Encarta Reference Library 2004 | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft
Category: Software
List Price: $69.99
Buy New: $3.95
You Save: $66.04 (94%)
New (6) Used (3) from $3.95
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 7888
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Xp, Windows 98
Genre: Childrens Reference Software
Color: Encarta Reference Library 2004
ESRB: Everyone
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows 98
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 3.2 x 2.2 x 0.6
MPN: 844-00619
Model: 844-00619
UPC: 805529344815
EAN: 0805529344815
ASIN: B000096L6Y
Release Date: June 30, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Put this indispensable learning tool to work for you and enliven your education | | • | Don't just read articles, experience them with multimedia content on almost every subject | | • | Rich and reliable content from the World Atlas, Encarta Africana, literature guide, translation tools & othe resources | | • | Comprehensive homework tools and research aides for better and easier learning | | • | Collection of videos from the Discovery Channel for interactive & dynamic education on a variety of subjects |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Encarta Reference Library 2004 delivers a complete reference resource for students and scholars!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Encarta Reference Library 2004: An Encyclopedia Masterpiece July 26, 2004
Marcelo Esteban Mauricio (San Justo, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the one edition that my father will give me, Amazon.com staff. This powerful encyclopedia has it all: Encyclopedia and atlas on one product. Previously, if you wanted to see all countries, you had to buy the atlas separately. But, from 2000 on, Atlas and Encyclopedia have bundled up since the 2000 edition. This new bundle is what we actually know as Encarta Reference Library, and this new edition incorporates 20 Discovery Channel videos, a feature that wasn't found in prevous editions.
Moreover, I want to congratulate the people at Microsoft Corporation for creating this new version of an exciting product.
And, Mr. Gates, you can include this review on the side of the 2006 edition packaging.
Thank you for reading,
Marcelo Mauricio
Encarta 2004 versus Britannica 2004 May 30, 2004
Billy Budd (Boston, MA USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have bought both Encarta and Britannica for years (EB in printed edition too: 32 volumes, 32.000 sheets). This is my opinion in brief: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) makes interesting to buy both.
TEXT: Britannica is a superb encyclopedia in text (not in visual aid) since 1768 (you know: an article by Einstein and so on...). Text in electronic version differs from printed encyclopedia (very large articles have been shortened). Britannica claims that it has more items than Encarta, but this is a joke: articles like "Mexico" are only one (with a lot of subdivisions) in Encarta, while in Britannica subdivisions are unconnected, and you must "jump" from one subdivision to another, which is slow and very annoying, especially if you want to copy it in "WORD". Very often, the text is not updated.
In the other hand, Encarta's text is not bad at all. Most articles have the name of their contributors (professions, works...): They are not John Doe. You can find large fragments of literary works, literature guides, a lot of sidebars and thousands of quotations. "Encarta Africana" is included. The Pop-Up (double clicking a word) Dictionary and Thesaurus has sound for correct pronunciation (by the way, it can read aloud, with a robotic and ugly voice, a whole article). The "Translation Dictionaries" to Spanish, French, German and Italian must be improved, because they are minimal. It gives you a lot of "Internet links", even if you are not connected. With Britannica you must be "on-line" and it searches in an EB Web page.
In theory you can update Britannica over the Internet free for a year quarterly (4 times), but this does not work: You can not find new files. Encarta can be updated free EVERY WEEK with new articles and additions or corrections to the old ones (till October 2004). With Encarta updating really works. Technically, is amazing to see the changes in old items.
ATLAS Britannica has not a real atlas; only a worlds map whose maximum detail is the States of USA. Statistics are very poor. Encarta's Atlas is like another encyclopedia, with a great detail (1 cm/ 4 km all over the world) and 20 types of atlas presentations (statistical ones can be counted by dozens). If you look a geographical article (city, river...) you can see in a corner where it is placed and, with only a click, open the atlas. In articles of cities, if you are on-line, you can see in another corner the weather of this place in that moment. If it is a USA place, you can read the latest news.
MULTIMEDIA: They say that "serious" or "adult" readers do not care about "pictures"; that multimedia is only for kids. I do not agree, because I think that, sometimes, "A picture is worth a thousand words". Works of art, anatomy, historical maps, diagrams ... Encarta devastates Britannica with a lot of photos, paintings, drawings, charts & tables, animations, interactivities, videos, music and sounds, pictures, 2-D and 3-D virtual tours, 360-degrees views, timeline, games... It is not only the quantity and quality. It is the easy access you have to all the multimedia, and that text and multimedia are fully integrated. Britannica is not really multimedia. It has photos and videos, but they make the program slow and sluggish. They should edit an alternative version with only text, as they did with the first edition in 1995. It worked fast and easy in old computers.
