Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 ULTIMATE Reference Edition DVD
ISO 3.6GB | RS.com
When I was young my parents bought a copy of Encyclopaedia Britannica which I used quite often, though I'm not sure it ever justified the significant expense for all those big, beautifully bound books. Now you can buy in on a DVD, there's much more in there and it's a fraction of the cost. The latest version of the world's most famous encyclopaedia packs the main Britannica, a Students' Encyclopaedia, a Children's Encyclopaedia, Book of the Year articles, World Leader biographies, Dictionary, Atlas and more all into the price of a midrange gift, which is pretty stunning.
The product we have to thank for the existence of an affordable Britannica is Microsoft's Encarta, which really transformed the encyclopaedia market, providing an affordable product that had the depth of a 20 volume reference, and the powerful search facilities of a CD (now DVD). To begin with Britannica priced itself out of the market, but now it is very affordable, still carries a certain cachet, and beats Encarta hands down on the number of articles. The user interface still isn't as sexy as Encarta, which has always been leading edge, but Britannica is easy to use and has a sensible screen layout. There's also plenty of multimedia for the low concentration generation (and to be fair, it does help explain quite a lot of topics, plus brings greater to richness to, for instance, articles on music).
