Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 [OLD VERSION]

by Microsoft

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000067G62
• Item model number: SPMSFT 805529068391
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 4, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,620 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 provides a wealth of current information for the entire family. This easy-to-use reference can access more than 60,000 up-to-date articles, online updates, photos, illustrations, map locations, live streaming media, and editorially selected Web links--everything you need for a rich, reliable research experience.

The premier multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 is easy to use and always up to date for use at home, work, or school. The Update Encarta feature automatically keeps the content in Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 accurate and current, so you're always working with trustworthy data. Explore the software's dynamic media presentation, including hundreds of engaging videos, animations, maps, and other tools. Learn about historical events using Encarta's interactive timelines and live streaming media, including news from MSNBC. Plus, Encarta's Web Center offers editorially selected Web links and sidebars that let you take your research even further.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good content, very good software, very good product., December 27, 2002

By 

Billy Budd "an_encyclopedias_addict" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

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.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Microsoft Encarta - some pluses and one big minus, September 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

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 Microsoft Encarta and Encyclopaedia Britannica (in both cases I've been trying 2002 Standard Edition).

Some of the Encarta's pluses
Characters display
Encarta displays practically all foreign characters correct (e.g. Slovenian and Czech c 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. Two concrete examples: 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 Encarta's minus at the end 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.

One big Encarta's minus
Articles
Articles in Encarta are usually shorter and less precise than articles in Britannica, not to mention the overall number of articles (Britannica beats Encarta, especially its Standard Edition) And finally: there are more mistakes in Encarta than in Britannica.
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) correctly described as a line Upper Sava River - Rijeka. Slovenia lies north of the Croatian seaport Rijeka and doesn't belong to the Balkans neither geographically or politically!

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 Encarta 3-4 stars for its interface and 1-2 stars for its contents.

18 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a word of caution, August 26, 2002

By 

wiseguy (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2003 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Insert those Encarta CDs into your PC and you will notice, that not one, but two installation processes start. Microsoft updates your system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Oulook Express 6, deleting scores of registry entries and seriously "updating" your system settings.

There is NO hint that this will happen, there is no way to stopp it and it's irremovable. The new explorer crashes frequently on my system, it's much slower and a million things go wrong that worked perfectly before.

The content on the other hand is closely focused on use in schools and is so politically correct that it will hardly satisfy any critical mind.