ihavebeenfloated

This is one of those things I write about just because Google didn’t help me AT ALL when I was trying to figure out which offline encyclopedia software was better, Encarta or the Encyclopedia Britannica. If you stumble across this blog post thanks to Google, leave a comment letting me know I helped you decide, it would be nice.

I recently got a laptop and I figured that for school and writing uses, having some sort of encyclopedia and dictionary/thesaurus application would be incredibly useful to have on the laptop. I access wikipedia on a nearly daily basis from my Sidekick, but having it on the laptop would be great for those times when I really just need to look up something quickly and easily. I only tried Microsoft Sudent with Encarta Premium 2008, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite. Talk about long software names.

Let me say, first of all, that I am surprised at how cheap these applications are.

Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 – $40

The interface for this is ugly, ugly, ugly. It is also slow, slow, slow. These two reasons were why I sought another product. But, Microsoft Student comes with a lot of other things that more than justify the $40 price even if you completely overlook the lousy encyclopedia portion of it.

Microsoft Math alone is nearly worth the price, as it is a full-featured graphing calculator as well as a database of every formula you’ll probably ever need. It doesn’t look like it does Calculus, but it has everything you need for algebra, physics, chemistry, trig, etc. It has a full equation solver which actually explains each step when solving the equation. When I finally take my next math class, I am sure this will come in very handy. Honestly, this is the first part in many great things about Microsoft Student.

Encarta Dictionaries is another sore spot for Microsoft Student. While it is a full featured dictionary, thesaurus, translator, and a whole conjugation database, the results are somewhat lacking. My test for this part of the product was running a thesaurus search on the word ‘curious’. Encarta Thesaurus displays:

inquisitive
inquisitive, inquiring, snooping (informal), interested, questioning, probing, nosy (informal), prying
antonym: apathetic

peculiar
peculiar, odd, strange, unusual, intriguing, remarkable, bizarre, weird
antonym: ordinary

...which is totally suitable. The dictionary part of it features pronunciation sound files as well, which is a big draw.

Microsoft Student also features a whole suite of learning tools. There are pages on improving your writing, how to critically analyze a character in a work of fiction, summaries of hundreds and hundreds of books as well as author biographies, all sorts of crap that will probably end up being useful to me at some point. It’s impossible to overlook the bevy of useful stuff within Microsoft Student.

It’s a shame Encarta Premium 2008 is a load of crap. My test for the encyclopedias was to search for Charles Manson. Encarta 2008 does not have an article dedicated to Charles Manson, only mentions of him in other articles about crime and Roman Polanski. It also has a quote: “Death is psychosomatic.”

The format of articles is actually really attractive, probably the only positive interface thing within Encarta 2008. The Atlas is also very nice, featuring an artistic 3D globe you can freely spin around.

There is a really nifty “timeline” feature that stretches the entire encyclopedia across, well, a timeline. It’s awesome, and awesome looking.

You do not need a key for Microsoft Student, and you do not need to register to receive Encarta updates, which there are already at least one hundred of. It is a safe product to download illegally, if you so choose.

Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite – $40

Britannica 2008 is pretty, and fast, fast, fast. As a dedicated encyclopedia, it is miles ahead of Encarta in almost every way. Charles Manson has his own article, even if it is short. For the same price of Microsoft Student, however, you get much less. Britannica is basically only an encyclopedia, there is not much else here.

It comes built in with Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus, but no translator or conjugation list. Here’s what the Britannica thesaurus spits out for curious:

curious adj
1

syn inquisitive 1, disquisitive, inquiring, investigative, questioning
rel searching; analytical; prurient
ant incurious
2 interested in what is not one’s personal or proper concern ‹a curious old woman prying into her neighbors’ affairs›
syn inquisitive, inquisitorial, inquisitory, ‖nibby, nosy, peery, prying, snoopy
rel interfering, intermeddling, meddling, tampering; examining, inspecting, scrutinizing; impertinent, intrusive, meddlesome
idiom consumed (or burning or eaten up) with curiosity, curious as a cat (or monkey)
con aloof, detached, disinterested, indifferent, unconcerned, uninterested; apathetic, impassive, phlegmatic, stolid
ant incurious
3

syn strange 4, bizarre, odd, oddball, peculiar, quaint, queer, singular, unusual, weird

Wow! Talk about exhausting!

However, the Britannica dictionary does not feature pronunciation sound files. Lame! Why can’t anything be perfect?

The timeline feature in Britannica sucks, it is ugly and hard to navigate.

The atlas is a flat and boring 2D map, not nearly as fun to play with.

Britannica doesn’t come with anything else. I thought it was supposed to be an “ultimate reference suite”.

You need a serial key and need to register to receive updates, and even then it doesn’t look like updates are downloaded permanently like they are with Encarta.

Summary

This is really a tough call. My initial thoughts are: since I assumed encyclopedia applications would cost upwards of $80 a piece, you should get both. They compliment each other really well, in the sense that neither does anything perfectly.

Microsoft Student is a great piece of software, and the Encarta Premium 2008 attached to is a very nice, but ultimately relatively useless, bonus. All the student related tools in it will probably be invaluable to me at some point, and for $40 I almost feel like you’re ripping someone off. There is at least $3,000 worth of college text books within Microsoft Student.

Britannica 2008 is a good encyclopedia, and that is about all it is good for. The included Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus are good references, as long as you aren’t too put off by the lack of pronunciation sound files.

If you’re looking for something to carry around on your laptop as a quick reference and for school/college, get Microsoft Student 2008. If you’re looking for an encyclopedia with nothing else, get Britannica 2008. I feel that Britannica should take a cue from Microsoft and improve their product with an actual “reference suite” like the title suggests.

If you have internet access, Britannica is rendered entirely useless by Wikipedia. Microsoft Student is not.