Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate 2008 [OLD VERSION]

In many ways this is a useful and complete encyclopedia, particularly for geographical, political and historical topics.However not enough effort is put into updating technical articles. For example, the article on the technology of photography is 25 to 30 years out of date. Digital still photography is not mentioned. The closest is a reference to the original Sony Mavica, an analog electronic media camera. The bibliography for photographic technology cites sources from the mid 1980's and earlier.This encyclopedia would be far better if updating of topics were consistent throughout.

Okay but in the future, I hope they can provide the encyclopedia via usb pin drive.

This is the best encyclopedia out there. If you want great adult, in depth reading material and easy to use interface, this is the only one to buy.

The Encyclopædia Britannica was first published in 1768 and still remains the best scholarly volume of knowledge available, and now at a breathtakingly cheap price. Subsequent editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica took decades to update but the tome would double and triple in size each time. In 19th century the Encyclopædia Britannica had gone from 1 book to 20. By the first decade of the 20th century the Encyclopædia Britannica had grown to 29 with over 40,000 articles.In the course of the 1950s the Encyclopædia Britannica established a worldwide editing team to give the publication global representation. This era of the Encyclopædia Britannica is widely regarded as one of the most expensive and work demanding investments ever undertaken for a publication. Over 4,000 scholars where assembled for this project.During the 1970s until the 1990s the Encyclopædia Britannica went through restructuring into different categories to make the articles easier to access. The finalized version (1985-present) consists of a 32 volume set and is the one that this software is based on.The next major transformation took place in the early 1990s when the Encyclopædia Britannica took advantage of the CD-ROM revolution. The digital technology innovators claimed that the new data storage medium could be compared to containing the entire Encyclopædia Britannica on one disc. The Encyclopædia Britannica was released on one disc becoming one of the most popular software packages available on the new CD-ROM format.Along with providing one of the most comprehensive Encyclopædias available for computers, the Encyclopædia Britannica hosts the domain Britannica on the Internet.Even though the Internet revolution offered considerable challenges to the Encyclopædia Britannica, such as Google's search engine capabilities, Wikipedia the free on-line Encyclopaedia, along with Microsoft's Encarta software, the Encyclopædia Britannica still has a powerhouse collection of articles that are edited by a staff of academics that are specialized in each field. You are guaranteed quality information. This makes the Encyclopædia Britannica a dependable resource for anybody who just wants to get their facts about the world right. Journalists depend on it, as do researchers and students alike.The Encyclopædia Britannica has over a whopping 100,000 articles to read.The Encyclopædia Britannica, for the full experience, takes up 4 GB of drive space. It is still on one disc although the medium is now a single DVD and not a CD. Even on high-end machines the Encyclopædia Britannica can take quite some time to install, so be prepared to wait around while 4 GB of data extracts onto your computer. The Encyclopædia Britannica software runs like a web browser and resembles Apple's Operating System widgets. Quickly the Encyclopædia Britannica becomes a workspace. You can browse timelines, view the atlas, or explore popular events. There is a nice brainstormer, powered by TheBrain software, which allows you to go through huge sections of material by category, very rapidly.The Encyclopædia Britannica A-Z is always going to stand out as the reason to own this package. The material is just so well presented in terms of the quality of English, layout and the vast array of support material including graphics, videos, many of which the user can interact with. The search feature not only pulls up direct articles, but also one's linked to it, images and a book of the year list.There are a few downsides but they are minor. One is that the package is the equivalent of opening up several intensive web pages over a web browser. If your system hangs or slows down considerably if you open up lots of new tabs or windows with content heavy pages, then you can expect the Encyclopædia Britannica to act the same way. It has always been a hardware intensive package and still continues to be. So make sure your PC is in order for it. The other thing is that it requires you to register or else you will be asked every time you use it with a pop-up that doesn't stop until you do. It is a little annoying. The only way to turn it off is to register. It is also nice to have the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary imbedded in the software but it is just a basic dictionary search and thesaurus and lacks any advanced power like the full version dictionary. However the Encyclopædia Britannica itself makes up for these minor quibbles.Overall the Encyclopædia Britannica does one other thing well which all others fail to do. It makes you want to read it from start to finish. Many people have done this and it is a completely viable option given that you do a little bit each day over the course of a year or more depending on how much you do. Where other Encyclopædias are for reference, the Encyclopædia Britannica almost demands to be read. You just know the experience would be time well spent.The Encyclopædia Britannica could very well be one of the most important items you could ever own. Education is the best investment you can make.

They include the Merriam Webster dictionary, but it's a stripped-down verson, and unlike the encyclopedia, there's no search capability. You only get definitions. Most word-processing programs have that function, so the Websters component is worthless. The stand-alone Websters CD is a much better product. Also, the maps in the encyclopedia can't be zoomed in on, and the type is a little small. And there are no almanac-type features. There's an article about tennis, for instance, but no list of past tournament winners through the years. Maybe I've been spoiled by Encarta, which has zoom-able maps and Almanac type lists, but if Britannica wants to call itself "ultimate", it has a way to go.

I've had it with that pesthole of crackpots, nitwits, fans and school papers called Wikipedia. I copied Britannica to my hard drive and am now a happy camper.Two problems have cropped up. First, and most troublesome, is that the bibliographies of standing articles don't look like they've been updated in about twelve years and don't seem to have been updated online either. The ones I looked at were historical/biographical entries, but scholarship marches on, and for me the essence of a good reference is information about the latest research. (The so-called references cited on Wikipedia are usually just other crackpots' opinions.) Another problem is the video. I installed the patch from the online support page, but the video still doesn't work. This isn't a big deal for me, and it may be a problem on my end, but check it out if the multimedia is going to be important to you.That said, the quality of Britannica's content alone is worth the price, and to have the mother of encyclopedias installed locally in my computer makes it irresistable. If you do reference often, do yourself and/or your kids a favor and have this one running in the background.

My only reasoning for acquiring Britannica was I thought that spending some money could land me a more comprehensive resource for quick research other than the free Wikipedia. As soon as I installed it, I did some quick article comparisons between the $35 "2008 Ulimate Britanica" and the free Wikipedia and found that pretty much on every article I was looking at, Britannica fell way short in the depth of content. Their articles were at least 75% shorter than the ones offered on Wikipedia, it offered no scholarly citations, no organization, few pictures, and fewer articles in general.I'm not here promoting Wikipedia, but I was just wanted perhaps a more credible source of information. Instead, I only found that there was just so little information on this product it's not even worth the comparison. I hope Encarta is a lot better than this... or is our encyclopedic authority left to precarious user-submitted sites?I am a college student at a four-year university, btw.

I have a 1964 set of the Britannica in hardcover. It's great, but being able to pull up the information immediately on screen AND not having to switch from book to book makes the electronic version far easier to use