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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Rieman who wrote (33515)	5/30/1998 11:22:00 AM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

MS Encarta 98 Reference Suite Fits Five CDs on a Single DVD Quain, John R. 07/01/98 Computer Shopper Page 232 (COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff Davis Publishing Company) Copyright 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved. What was once five is now one--that's the allure of the Microsoft Encarta 98 DVD -ROM Reference Suite from Microsoft Corp. For just under $130, you get all three of the major Microsoft reference works--Encarta 98 Encyclopedia Deluxe Edition, Encarta Virtual Globe 1998 Edition, and Bookshelf 98--on a single 4.5GB DVD . No more swapping discs to go from the article on Romania to the country map. No more waiting to load another disc for quotes from George Bernard Shaw after reading an article about the playwright. It's all now just a click away. Although the look of the program hasn't changed much (which is to say, the disc's creators haven't fully integrated all the titles into a single unified interface), the content has been spiffed up with more multimedia to hold younger readers' attention. There are 33 new panoramic views from around the world--more than double the number of 360-degree images contained on the Encarta 98 Deluxe CD. The virtual tours are also much more elaborate. You can virtually visit Paris, for example, jumping from views of the fountains in front of the Eiffel Tower to the room in the Louvre that houses the Mona Lisa. Other tours with appended articles include Mayan ruins, San Francisco's Chinatown, and London's Westminister Abbey. The disc's Virtual Globe, meanwhile, adds more detail to its maps to let you locate more than 1.2 million places and to zoom in within 1,000 kilometers when viewing the 19 different maps. There are also four new 3-D World Flights: topographical 3-D flybys of such natural landmarks as the Grand Canyon and the Andes Mountains. They're flashy, but ultimately uninformative. Though all this is light years ahead of a paperbound encyclopedia, there's still room for improvement in Microsoft's first stab at an encyclopedia on DVD . The video clips, for example, could be reformatted to take full advantage of the detail and image clarity supported by the DVD format. Sound clips and music samples should be remixed so listeners can enjoy the aural sensory experience of Dolby Digital surround sound. Is the Encarta 98 Reference Suite now the most accurate, in-depth multimedia encyclopedia available? Not really. But Encarta continues to shine for its slick presentation of everything from human history to planet cartography. The Paris virtual tour offers a panoramic view around the Eiffel Tower and a glimpse inside the Louvre. Microsoft Encarta 98 DVD -ROM Reference Suite Microsoft Corp. 1 Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399 800-426-9400; 425-882-8080 www.microsoft.com Requires: 133MHz Pentium or faster; 70MB hard drive space; DVD -ROM drive; Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 Mfr. Est. Price: $129.99