Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 | 
| From: Microsoft
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.60
You Save: $10.35 (35%)
New (23) Used (1) from $19.60
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 145
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
Media: DVD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.5 x 1.6
MPN: 96J-00139
Model: 96J-00139
UPC: 882224483728
EAN: 0882224483728
ASIN: B000Q6ZK3A
Release Date: July 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | A full set of study aids that help get homework done right the first time | | • | Students can find trusted and up-to-date information quickly and easily using Encarta Premium 2008 | | • | Mathematical tools help students tackle math and science problems quickly and easily | | • | Tools for completing foreign language assignments and a full-featured dictionary to help translate and conjugate | | • | Includes more than 1,000 book summaries that help students understand some of the most commonly studied literary works |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Some things that are merely elementary could distinguish whether you're a failure or a success. This Student with Encarta Premium 2008 from Microsoft helps make sure that you, as a student, have all the necessary help to excel. Microsoft Student gives young students the resources and tools they need to improve their grades and learn more about their world. The young scholar in your home will improve his or her academic performance, with the combination of features. Requires Windows PC with DVD drive
Amazon.com
Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 is a productivity suite of homework tools and trusted information designed to help students quickly and easily complete assignments in a variety of subjects and excel in school. 
Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 gives students a full set of tools to help them succeed and get homework done right the first time. | 
Make research entertaining. Find information on just about any topic. Thousands of articles, photos, sound clips, and links to related information from trusted sources(2)-plus political, climatic, and topographical maps of the world-make discovering new information fun! | 
Equation Solver. Enter a problem into the Equation Solver and get step-by-step help on how to solve it. And with free online access to Hotmath(3), students can quickly find their textbook and select the problem they're solving. They'll instantly receive step-by-step guidance on how to solve the problem and what the correct answer should be. | Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 gives students a full set of tools to help them succeed and get homework done right the first time.
Full-featured graphing calculator
A full-featured graphing calculator that's simple to learn and use (similar to those costing more than $100!) helps visualize and solve math and science problems. Equation Solver
Stuck on a math problem? Input your own problems into the Equation Solver and get a quick answer and step-by-step help on how to solve it. Triangle Solver and Equation Library
Interact with a library of more than 100 equations and explore the relationships of triangles and their parts while viewing associated rules or graphs. Learning Essentials
Get past the blank page. Learning Essentials helps students achieve better grades. Step-by-step writing tips and preformatted report and presentation templates give students a quick start in creating great-looking reports and presentations. Foreign language help
A full-featured dictionary helps translate and conjugate verbs in Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Learning Essentials also unlocks tools in Microsoft Office that are specially designed for foreign language study, providing templates and tools for completing assignments in Spanish, French, and German. Book summaries
Need to know more about that literary story? Includes more than 1,000 book summaries that help students understand some of the most commonly studied literary works from middle school to college level. The easy, all-in-one homework assistant that helps students excel in school.
Designed to be easy to use and simple to learn, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 makes learning fun. Whether it's a math, research, or foreign language assignment, students can find the right tools and information to get homework started quickly, get fast answers to academic questions, and complete assignments that can help earn higher grades. Find trusted content when you need it.
Complete with Encarta Premium 2008, the #1 best-selling encyclopedia software brand(1), it's content you can trust. With editorially approved content, students can use Web Links to more than 25,000 Web sites, preselected by Encarta editors for relevant and age-appropriate research material(2). Through multimedia content, Encarta Premium 2008 provides engaging visual tools to help explore and discover historical events and places. It even includes Encarta Kids, a separate encyclopedia geared to young learners ages 7 to 12! Get questions answered fast.
With time pressures to complete assignments, it's frustrating to get stuck without knowing where to go for answers. Whether they're stumped on a math, science, or a foreign language problem, students can quickly get the answers they need. They also get helpful ideas on how to solve problems, so the next time they're more likely to figure out the answer on their own! Includes a full suite of homework tools to help students get homework done right the first time. 
