Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Standard Edition

1) Find tool has its own window. Therefore you have to make more clicks to choose an article and read it than in the case of Britannica CD 98. Thousands of additional clicks mean A LOT OF EXTRA TIME!

2) It is said that Britannica CD 2002 has more than 80.000 articles. It seems a lot more than 72.000 articles comprised in Britannica CD 98. But the truth is that most of the so called new articles are actually parts of formerly more comprehensive articles!
Example: Britannica CD 98 has 1 article named Slovenia with many sections (chapters), while Britannica CD 2002 has the contents of this article divided into 10 (ten!) articles! Similar story is repeated in the cases of all other states and many other articles (like apterygote, for example).

This is a very easy way to increase the overall number of the articles, isn't it? But it does not seem fair to me.

3) Many corrections that were sent to Britannica's editorial stuff in the previous years haven't been taken into consideration. Mistakes from Britannica CD 98 are published in Britannica CD 2002, too (e.g. wrong spelling Pisarro instead of Pissarro in the two of the articles.)

Therefore my advice is: if you already have an older version of Britannica (in my case it is Britannica CD 98), keep it! It is not worth buying a new one.


Information fast, easy and complete   December 8, 2001
Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com))
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

When I was young, I was one of those kids who sat in a corner and read encyclopedias. To me, starting at a topic and then following the references was a voyage of discovery like no other. When my parents visited their friends to play cards, I always asked if I could read their encyclopedias. However, time marches on and yards of shelf space have been replaced by a CD.
However, while the form of delivery may change, the content is still capable of generating excitement. The addition of multi-media opens new avenues of instruction that simply cannot be done with paper. I spent several hours exploring the CD before I turned it over to my children to use on their computer. They thought it was neat. The material is fully referenced with complete search facilities that allow you to move quickly to desired information. A dictionary is also included.
Since I do spend so much time on my computer, I have found it very helpful, particularly when I need to find the exact meaning of a word. It is no longer necessary to reach across to grab my dictionary, I simply pop up the online dictionary and get what I need immediately. It is a very useful tool to aid in research projects and has replaced several of my reference books. While I recommend it for libraries, the most valuable use to academics is probably as an online reference tool that can be the source of first resort. Even if you have Internet access, it is much easier to try the encyclopedia before doing a web search.

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.


Ideal for braniacs...   June 6, 2002
Dr. Leslie Brown (Tenerife, Spain, Canary Islands.)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

Recall that Britannica was a multi-volume, paper-based Encyclopaedia worth many thousands of dollars only a few years back, so this CD version is well worth the money if you don't already have something like this. There is the advantage that if you decide to look up a few separate things, you don't need to pull one of the heavy volumes off the shelf, flick through it, put it back, then take out another, etc. With this software, if you choose the full hard-disk install option, you won't even need to insert the CD to run the program!

COMPARISONS WITH ENCARTA:
I think most people who reviewed this are correct in deducing that Britannica has much more information (mainly text) content than Encarta. For example, Britannica includes far, far more flow-charts, figures and diagrams, while Encarta has much more pictures. This becomes especially apparent when you search for something with both software programs and then compare the results. More often than not, Britannica has over twice the info [but please note that I used the 1996 version of Encarta]. For example, off the top of my head, I searched with following words and phrases: "Republic of Chad", "supercomputer" and "bicycle". There's roughly ten times more written on Chad with Britannica '02 than Encarta '96. This staggering difference isn't limited to just that country either. However, Britannica has decidedly few photos of places and cities. In fact, photo's of landscapes in particular seem to be non-existent, so don't think after buying this that you'll be able to go for a virtual tour of the world, because you won't.

I copied the results of the "bicycle" search into MS Word and did a word count. I got a total of 2922 words with Britannica, yet only 779 words with Encarta. Now I know that /technically/ it isn't an entirely fair comparison (because I only searched for an extremely limited number of terms + I'm using an old version of Encarta) BUT, I very much doubt that 2143 words have been written about bicycles over at the Microsoft headquarters since 1996 (not to mention countless other topics). Maybe if someone reads this and has Encarta '02, they could write a review that includes a word-count on the word-search for "bicycle"? Get a bit of a standard going here? But alas, sometimes, the result for either encyclopaedia is the same, as when I looked up "whippet". Britannica will provide you with a truthful, accurate, un-biased and objective account of events in History.

MY ADVICE:
As far as I'm aware, the DVD version doesn't actually include much more in the way of information; rather they merely pad it out with more videos and pictures. I didn't buy the DVD version because the standard one was offered to me much cheaper when I bought it with my computer. If you love pictures and can't live without them, get the DVD version of this. Alternatively, if you can afford both standard Encyclopaedias, then get both, because a picture is worth a thousand words, and Encarta includes more. If what you're looking for is content, look no further than Britannica, it is sooooo much more scientific for academics and intellectuals. If you only get one, realise that it is like only having one book on the shelf whenever you read about a topic.

