Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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50 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a value for money, 18 Feb 2007
If you want to buy this product, please do not buy the UK edition, which has only 42000 articles. Buy the US edition (called Encarta Premium), which costs you the same, but has 64000 articles.
I learned this the hard way. I bought the product in India and after installing and browsing the web found that whatever product I have is the UK edition and has 22000 less articles than the US edition. I understand that editions from different geographies should have subtle differences in their viewpoints. But such a dramatic difference in number of articles? I don't see the logic.
Also, if you are a new encyclopedia user, go for Britannica Reference Suite 2007, which costs a little more, but offers more value for money (much more articles, 3 encyclopedias in one, Encyclopedia Britannica, Students Britannica and Elementary Britannica).
Encarta is the only product I used to love from Microsoft. The last one I purchased was Encarta Reference Library 2002 (US Edition). Hard to believe, but that is much better than Encarta Reference Library 2007. Know what is missing in 2007 editon that was there in 2002?
1. Encarta Africana: The best African American Encyclopedia out there, one of my favourites and reasons for loving Encarta.
2. Archives: New stories from 1917 through 2000 on various topics.
3. More number of articles: For example, there were 6 main entries for United States in 2002 edition. 2007 had only one, sadly.
All the further editions (2003 through 2005) had another great feature called Literary Guides. Microsoft has cleverly come up with a premium product which includes Literary Guides, but has removed this feature from this product.
Also, they don't clearly indicate on the software cover, what edition they are selling, UK, US or Australia etc. As a result, I end up buying a sub-standard product.
They say that the interface is improved now, but I did not see any marked difference.
The only pro about this product is the new Children's Encarta, but that is not as extensive about Britannica Student Encyclopedia (I have 2004 edition)
Despite ridiculously less content, this product takes about 3 GB of hard drive space.
I'm going to uninstall this product and reinstall Encarta 2002. Also, this will be my last purchase from Microsoft.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a great family reference encyclopaedia - it lacks depth for some adults though, 22 Aug 2007
Encarta hasn't got the depth in articles that Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate reference suite 2007 has, but I can't imagine many preteen school children wanting a scholarly detailed account of the action of CD4+ lymphocytes when looking up AIDS. Plus Britannica seems to throw up strange search results more often than Encarta - put in 'evaporation' and Encarta gives the classic scientific text-book description, whereas Britannica throws up a detailed account of fridge compressors. Plus Encarta is far more kid friendly with fun as well as facts - it's simply infinitely more entertaining than Britannica and ideal as a family reference. Encarta's greater brevity is just right for a younger audience. Encarta does have on-line links if you want greater depth. The UK version of Encarta scores very highly for UK kids as it's geared toward the UK national curriculum and UK spelling (whereas Britannica ironically has a strong irritating US bias, even calling 'Primary' school 'Elementary' on the main menu screen). Encarta also presents the information in a more fun way with the use of multi-media content such as games to aid learning. You need internet access as well though (Encarta uses it to update itself to 'October 2007'), although that's pretty essential for homework anyway. Encarta even integrates itself into Internet Explorer. You can also upgrade to Encarta Premium [on-line] for free, but only until October 31st 2007 (where there's even help for A-Level etc). By the way Encarta says it is XP only and not Windows 98 friendly as stated by Amazon (ours also works under Vista Premium).
If you think you might want Encarta for your kids you should really have a look at Microsoft Student 2007 that includes this full Encarta reference library. The Student 2007 package adds much more though, there's 'learning essentials' templates, toolbars, tutorials and guides that help kick start any essay - with a wealth of information on how to construct essays. There's also guides to many English literature set books. Plus for maths there's an equation solver (basic algebra to calculus), graphs and help with complex sums. For languages there's spelling and dictionary translation, with help with writing sentences (using your words and verbs correctly with every tense). The languages French, German, Italian and Spanish are now supported. See Microsoft.com/uk/student for more details. It needs Office XP or 2003 though, as well XP, to work.
We do have Britannia Reference Suite 2006 as well - its greater depth suites well read adults far more and it has good advice on homework as well, useful if you are helping your kids but a bit too dry (dull even) for many under 16s to use on their own. It's good value for adults though, particularly when compared to the printed versions. However the children's Elementary Britannica is little more than a cuter interface - unlike Encarta it makes less effort to re-pitch the actual information it presents in a more kid friendly fashion. In comparison Children's Encarta is re-written for preteens and takes another 430Mb of space. Altogether Encarta takes about 1.8Gb of disk space, and then runs without the disk in the CD/DVD drive - pretty essential for most kids who probably couldn't be bothered to look for the DVD case otherwise.
Unlike some of the internet, Encarta and Britannica are a reliable source of information. I have to say we all do tend to search the internet as well as use these encyclopaedias, as there's many great sites out there for the kids and adults (particularly for things like history, science, computing and photography). However both these encyclopaedias aren't that expensive at all compared to the cost of raising and educating kids, plus they only need updating every few years. Other than teachers/parents, most adults will probably be content with internet searches or require specialist text books instead, although both encyclopaedias are fine for fun reading and the atlases are quite useful.
Along with web searches, Encarta is a useful aid to any kid's education. This version and Student 2007 was going very cheap recently (£19/£29 respectively) on Amazon as UK Encarta (and Student) 2008 is about to hit the shelves - no doubt nearer the full retail price and twice what those in the US pay for their version.
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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Encarta vs Britannica?, 28 Aug 2007
This is something a lot of people want to know when trying to decide on an encyclopedia to buy as i have been also. There are lots of conflicting reviews here on amazon, one's got more articles the other more multimedia content blah blah blah.
Basicaly I've just done a web search on the subject and found a review of both 2007 products from PC Advisor magazine. Basicaly the results were Encarta wins hands down. I won't list every single point on which one is better than the other because at the end of the day if you want to read the review you can easily find it with google and I'm trying to keep this brief. However the main issue they had with Britannica was that it was highly US biast (even the dictionary it says is in US English and maps only go ito detail for US and Canada) and Encarta has been largly rewritten for the UK verstion. A search for London on Britanica brings up much older info and Encarta brings up pictures of the 7/7 bombings not even mentioned in Britanica. Also it says that Encarta can be run from the disc and britannica takes half an hour to install upto 2G on the hardisc.
So based on this I'm going with Encarta.
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