Britannica
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006
Marketed as for 7 to Adult the latest version is available on either CD or DVD I was sent the latter. You will need a Pentium III running Windows 98SE or later, at least 256MB of RAM and at least 1.1GB of hard disc space. To do a complete install will need 4.3GB. You also need at least a 1024x768 display and 16bit colour.
The look of it is very different from last year, to begin with a different installer and you need to enter the sixteen digit serial number as part of the installation. Doing the full install on a reasonably fast machine took 29 minutes, and probably 27 of those were spent copying the files, there are in fact 12 stages and a further stage will be required to download a brain more on that in a bit. The install on my machine took 4.7GB.
There are in fact three different encyclopaedia libraries in one. The first intended for children up to 10, the second for students and the third for adults. Not only is the content filtered but also more importantly the wording used in the various articles is changed to suit the vocabulary of the users age.
On first run it takes almost a minute to fully initialise, you know which of the three libraries you are in by the different colour schemes. Blue for adults, Green for students and a purple pink for children. You would also soon know by the detail given for any question.
As an example enter Niagara Falls into the search field and you almost instantly get 258 articles offered in the childrens library, the student library thinks for a couple of seconds before producing 1353 articles. The adult section has the hard disc whirring for around 15 seconds before it comes up with 5424 articles. In all cases there are 38 images and 9 multimedia offerings.
So what is the Brain, it is a way of thinking and linking thought to the way you are supposed to think yourself, this is not the same as an index that only works on exact input. Certainly this is something new this year and in the adult section links can be rather large causing your real brain to think maybe that is more information than I wanted. However only time will tell if with careful input you will start to use the results to any effect.
Each library contains the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, they also contain a world atlas and the maps within have hot links, all these links are different according to the library selected. I liked the way when working it is easy to return to a previous subject as they remain at the top of the window rather like minimised folders.
I think its safe to say everything that was in a previous version is still there, some things may be accessed in a different way and maybe even from a different place. On the whole the new layout seems better to me, however, I am not sure about the Brain.
Doing my normal searches found it at around £47 in several places however I also found that http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593392532/kelkoo-2004-softw-21/ref%3Dnosim/202-8739749-6184628 had it for an amazing £28.97 including free delivery.
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