Installation
Our review version of Encarta Premium Suite 2005 came on 4CDs (like Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2005, it's also available on DVD) which were relatively poorly stacked into a single DVD case. Thankfully, once you've installed Encarta, if you've chosen the full install option, you don't actually need the CDs again -- although that will eat up 1.7GB of hard drive space. Encarta uses some of the functionality of Internet Explorer, so it's necessary to shut that down prior to install. Other than the same lengthy install wait that we experienced with Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2005, though, installation was relatively smooth and painless.
Features
If you just scanned the back of the boxes for Encarta Premium Suite 2005 and Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2005, you'd have to pick Encarta as a winner, with a claimed 130,000+ articles, 25,300+ photos and illustrations and 1.8 million map locations. Why they're able to pinpoint exactly how many map locations they've got, but can only estimate on the article numbers baffles us, frankly. Unless, of course, they're just employing hype -- but they'd never do that, would they?
It's somewhat hard to recommend (or disavow) any Encyclopaedia product on pure numerical terms, as everyone's searches and informational needs differ so very widely; while in a strict numerical sense Encarta dwarfs Britannica 2005, if either provides you with quality information, then it's not by definition a bad buy.
One thing that Encarta does differently to its competition is to launch individual components as individual applications, complete with a chiming windows noise that quickly becomes annoying. The advantage of this, however, is that some of the discrete tools can be very handy outside of the encylopaedia context -- especially the dictionary, which will weld itself to the system tray unless you tell it not to.
Encarta 2005 also features a children's section, complete with simpler articles, games and other educational activities. It doesn't offer the same three-tiered breakdown as Britannica, however, as there's no high school content equivalent on offer.
Copying text from anywhere within Encarta brings up an interface for copying straight, or to the Encarta Researcher -- will prepare reports, although you've got to have ActiveX enabled within Internet Explorer for this functionality to work, something that's a bit of a security no-no, frankly speaking. It became even more annoying when our Service Pack 2 enabled XP Professional machine informed us that it was blocking "potentially harmful" content every time we tried to use the researcher functionality. Yes, you can always re-enable ActiveX, but it does leave us wondering how many consumer-level users will know how to do so -- and how many will remember to put their settings back to a safe level once they're done.
The other catch with copying text is that it will by default stick a large copyright notice under any clipping. If you're using Encarta for any work that uses other forms of attribution, such as footnotes, it could be a touch choresome to remove all the copyright notices, although it certainly doesn't stop you from doing so.
Performance
When you pick up an Encylopaedia, you expect it to be accurate and correct, and thus we were rather surprised when doing one of our standard Australian searches (for the city of Armidale, NSW) to discover that, according to Encarta 2005, there are waterfalls nearby called "Dagnars Falls". File that one under the "whoops, who forgot to check that spelling, exactly?" category, as it's actually Dangars Falls. Given that you can update Encarta online (although it's mandatory to register it if you wish to do so), we'd hope that this error will be fixed rather quickly. It's not a sign that gives you confidence in a product, however.
Aside from that typo glitch, we've got few complaints against Encarta 2005, which searches itself quickly and diligently. As you'd expect, the additional online searches go through Microsoft's MSN search facility, with the choice of Encarta Editor's Choices, or a wider search, which for some reason goes through Microsoft's UK MSN site. From a few key searches, we're not convinced this is the best possible choice -- running the same searches concurrently through Google brought up better search results than MSN UK's engine, and more of them to boot.
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Nick
18/02/2006, 02:44 AM
Overall, it's very good
Pros: User friendly interface. Separate dictionary. Fast search and load times. Good amount of multimedia. Decent atlas.
Cons: You have to remember to click (not highlight) with cursor in the 'find' section. American based content and spellings. Could do with more "hyperlinks".
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25/03/2005, 02:17 PM
not much information and images
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