Encarta DVD makes Reference Sweet

By Jim Bray

The DVD ROM version of Microsoft's Encarta 2000 Reference Suite packs a lot of information onto a single digital disk.

Encarta, also available on five CD's, is an "all-in-one" marriage of the Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe, Interactive World Atlas, World English Dictionary, and "Encarta Online Deluxe." The latter is an Internet-based extension to the suite that puts even more information at your "mousetips."

I've always liked Encarta, but I like the DVD version best. With CD's, it never seemed to matter which disk was in the drive - the info I wanted was always on a different one. Now, thanks to all five CD's being crammed onto one DVD, there's no swapping.

This is admittedly a small point, but it's a wonderful convenience feature and once you're used to it you'll find CD-ROMs almost as attractive as floppy disks. Well, maybe not quite that bad…

Microsoft says the DVD version also has more than double the videos and more than three times the 360 degree panoramas (these are neat!) as the CD version, and that the audio and video quality are better.

The search engine is now unified as well, so you can look for data in any of the modules simultaneously - and this is extremely convenient.

The Encyclopedia includes more than 42,000 articles (including an extra 10,000 "historical archive articles" that weren't in last year's version), and Microsoft claims almost a third of the content is either new or revised.

A really nifty feature is the "Dynamic timeline." This is kind of a visual history of the world through which you can scroll, clicking on hot linked topics or eras to find more detailed information. While scrolling backward through time, for instance, I came across "Saul Unites the Israelites" and when I clicked on it a little window opened, revealing a short essay on the topic along with links to related info like "Canaan," "King David," "the Sinai Peninsula," etc.

You can copy text from the encyclopedia and paste it into your word processor, too, which saves you having to type all the stuff back in.

Encarta also includes "Collages," multimedia tours through subject areas like "After Communism" and "The Birth of Television." There are film and audio clips, too, and piles of other general information through which you can meander - and Encarta's presentation is interesting and informative and makes good use of multimedia.

The World English Dictionary puts a little icon onto one of Microsoft Word's toolbars and is a nice enhancement to the word processor's built in dictionary/thesaurus. If you want to make sure you're using - or spelling - a word correctly, just highlight it and click the book icon; Encarta springs into action (as long as the disc's in your drive) and brings you its various definitions, an audible pronunciation and a list of words that are close to it.

Interactive World Atlas is a real hoot. From space, you can drag and drop the world to wherever you want, then double click on the place you want to see and - quicker than you can say "artificial intelligence" - the map expands and you can zoom in or out or add/subtract detail to your heart's content.

You can take "virtual tours" from pole to pole or from mountain top to ocean bottom - or cruise national capitals and find out what a region's people are like.

I particularly enjoyed the "virtual flights" that let you soar over the world at various altitudes and angles, getting a 3D-like "bird's eye view" of Mother Earth. This was exhilarating, though I wish I could have made the window expand to fill my screen.

The Atlas is extremely flexible and it's customizable as well.

Finding a topic in Encarta is a piece of cake, assuming it's there in the first place. Just type your query into the search engines and Encarta lists the results it finds. As with a Web browser, you just click on the choice you want and Encarta whisks you there in a couple of seconds.

Encarta is powerful and easy, even if it is a bit long on form and short on substance occasionally. Still, it's hard to be everything to everyone, and when all is said and done Microsoft has done a pretty good balancing act.

Encarta runs under Windows 9x or NT 4 Workstation (Service Release 3 or later).

Jim Bray's technology columns are distributed by the TechnoFILE and Mochila Syndicates. Copyright Jim Bray.

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