nc10's Full Review: Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 Full Vers...
The Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 combines Microsoft Encarta Deluxe (by far the best selling encyclopedia), with a world atlas, thesaurus, Book of Quotations, Encarta Africana (a black history/culture encyclopedia), and the Encarta Research tools. The Microsoft Encarta Reference Library was clearly designed with the student and teacher in mind, but I can't imagine anyone who would not find this set of well integrated, multimedia rich Encyclopedia and reference tools useful.
Although list price for the Encarta Reference Library is $75 (about $15 higher than last years' version), I purchased the Encarta Reference Library from my local Sam's Club, for $50, before $30 rebate. It came in a large 10" X 12" by 2" box, inside of which I found a smaller cd sized box containing 5 cd's in paper sleeves and .... absolutely nothing else. Installation instructions are listed on the back of the small box, insert the first cd and follow the on screen instructions. Launching the installation routine requires users to agree to an extremely long "end users license agreement" (EULA), after which you can choose a custom or standard install routine. The Encarta Reference Library can be copied completely to and be run from your hard disk (a great option if you've got the disk space, about 2 gb), or can be installed to run from the cd's (requiring about 400 mb of disk space). I chose to install completely to my hard disk. Forty five minutes later, the slow installation had finished, and I had two new icons on my desktop, Encarta Reference Library and Encarta Dictionary Tools. Unlike most Microsoft products, the Encarta installation routine does not require entry of a cd key, or product activation, but you do have to sign up for "Club Encarta" to download updates for Encarta. Microsoft offers frequent updates of Encarta content, and the 2003 version of Encarta includes updates through Oct 31, 2003.
I installed the Encarta Reference Library on a 750 mhz Athlon system running Windows ME. The minimum requirements are a very reasonable 233 mhz CPU, Windows 98 or later, and Internet Explorer 6.0 (included). A DVD version of the Encarta Reference Library is also available.
Using Encarta
Encarta Dictionary Tools
Double clicking on the Dictionary icon quickly brings up a fixed size window that fills about a third of my monitor. In the upper left corner is a dialog box where you can type in a word or expression ("get lost" or "up your sleeve" for example) for which you need a definition, tranlation to french, spanish, german, or italian (or back to english from any of these), pronunciation, or synonym. Below the dialog box is an alphabetized list of words and expressions in the dictionary, and as you type each letter, you are brought to that point in the list, making it quick to find any word even if you are unsure of the spelling.
On the right side of this window, is shown the definition, translation, or synonym for each word. Commonly used expressions which contain your word are also listed, as well as an explanation for those expressions. The Encarta dictionary does a good job of showing complete, easy to understand definitions for each word and its common uses. For example, the definition for the word "real" includes about 15 definitions for its everyday use as an adjective or adverb, including sincere, not artificial, not imaginary, its use in Property law (as in real estate), very (as in "real tired"), its use in Mathematics (as in "real numbers"), a hypertext link to the expression real "numbers", and explanation for three expressions that use the word real ("for real", "get real", and in "real life"). Also shown in the definition window is a speaker icon, which when clicked on, provides a pronunciation for your word from your sound card. (Encarta also gives two other entries for "real", defining its use as a unit of Portuguese and Brazilian currency.
After your read the definition (or whenever you want) you can click on the Thesaurus button, and get synonyms for your word. The Encarta thesaurus shows over 25 synonyms for real, listed under 4 key synonyms, (actual, unfeigned, genuine, and very), with hypertext links to those synonyms. Several antonymns are also listed.
Finally, you can also click on the Translation button, and get French, German, Spanish, or Italian translations for words (but not phrases or expressions). No pronunciations for foreign translations are offered.
The Encarta dictionary includes definitions for "four letter" words, along with a password protected option to provide only "family-friendly" content, which works as advertised. Encarta also seems to include more technical terms (related to chemistry, biology, engineering, etc) than other dictionaries I have used. With the click of one button, you can print any definition, copy it to the windows clipboard, or add the definition to a "research list" you have started.
The Encarta Reference Library
Double clicking the Encarta Reference Library desktop icon opens up a full screen, Internet Explorer-based window for the Reference Library. In addition to the standard browser menu commands (File, Edit, View, Favorites, etc) at top of the screen, there is an additional menu heading, "FEATURES" to access Encarta's features; Homework, Maps, Multimedia, Articles, Online, Timeline, Tours, Statitistics, and Games. The "TOOLS" menu also offers to Encarta's tools (dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, etc) and options. As you dig into Encarta, its a little too easy to get lost, but if you do, there is a "home" icon to take back to the Reference Library main screen, as well as the familiar back and forward buttons.
Below the top menu bar of the Encarta/IE window is a single dialog box, where you can type in any subject you want to find information for. Microsoft has done a nice job of integrating the different packages (Encyclopedia, Atlas, sidebar articles, web content, etc) included in the Reference Lbrary. When you type your subject into the dialog box, a list of articles, charts, tables, videos, pictures, and maps related to the search term is shown on the left side of the screen. An icon is shown to the left of most listings, telling you if it is an article, picture, video, or other type of content. When I type in Mark Twain, a long list of hits pops up, and Encarta hilites the one which takes you to the Encarta article for Mark Twain. Other hits include a "sidebar" article on a Rudyard Kipling interview with Mark Twain, a table of "QuickFacts" on Mark Twain (Encarta includes hundreds' of QuickFact tables on different subjects, giving users a quick, interesting overview of many subjects), a picture of his house, maps to the Mark Twain house and Mark Twain cave, and a hundred or so other references in the Reference Library that mention Mark Twain.
