Others say..."Worse than previous versions"I've owned the 1999, 2001, and 2003 versions of the EB DVD. The 2001 was by far the best. While the content is wonderful in all three versions, only the 2001 edition provided any sort of ease of use. The 1999 version barely functioned, and the 2003 is a major step backward. As others have noted, it runs much slower, the scolling mouse function doesn't work, and the dictionary and article interfaces have been annoyingly combined. Also, the Atlas maps have not been greatly improved, which would have been really nice. The only major improvement in the 2003 EB-DVD is the pronunciation guide included in the dictionary. The superfluous student editions included on the DVD are worthless. My hope is that Britannica will build on strength and focus on improving content in subsequent versions.
"Good text, very bad software"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.
"World Book 2003 beats this hands down"I recently recieved this "product" and all I have to say is for the amount of cabbage they want, you could spend your money elsewhere. Even Encarta or World Book has this thing beat in feature parity and ease of use. I was truly disheartened after installing this and immediately getting an error message and program quit. I installed it on a second computer, same configuration, and it finally ran. With that said, this is a java-based application that is slow, boring, and ultimately a big downer. I have since returned it and purchased World Book (from their site, as Amazon apparently doesn't carry the Macintosh Jaguar edition). What a difference an application makes! Not only is World Book interactive, easy to use, but it's full of multimedia and tons of sights and sounds. A lookup of the same topic produced three movies, four images, and six related articles. The same lookup on Britannica produced boring chapter after chapter, all formatted the same, with no pics, sounds, or movies. Yech. Save yourself a headache and get World Book. You'll be happy you did. If you need the Mac version, get it from World Book's website.
"Did I get a different version?"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.
"Britannica 2003 worst edition yet"
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!
