Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD Edition and FREE Britannica Quizmaster

Having bought both - based on the previous reviewers comments - I find that I cannot recommend Encarta UK and can recommend Encyclopedia Britannica. Encarta is the encyclopedia that is in fact more USA focused, as it has more U.S. content and provides much less real information for other countries. Britannica, which doesn't have a "UK edition" but a good encyclopedia should not need country-specific editions, was published in Scotland for its first nine editions (120 years) then jointly London and New York until the 1940s. How an encyclopedia that has spent more years of its life being written in the UK, and is littered with articles that make continual comparisons with Scotland or the United Kingdom, can be called "USA-focused" eludes me.

Britannica is a vast store of information, its articles are long and authoritative, and navigation through those articles is very easy. Britannica's choice of font is superb, as it really enhances the sense that you're leafing through a book that contains hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge. On the other hand, while it might be slightly easier to find information in Encarta, the articles are strewn with distractions (default font size too big, sentences double-spaced, photos that can bear little resemblance to the information you're reading) and there is no navigation at all within an article. Compare, for example, the articles on the history of the United Kingdom. Encarta presents this as a few sections covering rough highlights of some key events on one long page that you must scroll through. Britannica organises the information into sections on many pages and includes every major historical event that has ever occurred, with plenty of navigation tools for moving around the article and reading related material, with many tables and graphs of statistical data (missing from Encarta). Encarta rarely identifies the source of their information, Britannica always names the author of the article (and they are always a specialist in the subject).

The only benefit I can find with Encarta is their selection of maps, and their navigation system for the maps. But I wouldn't buy Encarta just for the maps (if you want real maps, they're not detailed enough). The installation of Encarta forced me to install IE6, and required a reboot as a result, neither of which I wanted (and is a typical Microsoft strategy).

Britannica does have a sluggish interface, but this might not be surprising due to the huge amount of information which it is making available to you (vastly bigger than Encarta). Britannica doesn't have so many pictures or videos, but the use of these in Encarta is distracting and rarely "on subject". It looks like Encarta has just had pictures thrown in to help market the product by claiming it "has more pictures".

In conclusion, Encarta is a glossy magazine, not an encyclopedia. If you want an encyclopedia, a source of knowledge, there is only one choice - Encylopedia Britannica.

I was looking for a functional, PC-based encyclopedia that would link to the Internet and provide suitable (and safe) access to my young daughter. I was pleased that the Ultimate reference suite came with everything I needed for my wife and I, and the kids, in segregated databases within the same software. The links to the Internet work well, the user interface is as easy to use as anything else I've seen and the content is remarkable.

I have two minor grumbles. The first is that all the media clips lean toward being American. When I say "American", I mean that all the sound and video clips are voiced in American - the content of the database itself certainly could not be described as American, as I have read in reviews elsewhere. In fact, I have been able to extract lots of data relating to medieval life in England, one of the reasons I bought the product. The second small grumble is that the multi-media content could be improved - considering the content and the technological platform it requires, I would like to see some more spectacular visuals than simple video clips, colour diagrams and sound. I want CGI animation! Perhaps a future version will fulfil this?

In summary, this is a terrific purchase at a great price. The content, which let's face it, is why most of buy an encyclopeadia, is superb. There are good offers available for registering the product, too.