The articles in the Reference Library contain a reasonable amount of detail, and are very easy to read. Each article contains many hypertext links to other articles (for the Mark Twain example, you can jump to the Missippi River) and references. Usually a set of related articles is listed and linked, as well as links to online information, and where appropriate, links to other Encarta features, including the "timeline", sidebar articles, Atlas, or a literature guide.
Features
These other "features" are both interesting and useful. Sidebar articles are sources of "primary information", including excerpts from books (excerpts from the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for example), newspaper articles (a L.A. Times article on Three Mile Island), the text of speeches (Nixon's Checkers Speech), etc. The "hits" from my Mark Twain search included a dozen related sidebar articles, including useful excerpts from two books, and some not so useful, like an article on frogs that mentioned Twain's famous story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
The Encarta timeline feature allows you to travel through time, graphically on your computer screen, and see what happened in any year from now to 500BC and earlier. Each event on the timeline is hyper linked to Encarta articles or other features. The Mark Twain time line entry for "Huckleberry Finn" in 1885 links to a reading from the book, an excerpt from the story, as well as a link to the main Mark Twain article in Encarta. Time lines can be configured to include only topics related to "Arts", "People and Society", "Philosophy and Religion", "Political History" or "Science and Technology". The timelines can also be filtered to include topics related to one continent (Africa, for example).
Encarta also offers several types of Maps. A standard, zoomable, view of the world, starts you off with a view of the globe which you can rotate to find any point, and then zoom in. About twenty different views are offered, including a political view showing countries, day and night views, views defining regions by precipitation, temperature, or climate, language spoken, and a "statistical" view, showing literacy rates, electical use, birth rates and a more than a hundred other statistics. All of the historical maps used in different Encarta articles are also listed together in the Map view, from a map of the Santa Fe trail to a historical map which walks you through the main events of the Viet Nam war, and hundreds of other maps.
A few "3d" tours are included with this version of Encarta, including Ramses' II temple, the Acropolis, two castles, the Colosseum in Rome, Persepolis, and the Roman Forum. Using your mouse, you can zoom in, look up and down, and simulate moving through these places on your screen. As you move around, clickable links pop up, allowing you to access more detail on many items. 2d tours of several cities (Cape Town, Havana, Chinatown, and 8 others), natural wonders (Mt. Everest), ancient sites (Pompeii), Landmarks (Alcatrez) and other points of interest (Fenway Park)are also included. I found the 3d tours a little slow on my system, and a little underwhelming. The 2d tours worked well.
Encarta includes a "statistics" center, where you can view statistics and charts on countries, climates or populations, as well as prepare your own. If your child is preparing a report on Iowa, or the Vatical city, this might be a good starting point, as a couple of pages of facts and statistics are available for most states, countries and other political entities.
Research Tools
The Encarta Researcher is sort of a built in note card system to help you build a report as you gather data from the Encarta Reference Library and/or internet sites. As you find information that you want to save for your report, you add it to a "Project" in the Researcher, just like you a a favorite to a folder on the Internet Explorer favorites list. You can then go back and edit this content, and use it to create Microsoft Word or HTML documents. Any document you build this way includes the content you found and saved, as well as a bibliography and source list summarizing where the information was found.
Encarta also includes Literature Guides for over 60 well known books, including three Harry Potter books, The Color Purple, Slaughter House Five, and The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings guide includes sections on the author, an overview, a section on the setting, information about themes and characters, literary qualities, social commentary, and other topics for discussion, sort of a mini "Cliff Notes". These guides should be a help to anyone looking for ideas when writing a report or trying to understand these books. Hopefully Microsoft will increase the number of books in the next version.
Would I Buy Encarta Reference Library Again?
Yes, the Encarta Reference Library is a great value for students and teachers. Anyone using it will feel like the have a small library at their finger tips, and not just an encyclopedia. With its minimal system requirements, it should run on about any system, and if you look for sales and rebates, the price can be less than $40. In terms of content, no digital reference work I have used before matches the Encarta Reference Library. You can spend hours going randomly from link to link, or use its built in tools to put together a focused reference work to cover any subject, especially if you can take advantage of Encarta's web content. Encarta is also a very mature product, with a well thought out user interface that integrates several quite different reference works, so that they work well together.
One or two of Encarta's features don't seem up to Microsoft's standards, for example, you can select any text in Encarta, and have it read back to you. This works, but the digital voice that reads this text sounds very artificial, which really distracts from the content. The 3d tours are a good idea, but are too few and need to take advantage of the 3d technology developed for computer games. The tours are really too slow to enjoy fully. But in the end, the Encarta Reference Library is a "must have" for anyone with children in school, and should get a lot of use.
As the most complete reference resource from Encarta, Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 continues Microsoft's tradition as a leader of integrat...More at eBay
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