The software giant's latest version of its flagship encyclopaedia seamlessly combines a wealth of knowledge with impressive multimedia, including Discovery Channel documentaries. But can it tackle Britannica's "Ulitmate" reference suite?Encarta 2004 Premium Suite basically consists of an encyclopaedia, an atlas, a dictionary, and a homework centre. One of the most impressive features Encarta is how the entire package is smoothly integrated and the way in which it compels students to learn in a more interactive way than just flipping though the pages of a printed encyclopaedia.
Microsoft offers Encarta 2004 on a single DVD or a five-CD set. Opting for the minimum installation takes up 300MB on your hard disk and you will need the DVD in the drive to access multimedia content. A word of warning on the CD-ROM version; be prepared to constantly swap the discs. If you have around 2.5GB of unused disk space we recommend choosing the full installation. If you're equipped with a DVD-ROM drive of any type, it's much easier to save yourself the hassle and get the DVD version. It saves a whole lot of time during installation, it contains extra video footage, and it's the same price as the CD set.
The interface of Encarta is browser-like with a distinct Windows XP feel. This makes it fairly intuitive and easy to navigate for Windows users, although predictably Encarta doesn't support the Mac platform in the way that Britannica does. At the top of Encarta's browser are the back, forward and home buttons, similar to a Web browser. To the left is the search input box, which is the quickest way to find results provided you have a specific topic in mind. On the right is the content area, which is filled almost instantly with images, multimedia, related topics and an overview of the article when a topic is selected from the search results.
A new feature in Encarta 2004 is the visual browser; a set of alphabetised topics and images that fade in and out as they rotate around the screen. It is a great way of simply browsing the content in an interactive way as it prompts the user to click on a topic they might not have normally considered by keyword searching. Within articles the visual browser gets filled with the related articles, which you can then browse in an animated 3D way.
All up, there are about 130,000 articles in Encarta supplemented with 24,000 photos and illustrations, 3,100 sounds and music clips and 260 videos and animations. Encarta automatically references anything that is cut and paste from the encyclopaedia into a Word document, a handy feature to reference sources in assignments.
For this 2004 release of Encarta, Microsoft has teamed up with the Discovery Channel to provide some interesting, although limited, documentary footage. There are 20 clips on the CD-ROM version, while the DVD boasts 32 video clips. Clips are only a couple of minutes long but are of a good quality resolution.
The homework center brings together a couple of valuable resources students can use for assignments. There are homework starters provided to help get students underway on common tasks such as persuasive essays, book reviews, science experiment write-ups and short stories. There are 123 literature guides that give students an analysis (overviews, themes, characters, etc) including books like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, for example. Another handy tool for assignments is the huge collection of searchable quotations from sources such as television, literature and the media, each attributed by source and date.
The dictionary and thesaurus is not integrated in Encarta as well as it is in Britannica (where you can double click any word to have the definition pop up) but it does help the user by giving the pronunciation of the word. The dictionary can also supply single-word translations from English to French, German, Italian or Spanish (and vice versa).
One facet of Encarta that we love--or any geography buff would love--is the Interactive World Atlas. Starting from a 3D representation of the globe you can spin it round in any direction then drag out a square and click to zoom into any region for a more detailed view. The level of detail is remarkable with 1.8 million map locations as is the seamless integration when zooming. At any given level, a variety of map styles can be overlaid to provide information such as languages, politics and religions depicted by colour-coded regions with comprehensive legends. It is quite addictive and you can lose hours exploring the world, even down to the level of major roads in large cities.
Articles in Encarta 2004 can be updated online for until October 2004 but you'll to sign up for a free .NET account if you choose to use this feature. There are also scattered links to other online content in articles well as links to current weather reports and streaming radio.
Encarta Premium Suite 2004 provides an engaging way for students and adults to browse through the vast amount of knowledge it houses. The visual browser and Discovery Channel videos are an enticing reason to upgrade to the latest version and for Windows users who seek an interesting and absorbing educational resource for their children Encarta is top dog.
Microsoft Encarta Premium Suite 2004
Company: Microsoft
Price: AU$169.95
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 20 58
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