I bought the Microsoft Encarta in December 2000, for my daughter's book report. She only needed one more source of information for the report to be complete. Before bringing her to the library to find that last source, I had to run into the local walmart first. Microsoft Encarta was on a rack in the middle isle. My daughter was really the one that was persistent about buying this, so I did figuring if nothing else it would save me a trip out to the library.
Best 20.00 I ever spent.
My three oldest kids have used this set of Encarta's time and time again. The information on some subjects is only a paragraph long, but for my kids that a start. Even my 8 year old has used this for book reports on dinosaurs. The Encarta was not his only source, but for him it was a learning tool in such a way that he started with this, then went on to use a search engine to use the internet as a search tool.
Actually the Encarta by reading the articles, gave me a few topics for him to search under other than dinosaurs. I truly had no idea there were so many names of dinosaurs.
The only cons of the Encarta 2000 as I mentioned earlier
are that the set has too many cds causing constant changing of the cds, and some of the articles are short, but the Encarta 2000 is a great place to start for a book report for anyone. My youngest who is 8 all the way through me, a college senior.
I do recommend this purchase to anyone with kids or a reason to do research. I also recommending downloading the updates as they come through, alot of great information has been found there for us.

Recommended: Yes