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192 of 199 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Encarta versus Britannica, June 5, 2004
I have bought both Encarta and Britannica for years (EB in printed edition too: 32 volumes, 32.000 pages). This is my opinion in brief: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) makes interesting to buy both.
TEXT: Britannica is a superb encyclopedia of text (not in visual aid) since 1768 (you know: an article by Einstein and so on...). Contents in electronic version differs from printed encyclopedia (very large articles have been shortened). Britannica claims that it has more entries that Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Mexico" are only one (with a lot of subdivisions) in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are unconnected, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to another, which is slow and very annoying, especially if you want to copy it in "WORD". Very often, the text is not updated.
In the other hand, Encarta's text is not bad at all. Most articles have the name of their contributors and their professions, works...: They are not "John Doe". You can find large fragments of literary works, literature guides, a lot of sidebars and thousands of quotations. "Encarta Africana" is included. The Pop-Up (double clicking a word) Dictionary and Thesaurus has sound for correct pronunciation (by the way, it can read aloud, with a robotic and ugly voice, a whole article). The "Translation Dictionaries" to Spanish, French, German and Italian must be improved, because they are minimal. It gives you a lot of "Internet links", even if you are not connected. With Britannica you must be "on-line" and it searches in an EB Web page.
In theory you can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work. Encarta can be updated free EVERY WEEK with new articles and additions or corrections to the old ones (until October 2005). With Encarta updating really works. Technologically is amazing to see the changes in old items.
ATLAS Britannica has not a real atlas; only a worlds map whose maximum detail are the States of USA. Statistics are very poor. Encarta's Atlas is like another encyclopedia, with a great detail (1 inch = 10 miles all over the world) and 20 varieties of atlas presentations (statistical ones can be counted by dozens). If you look at a geographical article (city, river...) you can see in a corner where it is placed and, with only a click, open the Atlas. In articles of cities, if you are on-line, you can see in another corner the weather of this place in that moment. If it is a USA place, you can read the latest news.
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, historical maps, diagrams... Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of photos, paintings, drawings, charts & tables, animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, 2-D and 3-D virtual tours, 360-degrees views, timeline, games... It is 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 is not really multimedia. It has photos and videos, but they make the program slow and sluggish. They should edit an alternative version with only text, as they did with the first edition in 1995. It performed fast and easy in old computers.
INTERFACE AND PERFORMANCE: This is the worst side of Britannica. With Encarta you only have to type a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you automatically alternative spellings. Even if you write the name of a small village lost in any country, you see it in the atlas. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft WORD is perfect. It has additional ways to find content, including subject or multimedia browsing, "related articles" and the standard A-Z method. The "Research Organizer" is very helpful too. Encarta's TEXT FONT is very clear (Britannica's...) and you can choose 3 sizes.
Navigating with Britannica is disappointing. I will only give you an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with similar spellings (unless you open a window and "battle" with it). As I said before, the program's performance speed is very slow and sluggish, and it must be dramatically improved. To go "back and forward" you do not find any icon and you need to open a "menu".... One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works with Macintosh.
INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: Encarta has a lot in different languages. The four I utilize (United Kingdom, Spanish, French and Italian ones) are adaptations of USA version, which is necessary talking about History, Geography, Literature and other topics. The MISERABLE thing is that articles that equally concern any human being (Health, Mathematics and the rest of Sciences) are a VERY RESUMED translation of USA edition that is, of course, the best of all. Why Microsoft follows such a policy? I think this is MISERABLE in all the meanings of the word.
I repeat my modest piece of advice: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) make interesting to buy both.
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55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Much of change really., September 28, 2004
I thought that the 2004, edition of Encarta Reference Library was the ultimate refernce resource and I still think it is. Encarta Reference Library is a winner for every new user, especially if you are running 2003 and older versions. For the 2004 user of Encarta, not much has changed, except for the kids corner, and thats the big target of this edition, if you have kids they are more likely to benefit from it more. Its more tutor oriented and aims to keep them organized and ready for the class room with a sort of activity center approach to getting school work and home work done.
This Digital Encyclopedia is a must for students, who want concise and accurate information relating to what they are learning in school. But the fun does not stop on DVD's, users are able to expand their searching capabilities and knowledge to the Internet, through MSN Encarta. That why if you recently purchased 2004, I would recommend you stick with it and update it until the subscription is done then you can purchase version 2005.
There has been no major improvement in video quality but they do give a visual concept of life in countries whether it may be about people or animals. Whether its technology, science or history Encarta Reference Library 2005 gives you the information you need and expands the knowledge resource even further with the Internet. The program still lacks up to date images, but comparing the DVD to the 5 disk Set, you get more content on DVD. Its faster and certainly reduces disk swapping.
I have always admired Encarta for its approach to presenting information in a visual stunning and easy to understand way. Comparing this to a set of books would be a dishonour, because Encarta keeps current and more efficient.
Who Should Upgrade?
Well, it depends, if you need to get the latest and most up to date reference information on topics relating to our world, Encarta 2005 is must upgrade especially if you want to reduce disk swapping and go for the DVD Edition, but if you recently purchased 2004, just update it until subscription runs out then purchase the new version.
2000, 2001, 2002 and even 2003 users will find this update a necessary change to their reference collection. But students and teachers are the ones who will benefit the most from magnitude of information.
I can't wait to see whats in Encarta Reference Library 2006, I hope to see better DVD quality video footage and updated images!
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49 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Updates cannot be continued.... PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE, November 13, 2004
My real complaint with this fresh, good encyclopedia [my version was that for 2004] is that after "31 October" the "free content updates" stop. I had assumed that after that point I could subscribe to monthly updates at what I thought would be a modest annual fee. But the fact is that when the updates stop, often a few months after you buy the Encarta, you must purchase a whole new Encarta at full price and "toss" or rather delete the old Encarta. And the new Encarta runs out in another year. Then another full purchase, and then another. At a going and and rising price of say $70 for the DVD, that is a high cost over time for an encyclopdiea that has little of the real depth of a hard-copy Britannica or other established book-format encyclopedias. The whole benefit of the internet is that things can be updated (and, yes, for a reasonable annual fee), but Encarta provides us with throwaway "computer books" purely to get top dollar out of us once a year, or so it seems. Even the old Encyclopedia Britannica books provided a rudimentary update, for a much smaller fee than full re-purchase, of annual yearbooks. I'll be checking around to see what the DVD Britannica's update policy is (perhaps similar, perhaps not). In any case, I'm unhappy with the planned obsolescence of the Encarta encyclopedias, unhappy that such obsolescene was not made explicit from the start on the box (others I know had assumed there would be some system for continuing updates beyond "31 October"; when Encarta says updates will be "free" until that date, I think one is justified in assuming that they won't be free after, but that then you must begin to pay. The wording does not suggest that the updates will stop completely.) This situation will probably send me (and others) back to my old research tool---Google, which keeps on coming updated even as I type these lines. I had recommended this encyclopedia to many students and a few friends: I will no longer recommend it without full disclosure of the update policy. Until this month I had been one of Encarta's real fans and I bet I've "sold" a bunch of copies for them. Now I'll get in the habit of doing my research elsewhere. (Also, Encarta does not really encourage feedback on such matters. They give a mailing address for stamped letter, but do not provide any on-line or either tolled or toll-free telephone access to anyone who might want to bring up such a complaint. Surely they understand that this is no longer a letter-writing world, and that makes their customer service job easier for them, and less satisfactory for customers.)
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