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Installation was easy. I'm running Mac OS 9.1, and the installer first wanted me to upgrade to a more recent version of Mac Runtime for Java (MRJ) and to QuickTime 5 before proceeding with the installation. Installers for both items are included on the DVD, and the upgrades went quickly and smoothly.

The installer also gives you two installation options: Easy Install and Convenience Install.

The Easy Install installs the Britannica 2002 program on your hard drive. After installation, you will need the Data Disc inserted in your DVD-ROM drive to access all features. You need least 120 MB of free hard-disk space for this setup.

The Convenience Install option installs the Britannica 2002 program and most of its data files on your hard drive. You will then be able to search the encyclopedia and view articles without the Data Disc. Viewing full-size art, videos and World Atlas maps, however, will require that the Data Disc to be present in your DVD-ROM drive.

I chose Convenience Install, since I had plenty of room on my Pismo PowerBook's 20 GB hard drive for the 600 MB of files, and I am not enchanted with shlepping disks in and out of optical drives when I just want to look something up quickly. My habit is usually just to go on-line into a Google search, but I anticipate that I will probably be using the Britannica instead quite a bit now that it is conveniently there on my hard drive.

Once installed, the encyclopedia application took about 30 seconds to start up on my 500 MHz Pismo running OS 9.1. I found navigation of and access to the various features intuitively laid out, and the basic functions operate quickly enough on the 500 MHz machine, although I suspect that some of them might prove a bit sluggish on a slower Mac (minimum supported spec. is a 266 MHz G3).

Even with the Convenience Install, access to a lot of the pictorial content still required insertion of the DVD Data Disc. When accessing the more complex multimedia stuff, the Pismo bogged down noticably, and I was fairly easily able to overwhelm it with commands, which caused the program to quit responding properly, and finally it wouldn't respond at all. It wouldn't answer the Quit command either, although it was not actually locked up. The cursor was still operable, and the Help menu still functioned. I eventually gave up and forced it to quit using MacsBug, but otherwise a Command + Control + Power Key "three finger salute" would likely have been required.

It seems that 500 MHz is none too much power for running this program in multimedia modes, and while the minimum processor spec., as noted, is a 266 MHz G3, don't expect lively response with a machine that slow.

Nevertheless, this is a wonderful resource, and easily the best digital encyclopedia I've tried, with much more "meat" to its articles than either Grolier's or InfoPedia 2.

There is also extensive and thorough online help, which also starts up slowly on the Pismo, but is acceptably responsive once it's up and running.

Internet access is not required to use the DVD-ROM encyclopedia. However, to take full advantage of searching with Britannica.com and related Internet sites as you work, Internet access is recommended.

Each disk edition of Britannica 2002 includes the full text of the 32-volume print Encyclopaedia Britannica, plus additional encyclopedia articles, a world atlas, a Merriam-Webster dictionary, and recent editions of the Britannica yearbook. Britannica has over 80,000 articles, and the Deluxe CD-ROMs and DVDs feature multimedia enhancements, such as historical timelines, "visual tours" of selected topics, and rich video, audio, and animations.

The Britannica CD-ROMs and DVDs cater to individual research styles by giving users a flexible range of searching and browsing options for getting information. In addition to a powerful search engine that scans the full text of the Britannica database of more than 56 million words, more than 613,000 hypertext cross-references, and takes users directly to related information on their topics. Their exceptional searching performance is thanks in part to a unique system of topical, semantic, and hierarchical linkages between articles and index entries in the Britannica information database. This system of linkages, perfected by the company's editorial indexers over many years, produces smart, relevant results that are hard for conventional search engines to match.

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Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Expanded Edition DVD Review Part 1

Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Expanded Edition DVD Review Part 3

Charles W. Moore

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