Microsoft Encarta Deluxe Encyclopedia

Now on DVD, too!

Microsoft's Encarta 99 Reference Suite is a remarkable collection of research and reference works. It's an "all-in-one" version of its separate Encarta Encyclopedia and Atlas (now "Virtual Globe") with Bookshelf and a couple of other things thrown in to sweeten the deal.

The Reference Suite comes on five CD-ROM’s; The main modules are also still available separately.

The Encarta encyclopedia, which in 1997 was made available in two versions (Deluxe and Standard), includes the traditional yearly updates - with new articles, features, etc. It's designed for the Windows 9x/NT 4 operating systems, and packs a whole lot of stuff onto its disks. Microsoft says it has more information than a 29 volume encyclopedia. And, while one can argue about the information content of Encarta as compared with its competition (we look at Compton's elsewhere in TechnoFILE), Microsoft definitely has the slickest and most intuitive interface of the encyclopedias we've tested.

Not that an interface doth a reference work make, but it doesn't hurt.

Encarta Deluxe includes "Collages," multimedia tours through particular subject areas, from "After Communism" and "The Birth of Television" to "Where is Asia Now."There are film and audio clips and other general information through which you can scroll - and the presentation is both interesting and informative without being overly slick.

Finding a topic is easy. It's basically like using a Web browser: just type your topic into the space there, and Encarta searches the over 65,000 articles and lists the ones it thinks you're looking for. Click on the one you want and you're there in a couple of seconds.

Encarta also offers some pretty nifty 360 degree panoramas, including a spectacular aerial look at the Swiss Alps that could give you vertigo! This is not a shot for the faint-hearted!

Encarta has new or updated entries from last year's "encarnation", and the Deluxe edition includes more multimedia toys, internet links and interactive features than the standard version of the encyclopedia.

One "interactivity" that helped us get our jollies on a Saturday afternoon was the one dealing with orbits. Here, you can view or design the orbits of various planetary objects, from circular to open orbits - including a collision course that slams one body into another with a most satisfying bang. Chicken Little would have been proud...

Another neat musical "interactivity" asks you to identify from which part of the world a particular instrument comes, then gives you an example of the music it plays, including some nice Mississippi blues. You drag the instrument onto the part of the world you think is its home.

One disadvantage of the multiple disc format is that you have to switch discs periodically to access different parts of Encarta. Fortunately, Microsoft has also introduced a DVD version that confines all the goodies to a single disc.

The deluxe version of Encarta also offers you a "yearbook" and Web Link updates, features which are only available by subscription to those who get the standard version.

The research organizer is a newcomer to the family and uses a "file-card" type of metaphor to store text, graphical or other data. A card’s title appears in the left column, and each card includes a title, a field to cite the source, and a data area. Data can come from pretty well anywhere and you’re given help at filling in information about the data source.

This is a nice feature for creating bibliographies: fill in the source information for each card and Research Organizer spits out footnotes and a bibliography all by itself.

While we have some reservations about multimedia encyclopedias, which don't seem to be as in depth as some of their print cousins (and this isn't a shot at Encarta specifically, but at all the ones we've tried), they more than make up for that shortcoming in price, convenience, and fun. As a home reference tool, they're terrific - and have enough toys to give kids of the video generation incentive to use them.

Between the raw information, the animations, and even the games, Encarta Reference Suite offers a lot of value for the money - and we think it's a winner.

An excellent companion piece is Microsoft Virtual Globe, reviewed at the other end of the hyperlink. It's also available separately.

The other companion piece is Microsoft Bookshelf, the famous all-in-one reference suite that includes the American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, the Columbia Dictionary or Quotations, Encarta "desk" encyclopedia and Atlas (stripped down versions of the big Encarta works), the People's Chronology (a history book), the World Almanac and Book of Facts, the Bookshelf Internet directory, and a computer/Internet dictionary of terms.

That's quite a bunch to pack on a single disk and, as one might expect, elements like the encyclopedia and atlas are fairly superficial when compared with the Encarta Big Brothers. But if you get Bookshelf as part of the Encarta Reference Suite, you won't care, 'cause you'll have the other modules anyway.

The interface is comfortable and you can search quickly and easily merely by typing in your query. Bookshelf also parks a little icon on the taskbar that lets you quickly get at the features.

Encarta Reference Suite is powerful and easy to use, even if we think it may be a bit long on form and short on substance sometimes. Still, it's hard to be everything to everyone, and Microsoft has done a good balancing act with this reference suite.

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