INTERFACE AND PERFORMANCE: This is the worst side of Britannica. With Encarta you only have to type a word or the beginning of a word to see all the articles and multimedia that contain it. If Encarta does not find anything, it gives you automatically alternative spellings. Even if you write the name of a small village lost in any country, you see it in the atlas. If you need to copy text or pictures, the integration with Microsoft WORD is perfect. It has additional ways to find content, including subject or multimedia browsing, "related articles" and the standard A-Z method. The "Research Organizer" is very helpful too. Encarta's TEXT FONT is very clear (Britannica's...) and you can choose 3 sizes.
Navigating with Britannica is different. 2004 edition is better than 2003 one, but still it is disappointing. I will only give you an example: if you do not know the exact and correct spelling of a name or word, it does not help you with similar spellings (unless you open a window and fight with it). As I said before, the program's performance speed is very slow and sluggish, and it must be dramatically improved. To go "back and forward" you do not find any icon and you need to open a "menu".... One "pro" for Britannica: they say it works with Macintosh.
I repeat my modest piece of advice: Encarta is excellent in all aspects, but Britannica's authoritative text (sometimes outdated) make interesting to buy both.
 Good in a Very Microsoftish Way March 21, 2004
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Encarta is good. It is very easy to use. It has a web site that a registered user could access. Its world map is far superior than the Encyclopaedia Britannica's. However, its contents are sometimes not that good.For example, I searched "John Rawls," a prominent moral and political philosopher, today. Its first line reads: [ Rawls, John (1921-), American moral and political philosopher, whose major work, A Theory of Justice, has had a profound impact on ethics and political theory since its publication in 1971. ] For God's sake, Rawls died on Nov 22, 2002. It's March 21, 2004 today. And Encarta, which supposedly should be updated weekly, did nothing to correct this mistake.
Building on an already attractive encyclopedia January 9, 2004
x_bruce (Oak Park, ILLINOIS United States)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
In my review for Encarta Deluxe 2004 my basic points were...
1. if you are a visual learner and not in upper division classes from High School onward Encarta has a great deal to offer at an attractive price.
2. if you need detailed articles Britianica is probably the better purchase as there are more subjects and more intensive treatment of them.If you are still hovering on which to get and you do not need the kind of detail Britanica has you will appreciate this expanded Resource package. In Encarta Reference Library 2004 Microsoft pulls out all the multimedia stops and delivers a highly entertaining and educating encyclopedia that is a pleasure to simply roam around. The additional African Encyclopedia, Maps, extra content and lots of additonal useful information such as quotes and a very nice section on world musical instruments complete with the sound and ensemble works of these exotic instruments most of us otherwise would be unexposed to. The dictionary and theasaurus are suited to the content and tie in nicely with the standard information. The result is a rich and involving multimedia learning experience. That makes Encarta Reference Library 2004 indespensible for casual and younger readers. While it is a nice gesture including the African Encarta the extra detail paid Africa at times seems disproportionate in it's importance compared to the rest of the reference libraries content. While this may be an unpopular thing to say it is almost verging on political correctness. While I applaud a deeper, and to some degree necesary involvement of African cultues contribution to the world I would have liked seeing a bit more attention paid the existing areas that are a little underdeveloped like political science, world history and the sciences. This is a minor quibble and the material on Africa is exceptionally well produced. Still, I think I'd rather hear and read more of Dr. King and Malcom X, or more detail about the Chicago 7 trial. No matter what, if you enjoy this well rounded multimedia experience. It is hard to imagine almost anyone not impressed with this exceptional program.
Invaluable October 23, 2003
Joe (Upstate, NY)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
I've tried both Encarta 2004 and Britannica 2004. As other reviews here pointed out, Britannica is also good, but the interface leaves a lot to be desired and program is very very sluggish. I'm on a 1.6Mhz Pentium 4 Windows XP system, with 1 gigabyte of memory. So I was a bit surprised how slow it was.I decided to go with Encarta because it's faster, has more multimedia, and I like how Microsoft updates it (and displays a list of what was updated/added). I haven't tried the older versions of Encarta so I cannot compare, but 2004 looks and works fine for me. Some have complained about the Visual Browser "carousel" on the main page of the program. This can easily be disabled in the program options if it annoys you. The Encarta interface is very clean and organized. Colorful detailed buttons on the toolbar make it very easy to access the most common tasks and the search function is very fast. It seems the more you dig into it, the more goodies you'll find. There are great interactivities, games, dynamic atlas, 3D and 2D virtual tours, thousands of quotations, an entire dictionary program, and lots more. If you're used to the Internet Explorer browser, the "Favorites" menu in Encarta is identical and a great way to bookmark and organize your favorite places in this vast program. It's very easy to get "lost" for hours just clicking around. I haven't looked through an encyclopedia on CD-ROM since the early 90's when CD-ROM technology was just starting to take off. I'm pleased to see how detailed and invaluable they've become. I'd recommend this to anyone.
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