Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Alice in wonderland
Being a previous owner of an earlier version of Britannica on CD, I was absolutely amazed by the 2003 Ultimate Reference CD.The CD seemed innocent enough once the program loaded and I was presented with a search box and a few other buttons. But don' t be deceived by the simplicity. As soon as I entered a few queries, I suddenly realized the enormity of the data contained in this product. It reminded me of the first time I ever browsed through the print version as a kid--you almost cannot believe how wondrously complex the world can be. I found myself skipping from topic to topic going through history as a wide-eyed observer...and at the end of my first session, I actually felt smarter!I have a recent version of Encarta installed on a machine at work and I can tell you that with Microsoft's backing, it has some really excellent graphical features. While I can see the appeal, I never felt compelled to LEARN. It was if I was playing a video game, and the content was secondary. Overall,I 'd recommend this CD to anyone who is genuinely curious about the world we live in and has a healthy thirst for knowledge.
Rating: - No problems with Britannica
I recently received Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite on dvd. I read all the problems people had with it, but decided to purchase it anyway because of the content. I had no problem downloading it to my hard drive and the user interface is straight forward. I don't know why people are having so much problems with the software. It may be because they are using Windows instead of OS X.Although it is easier to look an article up in the book version of the encyclopedia, it is a lot more economical to buy it on dvd. ...
Rating:  - Some improvements and corrections are needed!
If you are a serious user of reference books and you intend to buy multimedia encyclopedia because of its text content and not multimedia features such as videos and animations, you might be interested in this brief comparison between Encyclopaedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta (in both cases I've been trying 2002 Standard Edition).One big Britannica's plus
Articles
Articles in Britannica are usually longer and more precise than articles in Encarta, not to mention the overall number of articles (Britannica beats Encarta, especially its Standard Edition). And finally: there are less mistakes in Britannica than in Encarta.
One of the big blunders (in both encyclopedias!) is a false information that Slovenia, a Central European and Alpine country, lies on the Balkans, though the northern border of this peninsula is (in Encarta only) correctly described as Upper Sava River - Rijeka. Slovenia lies north of the Croatian seaport Rijeka and doesn't belong to the Balkans neither geographically or politically!
Another Britannica's slip is its claim that the Slovenian composer Jacobus Gallus was German-Austrian. If editors of Britannica doesn't believe to me (I've sent them plenty of corrections including this one a few years ago), they should take a look at Merriam Webster's Biographical Dictionary (see my review there!) where Gallus is described correctly. Some of the Britannica's minuses
Characters display
Encarta displays practically all foreign characters correct (e.g. Slovenian and Czech c, s and z with a circumflex, other Central European characters, Portuguese a and Spanish n with a tilde, French e with a grave accent, etc.) while Britannica doesn't. In Britannica a Croatian writer Senoa (S with a circumflex) is listed in the very beginning of the A-Z list, and a great Slovenian poet Preseren (again s with a circumflex) is almost imposible to find though he's listed in the Britannica A-Z. A fact that Encarta doesn't list those two men of letters at all is another story (see One big Britannica's plus at the beginning of this review). Interface
Encarta has much more user friendly interface than newer versions of Britannica. In Britannica it's obviously designed for the extinct 14" monitors. Find tool in Britannica has its own window. Therefore you have to make more clicks to choose an article and read it than in the case of Encarta. Thousands of additional clicks mean a lot of extra time. Multimedia content
It's also a (big) plus for Encarta, but for an adult user of encyclopedias multimedia isn't the most important feature. My advice
Probably the best decision is to buy both Encarta and Britannica (of course not necessarily the same year; in my opinion Britannica is the one who should wait until its interface is improved - or even reversed to its '98 version). It may be very useful to have two different sources of information - not only for researchers and students.
If you don't mind about multimedia features and if you'll use multimedia encyclopedia as an authoritative source of facts and information only, you'll probably prefer Britannica. But keep in mind that even in Britannica there are some small and big mistakes, and that its interface and character display aren't as user friendly as in Encarta. PS
I actually gave Britannica 3 stars for its contents and 1-2 stars for its interface.
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