I also have the Encarta Interactive Atlas 2001; it is far superior to the one included with Britannica; so if you have a thing for atlases, then you should buy that separately as well as this, because they complement each other very nicely indeed (it includes plenty of photos & statistics of places).

Britannica also includes a comprehensive dictionary. All you have to do is double-click on any word in an article, and the corresponding word is automatically retrieved from the dictionary - definitely a handy feature!

NOW HERE'S SOME REAL FEEDBACK:
A problem I find with Britannica (and Encarta as well for that matter) is that if you have a large, high-resolution monitor such as 19" or 21", and you're using the 1600x1200 pixel mode, the size of the font in the Find (or search) window is waaaaay too small. At 2048x1536, forget it; while it is still readable, the text will only be about 1mm high!! Why don't they have an option for these higher resolutions which are becoming more prevalent? Having said that, it is possible to adjust the size of the font in the article itself with both programs, but that doesn't help much if you're doing a lot of searching or browsing within the "Find" window.

Also, the colour of the background is a very brilliant bright-white (i.e. too damn white). It's like trying to read something written on the Sun! I'm used to looking at an off-white page with Word or Excel. A slightly duller colour would be so much easier on the eyes.


Encyclopaedia Britannica - one big plus and some minuses   September 9, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

If you are a serious user of reference books and you intend to buy multimedia encyclopedia because of its text content and not multimedia features such as videos and animations, you might be interested in this brief comparison between Encyclopaedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta (in both cases I've been trying 2002 Standard Edition).

One big Britannica's plus
Articles
Articles in Britannica are usually longer and more precise than articles in Encarta, not to mention the overall number of articles (Britannica beats Encarta, especially its Standard Edition). And finally: there are less mistakes in Britannica than in Encarta.
One of the big blunders (in both encyclopedias!) is a false information that Slovenia, a Central European and Alpine country, lies on the Balkans, though the northern border of this peninsula is (in Encarta only) correctly described as Upper Sava River - Rijeka. Slovenia lies north of the Croatian seaport Rijeka and doesn't belong to the Balkans neither geographically or politically!
Another Britannica's slip is its claim that the Slovenian composer Jacobus Gallus was German-Austrian. If editors of Britannica doesn't believe to me (I've sent them plenty of corrections including this one a few years ago), they should take a look at Merriam Webster's Biographical Dictionary (see my review there!) where Gallus is described correctly.

Some of the Britannica's minuses
Characters display
Encarta displays practically all foreign characters correct (e.g. Slovenian and Czech c, s and z with a circumflex, other Central European characters, Portuguese a and Spanish n with a tilde, French e with a grave accent, etc.) while Britannica doesn't. In Britannica a Croatian writer Senoa (S with a circumflex) is listed in the very beginning of the A-Z list, and a great Slovenian poet Preseren (again s with a circumflex) is almost imposible to find though he's listed in the Britannica A-Z. A fact that Encarta doesn't list those two men of letters at all is another story (see One big Britannica's plus at the beginning of this review).

Interface
Encarta has much more user friendly interface than newer versions of Britannica. In Britannica it's obviously designed for the extinct 14" monitors. Find tool in Britannica has its own window. Therefore you have to make more clicks to choose an article and read it than in the case of Encarta. Thousands of additional clicks mean a lot of extra time.

Multimedia content
It's also a (big) plus for Encarta, but for an adult user of encyclopedias multimedia isn't the most important feature.

My advice
Probably the best decision is to buy both Encarta and Britannica (of course not necessarily the same year; in my opinion Britannica is the one who should wait until its interface is improved - or even reversed to its '98 version). It may be very useful to have two different sources of information - not only for researchers and students.
If you don't mind about multimedia features and if you'll use multimedia encyclopedia as an authoritative source of facts and information only, you'll probably prefer Britannica. But keep in mind that even in Britannica there are some small and big mistakes, and that its interface and character display aren't as user friendly as in Encarta.

PS
I actually gave Britannica 3 stars for its contents and 1-2 stars for its interface.


It also works with Mac OS   February 27, 2002
N. S. Johansen
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

...

The package delivers good materials especially for students, but not very detailed though. Like Chinese Crested Dog, when you would like to trace its origin, Britannica will only show "History and Origin of Dogs," not about the specific Chinese Crested Dog (it does not in printed volumes neither).

One another weak point, the Merriam Webster Dictionary which is included in this pack cannot copy and paste. But in Britannica section, you can always copy and paste.