Foreign language tools help complete assignments in Spanish, French, German, and Italian | 
Quickly grasp the plots and themes of commonly studied books. | Encarta Premium 2008
Students can fi nd the information they're looking for-quickly and easily-with Encarta Premium 2008. With trusted content that's accurate and up-to-date, Encarta has been the #1 best-selling encyclopedia software brand for the past 8 years!(1) You'll be amazed at how much time your student will spend researching-compelled by the sights and sounds of one fascinating presentation after another. Students can easily-and quickly-access trusted information provided by world experts. And since they can automatically download updates from the Encarta Web site, they'll have up-to-date and accurate reference software when they need it.(2) Encarta Premium 2008 comes complete with a wide range of reference tools, including a dynamic atlas, dictionary, thesaurus, and language translation dictionaries. Microsoft Math
Microsoft Math features a large collection of tools, tutorials, and instructions designed to help students learn mathematical concepts while quickly solving math problems. In an instant, they'll see how to solve problems-step by step! Works for many grade levels-from basic math, pre-algebra, algebra (including logarithms and exponents) to trigonometry! Need advanced help? A full-featured graphing calculator that's simple to learn and use (similar to those costing more than $100!) helps visualize and solve math and science problems. Triangle Solver and Equation Library. Interact with a library of more than 100 equations and explore the relationships of triangles and their parts while viewing associated rules or graphs. Templates and Tutorials
Having trouble getting started on class projects? Sometimes the hardest part about completing a project is getting started. Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 includes the latest version of Learning Essentials. Working with Microsoft Office Word, Office PowerPoint, and Office Excel (in either Microsoft Office XP, Office 2003, or the 2007 Microsoft Office system, sold separately), Learning Essentials helps students achieve better grades. Step-by-step writing tips and preformatted report and presentation templates give students a quick start in creating great-looking reports and presentations. Get past the blank page. Easy-to-use tools, templates, and tutorials help students get past formatting questions to the core learning in assignments. Learning Essentials includes tips and tutorials for managing projects and creating high-quality reports, presentations, science projects, and other assignments. Foreign Language
A full-featured dictionary helps translate and conjugate verbs in Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Learning Essentials also unlocks tools in Microsoft Office that are specially designed for foreign language study, providing templates and tools for completing assignments in Spanish, French, and German. Literature
Need to know more about that literary story? Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 includes more than 1,000 book summaries that help students understand some of the most commonly studied literary works from middle school to college level. Note:
1. The NPD Group/NPD Techworld, January 2000 to February 2007. Based on total U.S. retail sales. 2. An active Internet connection is required for Math Online Help, Update Encarta, Web Links, Weather and Radio Links and Encarta Premium Online. Update Encarta and Math Online Help are available through October 2008. Access to Encarta Online Premium requires a Microsoft .NET Passport (Windows Live ID) and an Internet connection. You must be 13 years or older to create a Windows Live ID. 3. Hotmath contains primarily US-based textbook problems.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Microsoft Student 2008 August 23, 2007
Sam Vaknin (Skopje, Macedonia)
16 out of 20 found this review helpful
Homework assignments are the bane of most students I know (not to mention their hard-pressed and nescient parents). This is mainly because of the tedious and mind-numbing chores of data mining and composition. Additionally, as knowledge multiplies every 5-10 years, few parents and teachers are able to keep up.
Enter Microsoft Student 2008: a productivity suite which includes English and foreign language dictionaries, thesaurus, quotations library, assignment templates, tutorials, graphing calculator software and a Web Companion. MS Student comes replete with the entire Encarta Premium 2008 encyclopedia and its dynamic atlas and provides online access to the feature-rich MSN Encarta Premium through October 2008.
The previous versions of Encarta included a host of homework tools. Two years ago, these have evolved into a separate product called Microsoft Student. Since then, it has been gainfully repackaged and very much enhanced. This year, for the first time, MS Student can be downloaded from the Web or purchased as a standalone, packaged product (DVD only).
Among the new or revamped features: free online access to MSN Encarta Premium, Step-by-Step Math Solutions calculator, Step-by-Step Math Textbook Solutions, Triangle Solver, Equations Library, tutorials, and foreign language help.
To augment the performance of MS Student 2008, Microsoft offers "Learning Essentials": preformatted report and presentation templates and tutorials designed for Microsoft Office XP and later. MS Student's templates are actually clever adaptations of the popular Office suite of products: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They help the student produce homework plans and schedules, science projects, book reports, presentations, research reports, charts, and analyses of problems in math, physics, and chemistry. Detailed step-by-step tutorials, Quick Starters, and pop-up toolbars (menus) guide the student along the way in a friendly, non-intrusive manner.
The Ace in MS Student's deck is Microsoft Math. It is a seemingly endless anthology of tools, tutorials and instruction sheets on how to grasp mathematical concepts and solve math problems, from the most basic (e.g., fractions) to mid-level difficulty (e.g., trigonometric functions). And if this is not enough, there's free access to HotMath, an online collection of math study aides and problem solvers.
The graphing calculator is a wonder. It has both 2-D and 3-D capabilities and makes use of the full screen. Aided by an extensive Equations Library, it does everything except cook: trigonometry, calculus, math, charting, geometry, physics, and chemistry. And everything in full color! Triangles get special treatment in the Triangle Solver. The most vexing trilateral relationships and rules are rendered simple through the use of enhanced graphics. The Equation Library, though, is disappointing. It holds only 100 equations and calculus is sorely neglected throughout.
