Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition CD
reviewed by Rick Fischer

Many in the Memphis PC Users Group will remember the Encyclopedia Britannica with a sort of mystical awe. This was the gold standard of encyclopedias. You could probably find a set at the public library. Some of the wealthy families owned a set. After all, that's how you knew they were wealthy.
But no matter where you found them you always knew you'd find lots of text (and few pictures). They used to say that the Encyclopedia Britannica was for the older kids.
Times have changed and the Encyclopedia Britannica has gone through a number of transformations. But, the new Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Deluxe CD continues its emphasis on text and "older kids."
And, while its holdings are impressive, it can put a load on your computer resources. I had no problem running Encyclopedia Britannica on a clean Dell 733 with 128 RAM over Windows 98 SE. I got low resource alerts on my Dell 500 with 128 RAM on Windows 98 SE. The Dell 500 is my regular home computer and has lots of programs installed (but not loaded at the time). My Dell 500 also locked up four times while using Encyclopedia Britannica 2002.

Test drive
Today I needed to know how much of a book's selling price typically goes to the author. My information was a few years old and I was suspicious that it might have changed. It wasn't in the new edition of the textbook we were using at the University. So, I started to search the Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 on CD to see whether I could find the answer.
The main page has three ways to search. You can use the Search button. Here you'll use words or phrases to locate material in the encyclopedia, Web directory or dictionary.
I typed in the whole question: "How much do book authors make?" I got a lot of references to the authors of the annual updates. That's when I realized that it is much happier with keywords. I tried "book." From book I went to book publishing and found a wonderful in-depth (yep, for older kids) treatise in book publishing from the earliest times. It was much more comprehensive than the chapter we will cover on books in class next week (college freshman level Intro to Mass Communication). Not much on recent times and nothing on the economic aspects of the publishing business. Let's try to get at it another way.
Britannica A - Z lets you look at the complete alphabetical index. Here's where you can see whether the item is an article, image, map, audio clip, video clip or table. They've got some of each, but the majority are articles. I saw "book" again and tried "writing." Not here.
Another way to search is by something called knowledge navigation. You find topics by navigating through related subjects. I've seen this called a spider diagram because the words are arranged hierarchically but not in the traditional "tree" or outline form. I had given up on learning about book authors (today) so I clicked on "the arts." I drilled down a few levels and found myself selecting Lee DeForest, inventor of the Audion vacuum tube. Interesting.

Special Features
Ok, there are lots of special features - maps, country data, timelines. But on the start page you can select "visual tours" of: rock music, ecosystems, thunderstorms, human anatomy, topic spotlights (opens to still more special topics), Britannica classics (classic articles penned by now-famous authors) and online spotlights.
I chose rock music. After a beautiful Rock Music screen I was directed to lots of text. Nice hyperlinks. Great for reports, but if you wanted to actually hear any of the artists, listen to samples of the musical influences and such, you were out of luck. There are some audio descriptions by some of the pioneers, but no actual music. Curious.
You can select the tab called media and see pictures. Don't select the tab called Web unless you are hooked up to the Internet. I got the big blue screen when I selected Web (while not connected).

Choice of Load
You can do the minimum load - called "compact setup." It will take 140 MB of hard disk space. If you don't have Internet Explorer 5.01 (at 50 MB) you will get that too. With this load you will have to put in one or the other data disks when asked. There are two data disks and one startup disk
The "one-disc setup" takes 1 GB and lets you get by with putting one CD in the drive. No swaps. This is what I did.
The heavy-duty load - called "complete setup" -- is supposed to be very quick and puts everything on your hard drive (2.GB). No CD in the drive.
You'll get one year access to their fee-based online service and the ability to get update over the Internet. But you'd better have a pretty heavy-duty computer to take advantage of all this. Or, maybe you still have to be one of wealthiest people in town -- just like when I was a kid.

Stated Requirements: Windows 95 to XP or NT 4 with service pack 3. Recommends Pentium 233 or faster. 64 MB RAM for Win 95/98. 96MB RAM for Win 2000/Me/XP. 140 MB of free hard drive space (for minimum load). CD-ROM drive, mouse, sound card. Also available on (one disk) DVD.

$ 59.95
www.britannica.com