Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 review: Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006

Finally, a reference company creates reference software. Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 has an enormous amount of data to please curious browsers and serious researchers, with a language-learning program and flash cards to boot. Thanks to a range of search features, you can mine installed and online content for anything under the sun. Literacy rates in Algeria? A time line of medical history? No problem. However, quarterly updates make this program better for researching historical topics than current events. Britannica's information is unbeatable and its interface simple, but the company needs to address technological problems such as wretched technical help, ultraslow installation, and the program's enormous size. Your computer must have a CD or DVD drive and at least 3.7GB free on a hard drive. Unlike the CD version of Microsoft Encarta, the one for Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 is sold only online. Although we think Britannica has better data, you'll have fewer technical hassles with Encarta.

At $49.95, the Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite offers a lot of bang for the buck. You get the Encyclopedia Britannica Library, the Britannica Student Library (for ages 10 to 18), and the Britannica Elementary Library (for grades K through 5). Three tabs let you choose the library you want, and a top-of-the-page search bar offers buttons for the Atlas, the Dictionary, and other tools. Britannica 2006 also includes a separate interactive language-learning program (Transparent Languages' Languages of the World) and a flash-card program (Transparent Languages' Before You Know It).

The lumbering 4.3GB Ultimate Reference Suite took an hour to install via two DVDs (3.7GB for the full CD install) on our Windows XP test machine, hogging far more disk space than Microsoft Encarta 2006's unobtrusive 950MB. The monstrous Britannica software makes the free, Web-based Wikipedia attractive by comparison. We were happy that Britannica 2006 didn't ask to monitor our usage, as Microsoft Encarta does. Like Encarta, Britannica makes more intrusive registration questions, such as marital status and number of children, optional.

With installation complete, Britannica 2006 confused us by prompting to install the encyclopedia again. It also failed to update QuickTime to version 6.5.2; we had to install it manually to get videos to work. You may also need to turn off antivirus software (Trend Micro's PC-cillin Internet Security 2005) and firewalls in order to access Britannica resources and updates online--a manual process that can get annoying. If you don't want to burden your hard drive with this beast, you can subscribe to the Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 Web site (with fewer features than the software) for $69.95 to $79.95 yearly or $11.95 per month. Luckily, it took us only 10 minutes to install Languages of the World and another painless several minutes to set up the Before You Know It flash-card program.

Encyclopedia Britannica 2006's clean layout provides a variety of browsing and searching options.

Encyclopedia Britannica updates content quarterly and will e-mail notices of new content to registered users. Upgrades are available for one year, after which you'll need to purchase the 2007 software. Users of the 2005 edition can purchase the 2006 Encyclopedia Britannica for $24.95.

Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite is available on either two DVDs or six CDs. However, you'll need to track down the CDs at the Britannica online store because they're unavailable in retail shops.

Encyclopedia Britannica has published reference books for more than 230 years, so the 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite draws from a wealth of trusted information that other reference programs can't match. The Classics button in the Browse sidebar, for example, provides entries written by (rather than about) famous people throughout history. The fascinating media collection includes 502 video clips, 127 sound clips, and 43 animations and special comps. You can view video clips of Hawaiian lava flows, hear audio clips of musical performances and presidential speeches, and browse through each Year In Review back to 1993. The Timelines button details Architecture, Exploration, Technology, and other subjects from ancient Egypt to the 21st century. The fun BrainStormer feature draws webs of information that let you narrow a subject down while learning visually how it relates to other branches of knowledge.

The BrainStormer dynamic index links related topics together.

Handy for researchers who demand a reliable source, the Ultimate Reference Suite provides a Dictionary, a Thesaurus, and an Atlas with a Mercator projection of the continents, which lets you zoom in for data on each country. The online GeoAnalyzer is especially useful. It provides Country Snapshots with basic data per nation, allowing you to compare current and historical statistics for any two countries. You can also view continent-wide statistics on foreign trade, diet, economy, and demographics. The search bar on each main page scours nearly 100,000 articles and 166,000 Web links to turn up images and multimedia. Looking up Aristotle, for example, we found 16 articles and three images.

The bundled Languages of the World program can provide feedback on your pronunciation skills.

For students, the How To section of the new Homework Helpdesk provides guidance on useful topics such as writing a book review and preparing an oral report. Encarta 2006, on the other hand, cut out its homework resources and rolled them into the "new" Microsoft Student program. Britannica's homework Reference Center links to the grammar school-level Dictionary, BrainStormer, GeoAnalyzer, and other tools. The Explore section lets students browse topics such as Earth Science; it also offers educational games and activities. Unlike Microsoft Student, Britannica's Homework Helpdesk does not need Microsoft Office to be useful.

Transparent Languages' Languages of the World and Before You Know It flash cards cover Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Both programs emphasize language acquisition for business travelers, with topics that include Meeting And Greeting, Restaurants, and Emergencies. Highlights of these self-paced programs include pronunciation guides with audio samples from native speakers.

Unfortunately, technical support for Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite falls far below what a software product should offer. Like Encarta, Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 offers no user guide, so you'll need to rely on the easy-to-navigate help menu or the Web site for questions. But without a Web user guide, only a brief online troubleshooting section addresses a handful of common installation and program problems. Telephone support is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, but we waited 10 minutes on a toll call to Chicago; fearing for our phone bill, we had to hang up before a customer-service representative even answered. Also frustrating, a question that we submitted to technical support via the Online Contact Form bounced back unanswered to our e-mail address.