Customer Reviews

Microsoft Encarta Interactive World Atlas 2001 [Old Version]

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

 

 

Computer atlas and map programs can easily become either too bogged down with silly multimedia files, or dry and boring, with endless similar maps that don't tell you anything about the actual culture. Microsoft has avoided both of these things with an outstanding atlas that is interactive, informative, and fun.

At the foundation are the maps. They are extremely detailed, showing both major and minor cities in nearly every country. At each level of magnification, more and more towns appear, until at the highest level it seems like wall to wall names in some countries. There are several different map styles for each map - comprehensive, political, population, religion. My personal favorite is "view from space at night." It is truly beautiful to see the Earth the way planets on Star Trek look from the Bridge.

The articles and multimedia are adequate - they give you a taste of the culture and history of the countries, and point you in the right direction if you require more information. The package includes much of the same statistical information you would find in a good almanac, and the interface allows easy comparison of information.

This software is going to keep me busy and inquisitive for hours. I would unhesitatingly recommend it.

I think this product towers above all other interactive atlases is because this atlas has alot of rich features,such as : excellent display of countries,major towns, and states, lots of information about each country etc.. I love it also is because I am a student in jounior high and this is a excellent reference to have to help me in history and geography. I believe every student should purchase this because I have bought alot of references from Microsoft and they all go above 5 star ratings.

The rebate has expired!, but so far it's still listed as coming with a rebate. As for the maps, it seems to be a pretty good atlas, but not as detailed as it led me to believe--I bought it because I wanted detailed geographic maps of certain areas of the UK. Not much help there.

I am no fan of the evil Microsoft. Mordor. But this is a great world atlas.

I've been a loyal follower of the Virtual Globe/Interactive World Atlas series since 1998, and the product is without a shadow doubt a very fine piece of software and worth your $45. However, I'm beginning to become a little bit irritated at the Microsoft philosophy of installing everything including the kitchen sink (and perhaps the bathroom sink, the utility room sink, your neighbor's sink...) to run something. Upon entering the setup process, the program proceeds to install IE 5.5, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and a whole host of other totally nonrelated software with no options at all to NOT install them beforehand. I have problems with IE 5.5 because it reloads frames every time a target is clicked, which can take a LONG time if the frame is packed with images. It no longer jumps immediately to a target in a frame. Sigh... I see no excuse to dump all the unneeded software like Outlook and MSN Messenger to a user's machine without their having an option not to. Luckily, despite its claiming to "require" IE 5.5, I was able to uninstall 5.5 and go back to 5.01 with no apparent problems in the software. This even more leads me to believe that Microsoft is simply pushing its new browsers versions more and more aggressively.

Anyway, what's new in the 2001 version? There is a new map style, the "Flat map", and it shows the world as you'd see it on a Mercator projection paper map. Also, you can now switch from the default place names to their local variants. Moscow becomes Moskva, Munich becomes München, etc. It's a nice touch and makes it possible to locate features you may hear of which are in their local tongue. There are more images and they are high quality. Apparently, Microsoft has teamed up with Corbis to some extent for pictures as a number of them have that company credited for the shot. There are additions to most other features of the program, some new videos, lots of new text, and of course the world flyovers and music. Some features seem pretty half-hearted and I'm sorry that they have not gotten better. The ecoregion and language maps are rather undetailed and the national anthems seem to be still provided as MIDI files rather than MP3 or some other sound format, so their quality varies greatly depending on your sound hardware.

Overall, I still love the series. As a GIS/geography graduate I feel qualified to praise Microsoft's developers highly for incorporating such huge amounts of data into a cohesive and fascinating product. If only all their products were as wonderful as this one is!

If this product doesn't provide all the world city images you could ask for, give my page with over 4400 more a look at www.worldcityphotos.org