, World Atlas. Each of them are packaged to help the user find certain information quickly. Another reason why this product is handy is when multiple windows brought up during research can be save in the Workspace feature. I am definitely impressed with it esp. when I have 15+ windows opened to various Britannica articles and need to save them so I don't have to go thru the torture of searching for them again. The only improvement this software might need is to speed up the installation time. It took me about 45 minutes to install the whole product on my Win98 computer.

Having grown up with the printed Britannica set (c. 1970), I am extremely disappointed with this digital version. Although all the articles are complete, searchable, and cross-referenced, the overall user interface is so poorly designed that it makes using this program nearly unusable and absolutely unappealing.

Installation issues:
1. wastes space (>2gig) by installing all 3 encyclopedias with some redundant material.
2. same interface for all 3 encyclopedias creates an intimidating environment for children.

Interface issues:
1. articles are difficult to read because of poor font choice (sans serif), insufficient spacing between lines (< single spaced), and lame layout design (in-line images lacking, repeated TOC wastes space).

Mac OS specific issues:
1. This is not a true MacOS app; it is a JAVA app running inside it's own window with interface components which are inconsistent with MacOS (e.g. menu shortcut key is Ctrl, not Cmd).
2. Screen redraw performance is unacceptably poor (e.g. several seconds to resize window, almost a minute to select-copy article text [450MHz G4, 1 gig RAM, OS 10.2.4])

Content issues:
1. Timeline shows only one item per screen; no context, no Gant chart.
2. Atlas is not interactive (no zoom; lacks detail) and other multimedia items are inconsequential.
3. Dictionary and thesaurus cannot be accessed directly; must do full encyclopedia search.

Summary: I bought and decided to keep both Britannica and Encarta 2003 RL. The Britannica articles are substantially better researched and more complete than Encarta. Encarta is much, much, much better at everything else (even running inside VirtualPC 6.0). Money saving tip: if you must have Britannica articles, buy the "deluxe" version rather than the "ultimate" (full articles, fewer disappointments).

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 been a print user since high school (25 years) and a CD/DVD user since the 1997 version. What is it with this company? Every year they change the interface, but each edition is hopeless in many new ways! Can't they ever get this right? It's almost like the software is incredibly dumbed down so that literate people will prefer the print version. And they are utterly unresponsive when you complain.

Nevertheless, you have to buy a copy every couple of years because, well, there is only one Britannica! No Encarta is ever going to have the scholarly content I'm looking for. But I'm sticking with DVD 2002 for now, even though it has other flaws (dvd can't install to hard drive, etc). No need to "upgrade" to another set of mistakes this year.

I would like to compare Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2003 (which I will refer to as Britannica) with its competitor Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 (which I will refer to as Encarta).

Fact 1 - Britannica is incredibly slow. It takes 200 seconds to start the program, search for an item and display the sought article. For comparison the same operation takes 40 seconds with Encarta. These numbers are averages of three trials rounded to the closest multiple of 10 taken on a 350Mhz AMD with 256mb of memory. I think that being five times slower than your competitor is unacceptable. Once the programs are loaded the subsequent searches are much faster, but that is not how I would like to use the programs. I would like to search for some items few times a day and between the searches I want the programs not to occupy the memory. I must also mention that there is a patch on Britannica technical support page that should speed up the searches. It did not work for me - the above-mentioned operation still took 190 seconds (I did only one try).

Fact 2 - Britannica does not correct spelling. Try typing in "bratislva" in Britannica and in Encarta. Britannica simply says that there is no entry with bratislva and you are left to figure out what is the correct spelling. Encarta on the other hand offers you the corrected spelling Bratislava and after one click you have the information you wanted.

Fact 3 - Once an article is displayed in Britannica you cannot search for a word within the article. This is extremely annoying - you often have to perform this low-level task yourself.

Conclusion - I think that in many areas Britannica has better content than Encarta (however if you want an example of an area where this is not the case, see the last paragraph). However the information is extremely hard to access because the software is poorly designed. Personally I purchased both encyclopedias but decided to return Britannica to the store and keep the Encarta. I will wait until Britannica provides an acceptable user interface.

Has Britannica better content than Encarta in all areas?

It seems widely accepted that Britannica has better content than Encarta. I think that in many areas this is true - Britannica has better content, especially when it comes to science (I do not feel competent to judge the content related to arts). However, I would like to point out that that in some areas Encarta is better than Britannica. For example consider "controversial events in modern history". I chose the following sample of events: the Rosenberg trial, My Lai massacre, McMartin day care trial, KAL 007 and Iran Air 655. The measure we will use is the number of bytes (characters) related to these topics. Here are the numbers for Britannica (in the order of events, rounded to the closest multiple of 100): 2500, 0, 0, 300, 0. The numbers for Encarta are 5100, 4600, 1000, 5400, 500. Note that Encarta has more (and better) content on each of the five events. Three of the events are not mentioned in Britannica at all! I used the following search terms in the Britannica: "Rosenberg", "My Lai", "McMartin", "Korean and 007", "Iran and 655". In the numbers for Encarta I included archive articles (which appeared in Collier's Year Book and are part of Encarta now).

The user interface is very marginal. In that I agree with the other reviewers.

If I set the text display size to medium or large and exit, the settings are not preserved - when you restart the program you get the minimum text size. Naturally, the search/browse pane on the left does not reflect whatever text display size you specify, period. You always get small text. In my opinion there is something wrong with the fonts, the display just does not seem as clear as it could be? At the end of installation, the Windows FONT folder was opened for some unknown reason. I just closed it. Maybe I was supposed to chose whatever font I want? I have looked and looked and I can't find anyway to change the display font now.

When you select an entry to display, the entry is never, ever displayed in a full window, you always get a 3 1/2 x 4 miniwindow. Grrr. You can, at least, manually maximize it. However, if you close it and then select another entry to display, again you get the miniwindow. If you maximize this miniwidnow and select another entry to display, it comes up as a miniwindow again (then again sometimes it gets overwritten with a maximized window, I can't figure why or when this happens). It just seems like you can't get a full size window and keep it that way.

Sorry if this seems confusing but the program is confusing. Microsoft Encarta has a much more 'rational' interface.

I have all three of the digital encyclopedias available on Amazon.com. This is how I would rate them. If you have the money, buy both 1) & 2). The World Book 2003 Ultra-Deluxe (they must have a sense of humor?)is a total pain in the so and so. Everytime you load it you have to insert the installation CD and I can't figure out how (if?) you can get around that. I submitted a review of it that is so negative I doubt if it will be accepted.

1) Microsoft Encarta
2) Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003
3) World Book 2003 Ultra-Deluxe

What is the conclusion of this somewhat rambling 'review'? I decided to fork out the [money] and buy the Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003 Print (Hardcover) Edition. I will use the digital version to look up words or topics and then use the print version to actually read the entry.

While I agree with some of the comments regarding the interface - it seems clear to me (having seen most of the past versions) that Britannica finally decided to depart from the flashy, but ineffective and time wasting interface that has been driven by Microsoft and poorly copied by everyone else for years.
It is very easy to get to whatever you are looking for in Britannica and more importantly the information is comprehensive and trusted. There are different age levels and libraries that allow this to work for a much wider age group than others.

I agree with the reviewer that says - If you want flash without substance than Encarta or others will do - if you want trusted, comprehensive content in a good (if not flashy) interface than Britannica is the one - without question - to go with.

I am looking forward to the second version (2004) of this new interface and direction Britannica has taken and anticipate great improvements in all areas.