Encyclopedia Britannica 2001 DVD Edition

Why pay 70.00 for a buggy, non-resizable DVD version, when you can get all this an MORE for free off of the greatest encyclopedic volume in history? It is called the internet, and it is FREE, aside from the general access fee. You can have the lastest news, pictures and science reports, plus whitepapers, articles in biomedicine, physics, chemistry, mathematics, et cetera. Why pay for a 'version' of knowledge when you can have it all, not doled out in discreet dollops of creamy unsatisfaction like Britannica and Encarta? If you want to pay for learning and knowledge, the currency is determination.

I had high hopes when I ordered the DVD version of Britannica. I expected a huge array of easy to access information, backed up with powerful images and sound. Apart from the fact that I find the site information extremely poorly laid out and not as logical as Encarta to access, it doesn't even impress with it's depth. But most of all - I just hate the way that you have to PAY to get someone on the telephone, simply to help to get the stupid disc to work. One of the key tabs ("analyst") is bringing up a strange, incomprehensable message. It would be nice to get it resolved with a good old-fashioned customer service rep. I wouldn't bother, if I were you....

We all know the excellence of the Britannica. This DVD version is a very good way to use the vast information available. Not only you can move quickly between articles, but you can take notes, arrange them and use them for your research. You won't need to switch discs for media or text. Everything is a click away. You can get Britannica free on the web, but on DVD you will work faster and you will have more options available.

Everyone knows that the Britannica is a superb encyclopedia. The problem until now has been that the CD-ROM and DVD versions often failed to run properly on many computers. I suspect that much of the problem had to do with the fact that the earlier versions were produced by Broderbund/Mattel Interactive (Really!), hardly firms from which you would want to purchase serious software. I have just loaded this version, from MacMillan, and it runs smoothly, permitting the user to efficiently peruse the wonderful content, which puts Encarta, Compton's and the like to shame. Buy it.

The user interface for this product is so difficult. When you click on a word just to highlight it, the software will look up the word. Also, it is impossible to print out long article to read because the software break up articles into little section. But it does not let you print the whole article. You have to print out a small section each time.

When you buy the Encyclopedia Britannica DVD, your anticipation is that it's a Rolls Royce. It's not; it's an Edsel. Not only does it have non-resizable windows, its level of technical detail stops at about a college sophomore level. This is adequate for a high school student, but I expected a much higher level of erudition from this DVD. After all, it's Britannica.