MS Student provides a powerful English-Spanish-French-German-Italian dictionary. It helps the student to translate and conjugate verbs. The synergy between this product and the impressive foreign language capabilities of MS Word creates an effective language laboratory which allows the user to study the languages up to the point of completing assignments using specialized foreign-language templates.
For the student keen on the liberal arts and the humanities, Student 2008 provides detailed Book Summaries of almost 1000 classic works. Besides plot synopses, the student gets acquainted with the author's life, themes and characters in the tomes, and ideas for book reports.
Similar to the Encarta, MS Student's Web Companion obtains search results from all the major search engines without launching any additional applications (such as a browser). Content from both the Encyclopedia and the Web is presented side by side. This augmentation explicitly adopts the Internet and incorporates it as an important source of reference - as 80% of students have already done.
I am not sure how Microsoft solved the weighty and interesting issues of intellectual property that the Web Companion raises, though. Copyright-holders of Web content may feel that they have the right to be compensated by Microsoft for the use it makes of their wares in its commercial products.
MS Student would do well to also integrate with desktop search tools from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others. Students will benefit from seamless access to content from all over - their desktop, their encyclopedias, and the Web - using a single, intuitive interface.
Microsoft would do well to incorporate collaborative and Web publishing tools in this product. MS Student does not equip and empower the student to collaborate with teachers and classmates on class projects and to seamlessly publish his or her results and work on the Web. Future editions would do well to incorporate a NetMeeting-like module, a wiki interface, and an HTML editor.
All in all, MS Student 2008 is a great contribution to learning. Inevitably, it has a few flaws and glitches.
Start with the price. As productivity suites go, it is reasonably priced had its target population been adult professional users. But, at $50-100 (depending on the country), it is beyond the reach of most poor students and parents - its most immediate market niches.
MS Student 2008 makes use of Microsoft's .Net technology. As most home computers lack it, the installer insists on adding it to the anyhow bloated Windows Operating System. There is worse to come: the .Net version installed by MS Student 2008 is plagued with security holes and vulnerabilities. Users have to download service packs and patches from Windows Update if they do not wish to run the risk of having their computers compromised by hackers.
Fully installed on the hard disk, MS Student 2008, like its predecessors, gobbles up a whopping 4 Gb. That's a lot - even in an age of ever cheaper storage. Most homesteads still sport PCs with 40-80 Gb hard disks. This makes MS Student less suitable for installation on older PCs and on many laptops.
Finally, there is the question of personal creativity and originality. Luckily, MS Student does not spoon-feed its users. It does not substitute for thinking or for study. On the contrary, by providing structured stimuli, it encourages the student to express his or her ideas. It does not do the homework assignments for the student - it merely helps rid them of time-consuming and machine-like functions. And it opens up to both student and family the wonderful twin universes of knowledge: the Encarta and the Web. Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self-love - Narcissism Revisited"
 Each recent version gets worse September 2, 2007
Rod Walsh (Sherman Oaks, CA United States)
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
I've used Encarta for many years. However, the 2004 version was the last version worthy of carrying the Encarta name.
Navigation used to be extremely simple. Now, you need a PhD to get around. The use of the "find" box in 2004 is so much more helpful than the "search" box in this 2008 version.
This version crashes regularly (running Vista). By regularly, I'd say it crashes 20% of the time. On the plus side, they have all been soft landings and I can re-open without a re-boot.
not for adults March 11, 2008
Michael A. Johnson (San Jose, California)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Unfortunately this is not an encyclopedia and dictionary with student aids, but student programs with the encyclopedia added on. You must wade through all kinds of homework, math, etc. programs to reach the dictionary and encyclopedia. Microsoft apparently thinks that after you leave school you can never have need of an encyclopedia or dictionary again. Also once you load it on, you cannot turn it off. It will run forever on the grounds that you might have to look up something. Once you do get in, the interface is harder to move around in than in the old 2004 edition.
A good purchase for a college student. August 1, 2007
Russell Harms (SLC, UT USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
The programs in this package are really useful for several tasks, from writing an essay, doing your math (including calculus), and looking up various topics.
However, it has a shortfall: the Encarta encyclopedia does not have as detailed articles as the encyclopedia Britannica, which is also a great project.
Each year, this product keeps getting better August 29, 2007
Dennis Obrien
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
I have a 16 year old son. We made a decision when he was 5 to get new copies of Encarta each year he was in school instead of a hard bound encyclopedia. He was given an award from John's Hopkins university when he was in eighth grade, and has attended classes at both John's hopkins and Stanford ever since. The Encarta series has improved every year, and was very good to begin with.
As a professional educator myself, I very highly recommend it as a cost effective investment to have available for children growing up.
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