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Review: Encarta 2004 Premium Suite Multimedia Encyclopaedia Electronic encyclopaedias have been around for a while now and they just continue to get better. This latest offering from Microsoft packs more than an equivalent 60-volume printed set onto a single DVD. It features fast and efficient content searches, built-in report building and rich multimedia content not available in the bound editions. By PETER SMITH E NCARTA 2004 PREMIUM SUITE integrates an encyclopaedia, World atlas, dictionary and thesaurus into one seamless package. It is available in either CD or DVD format and runs on all recent versions of Windows. Multimedia presentation means that along with the facts and figures, you also get sounds, animations and movies. Naturally, this is one of the biggest selling points of what is now the world’s most popular multimedia encyclopaedia. Included in the 2004 edition are 130,000 articles, 25,000+ photos and illustrations, 3000 sound and music clips, 1.8 million atlas locations and over 260 videos and animations. Equally important to content is the ability to be able to pinpoint, extract and organise the material of interest. This is exceptionally easy in Encarta 2004 with the aid of a web-based interface and excellent search facilities. If you’ve used a web browser before, you’ll be able to drive Encarta “out of the box”. Basic features Encarta uses a concept called “centres” to provide casual access to its vast store of information. Each centre is accessible via a drop-down menu on the main toolbar. Available centres include articles, maps, multimedia content, statistics, geographical tours, historical siliconchip.com.au timelines, games and online material. For more than just casual browsing, you can use Encarta’s powerful search facilities to quickly find what you want. A search from the main toolbar draws elements from the encyclopaedia, atlas, dictionary, thesaurus and the Internet and arranges the results in a familiar “web” style page layout. For example, a search for “Albert Einstein” returns a main article on the man, headed with a clickable contents list. A series of related resources appears in the right margin, including links to additional articles, quotations, multimedia content, a sidebar from the Times (in this case, Einstein’s obituary) and links to recommended Internet sites. As you identify content that is pertinent to your work, you can add it to your Favourites list for instant access later. Even better, you can gather text and media “on the fly” using the Researcher tool. This excellent tool also makes it easy to add statistics, charts, tables, notes and more to your reports. Of course, you can also export content to other applications if so desired. Study centre If you’re having trouble getting started on a project, help is available in the Study centre. There you’ll find a Project Starters guide that gives advice on how to write an essay, book report, research paper, lab report and June 2004  35 Fig.1: Encarta opens with the Visual Browser, inviting you to click your way in to its depths. It’s web-based interface means that anyone can use it. Fig.4: Encarta includes a comprehensive World atlas with over 1800 map points. Explore the World using a variety of map styles to learn about populations, climates, politics, economies and much more. You can even place “pins” in the globe, complete with notes for later reference. science project, to name but a few. To help with presentation, you’ll also find a selection of basic templates for use with the Researcher tool. Budding authors will appreciate the Literature Guide, which helps to explain themes, characters and settings from over 120 classics in literature. Also of note is the Curriculum Guide, which is intended as an aid to teachers and parents. Using this guide, you can find information in a range of subjects suitable for secondary and senior secondary levels of study. Internet access Fig.2: a web-based interface and powerful search facilities ensures ease of use. Once you’ve pinpointed what you want, you can add it to your Favourites list for later access or copy desired elements to build your project. The Internet is an important resource for study material, but tracking down relevant information is often a time-consuming task. Encarta’s editors ease the pain somewhat by providing a host of links to recommended material. With its web browser interface, Encarta marries Internet content seamlessly to local CD/DVD content, significantly increasing the amount of information at your disposal. For those concerned about content on the ’net, you can enable the parental controls option to ensure only “family-friendly” hits are returned. Encarta can be updated on-line for one year from date of release at no additional cost. For this edition, the cutoff date is October 2004. Learning can be fun! Fig.3: the Timeline is an intuitive and engaging way of discovering related events in history. Clicking on any hotspot opens a short text description, complete with links to related material. 36  Silicon Chip As well as direct access to information through Encarta’s search facilities, Microsoft has included several other interesting ways of exploring encyclopaedia content. For example, the Interactive Timeline allows you to scroll through time from Earth’s geological beginnings right up to the present. Historical periods and events appear as horizontal strands of time, each clickable to reveal a short text description along with links to related material. Importantly, multiple strands are “overlaid”, allowing you to see how these periods and events interrelate. New to this version of Encarta is the Visual Browser, siliconchip.com.au another way of exploring a particular topic in depth. Essentially, it’s just a series of animated graphical links related to the displayed topic. Nevertheless, it provides a unique way of exploring interrelated information, especially if you’re looking for inspiration or just enjoy browsing. Found in the Tours centre, “Map Treks” are an interesting and informative way of exploring any region on the globe. Based on a variety of map styles from Encarta’s atlas, you can learn all about populations, climates, politics, economies and much more. If all that sounds a little boring, then check out historic cities and places or take a field trip in the 2-D Tours section. Here you’ll find Mount Everest, the Serengeti Plane, Prague, the Kremlin and even the Space Shuttle, to name a few. Each tour incorporates a map of your route, a series of photos and 360° panoramic images that showcase the multimedia content of Encarta. Ancient ruins Fig.5: explore man-made and natural wonders and famous cities in the 2-D Tours centre. 360° panoramic images really bring the experience to life. If that’s not enough, you can visit ancient ruins and landmarks from the past in the 3-D Tours section. With a few mouse clicks, enter tombs in Ramses II’s temple in Abu Simbel, navigate the passages of the Colosseum in Rome or visit Beaumaris Castle in North Wales. Younger students will appreciate the quizzes and interactivities in the Games centre. There you can explore a variety of different topics such as insect structure, world music and natural wonders. As a bonus, the 2004 edition includes 20 high-quality videos from the Discovery Channel. Watch animals in their natural habitat, see where electricity comes from or learn how stars evolve. Note, however, that you’ll need the DVD version of the product to get all 20 videos. Summary This review has focused on the Premium Suite release of Encarta 2004. Cut-down versions with less content are also available but at the recently reduced RRP of $129.95, we think that most will opt for “the works”. At this price, it has to be one of the best educational products on the market. A complete list of system requirements appears below. Note that when installing the product, you have a choice of a minimum or full installation. A full installation copies the entire contents to your hard disk drive, speeding access and eliminating the need to continually switch discs during use. This is by far the preferred method but does require about 2GB of free drive space. Fig.6: interactivities help make the learning experience more memorable. In this anatomy study, any of the 10 body systems can be displayed by clicking on the relevant buttons. The CD version ships on four CDs, whereas the DVD version requires only a single disc. If your PC reads DVDs, get the DVD version. This eliminates potential disk swapping and you get the full complement of SC videos as well. System Requirements • • • • • Windows 98/ME/2000/XP 333MHz or faster processor (500MHz recommended) 64MB of RAM (128MB for Windows 2000 and XP) Super VGA, 16-bit or higher supporting 800 x 600 screen resolution 4MB or more of video memory siliconchip.com.au • • • • • 260MB hard drive space minimum Quad-speed CD-ROM drive (CD version) or DVDROM drive (DVD version) 16-bit sound card with speakers or headphones Internet Explorer 6.0 or later (included on CD, requires 100MB additional hard disk space) Access to the Internet June 2004  37