Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2007 DVD-Rom (Win/Mac)

List Price: $39.95 Discount Price: $15.40

Features:

• 3 Encyclopedias in One: Elementary, Student, and Adult
• 100,000+ Articles
• New! Virtual Notecards allow you to make notes around what you've read and keep track of where you have been
• New! Explore Interactive Articles and Media Tours
• Multimedia content, Atlas, Timelines, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus

Customer Reviews:

too brief to be useful [Posted on 2007-05-04]
I purchased Britannica because my children needed a vetted source for their high school assignments and their teachers would not accept Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Britannica's coverage is too superficial to be of used. The entire product is contained on a single CD. The first topic I looked up was the New Deal; Britannica gave it 674 words; Wikipedia 11,871. I looked up several others; all with similar results. To me, Britannica is no more than a glorified dictionary. At that, Encarta is better.
The product installed and functions without problem on Windows XP SP2.

Quite good [Posted on 2007-05-09]
I haven't used it extensively, but seems good for topics I searched. But nothing beats Wikipedia - and ease of use it has - just for sake of authentic material - I bought this product. Thats why only 3 Stars.

OK, but Encarta is better [Posted on 2007-06-09]
Having previously used the computer version of Encarta, I thought I'd try out the computer version of my classic Britannica. Yes, you can type in keywords and pull up resaonably well-written articles. The fun stops there. The articles contain few images: for example, I was looking up various famous people, minerals, and world landmarks, yet was disappointed to find no pictures at all in any of the articles I found. Most disappointingly, Britannica lacks the super-cool 3-D tours of famous world sites and 3-D zoomable and rotatable world atlas that Encarta does so well.

I Like the New Encyclopedia Brittanica [Posted on 2007-06-26]
I won a set of the full printed version during a spelling bee a few years back, but find the DVD version very good (and sure takes up less space). I look forward to its evolution.

the text is great; the rest is junk [Posted on 2007-10-01]
This is a great encyclopaedia, and it is a fabulous deal to get it cheaply on DVD. While it is not as extensive and up-to-the-minute as Wikipedia, the articles are much better written and more reliable. (I warn my students not to trust anything on Wikipedia.)

The text of the articles on the DVD appears to be identical to that of the printed version; however some of the figures from the printed version appear to be missing from the DVD. (I can't be sure about this because I am comparing with the 2002 printed version.) Unfortunately, the maps on the DVD are of much lower quality than those in the printed version.

The interface for reading the articles is pretty good. It features tabbed browsing, and it gives you whole articles (unlike a previous edition).

In my opinion the multimedia extras are cheesy and not worth the disk space. Maybe children will like them, I don't know. Anyway, get this for the text, not for the extras.

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