2 stars (Bitterly disappointed) - Microsoft have had years to get the Encarta interface right, and they still can't manage it. By now we can be sure of their strategy: deliberately build in imperfections and slyly *remove* existing functionality in order to give them something to improve in future editions, without which improvements they will have no product to market every year.
Every year I look for basic improvements which are never there.
- The homepage now has a huge picture of a white sea anemone type creature. A high quality image, but I don't want to see it every darn time! Surely Microsoft would realise that you can't please everyone all the time when it comes to images (desktop wallpapers, screensavers, etc) so why would they palm this thing off on us...?? We cannot get rid of it. Imagine if the background image could change randomly every time using pictures from the encyclopedia. That would have been interesting. Microsoft are just not thinking.
- On the homepage there is a large green information balloon pointing to the search bar. Isn't everyone sick of this sort of patronisation? The first time you see it the balloon performs its function, thereafter it is just annoying. My instinct is to immediately get rid of it (shouting "Alright, I'm not an idiot!") but I can't!
- The only other feature on the homepage is a dull list of subject items on the left, which takes us into a boring spiral of menu choices resulting in a highly selective set of (often disappointing) results. I tried this once and will never use it again. You won't either.
- There is still an almost complete lack of options available for customising Encarta. Certainly no improvement here at all over previous years. What on earth have all those programmers in that huge building in Seattle been doing all this time?
- There has been no updating of the Atlas maps, no new roads or improved accuracy. That would have been a reasonable step forward, but Microsoft seems to have left the Atlas for dead for many years. For example, go to Thailand and browse around for Kanchanaburi, a sizeable town and a prime tourist destination (site of the River Kwai bridge). The town does not even appear on the map. Surely it would be easy enough to run the maps by someone in each country and get them to point out some salient improvements like this?
- There is still no direct link from the homepage to the Atlas! How difficult is it to add an icon for that?? We have to go through the menus to reach it, like it is some trivial addition to the program.
- Where is full screen mode? There is no full screen mode!! The Atlas maps are squashed into a corner of the screen. We need full screen mode for the maps! Doh!!
- There is a large amount of wasted screen space that could have put to better use. A very broad white bar at the top is almost empty. In the Atlas there is a big new sidebar containing pointlessly huge icons that takes up a fair percentage of screen space. These icons are hardly ever used - this is a major design step backwards from the previous edition. They could have used this space to provide bigger "cinemascope" maps - that would have been great. One wonders at the amazing lack of gumption of the people responsible for designing these layouts. But again, we can probably assume they are deliberately putting aside such improvements for future editions.
- I find I am no longer able to associate .erl files (in Explorer) to open in Encarta. No doubt some inscrutable new security system prevents me from doing this, which to me was essential for opening my favourites files (maps) within the Atlas. I'm quite peeved about this.
- The Atlas now defaults to the "hand" curser every time you open it, even though I never use the hand curser, prefering the "select area" cursor. Again, no customisation is allowed. I have to manually click the "select area" curser every time I open the Atlas. Another step backwards and very annoying!
- I'm glad they got rid of the long list of subject headings that appeared on the left side of the homepage (I was tired of seeing "Bertie Ahern" at the top), but it was a mistake to get rid of it completely. There were occasions when it was actually useful to browse down the list - it gave you a feel of exactly how deep the coverage was and was the best method of serendipitous browsing. This list is now nowhere to be found!
In short, the new search interface is the only improvement in the 2006 edition. Given the regression in other areas you will be better off sticking with the 2005 edition. All in all the 2006 edition is hugely disappointing and has really damaged my confidence in Microsoft's ability to give us what we want. This business of routinely releasing new versions every year is holding us back, not taking us forward! You can imagine how terrifed they are that the day will come when they cannot improve the product significantly anymore. You can be sure they will never make it perfect for us for this reason.
5 stars (Most extensive title. Well done, some thin spots.) - Encarta 2006 is, overall, an excellent product. No installation problems and no problems running it on a 1.1 Ghz laptop with Windows XP. I did discover, however, that it likes RAM and ran more quickly when I increased my RAM from 384 to 768 MB. The content is quite good, with the occasional thin spot. Obvious topics are extremely well covered while some more obscure queries lack in detail. For example, my 7-year-old son and I were interested in the human digestive system and found a great diagram and articles. When we looked up wild turkeys however, we discovered the article did not contain a description of their diet (though it did have a nice recording of a wild turkey call). Multimedia items such as sounds and videos are plentiful and appear regularly in articles. Within a few days I realized what a bargain this package is given the sheer volume of content. No encyclopedia will be everything to everyone, but Encarta 2006 Deluxe is a fine reference product.
5 stars (Redefines the digital encyclopedia) - I would have wanted a little more content, but for that I guess there's the Wikipedia and the general internet. What this digital encyclopedia does is not just give you information but the feeling of being there. You pick up on the nuances of a subject, not just the raw data. I grew up with a number of encyclopedias as a kid, and Britannica was the king of the tomes. However in the digital world, Britannica 2006 may give me Shopping with discount and great articles, but Encarta gives me the connected experience, superior multimedia, extra rich and crisp graphics. I also had the 2004 version but there are many new features that make this is a good upgrade. |
