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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Chapman who wrote (6848)	3/22/1999 12:51:00 AM
From: Spots	Respond to of 14778

Somewhat off topic, and not responsive to Dev Chapman's post, but I want to report on the Britannica 99 Reference Suite. Dave expressed interest, and others may also be interested. Britannica IMO remains the definitive online encyclopedia if your after steak rather than sizzle. By comparison, Encarta is a joke (though I admit my Encarta experience is a couple of years old). Encarta is sizzle but little meat. Example: My daughter, a math major, asked me about the induction theorem (she does that kind of thing -- since she decided to get a degree in math there has been this father-daughter binding. She says "no, dad, 'bonding'" but I say it's binding, as in rope or handcuffs). I couldn't remember a detail about the statement of it. We looked induction theorem up in Britannica, and there it was, in precise mathematical terms, AND it resolved the question we were asking. Ok, she was asking and I couldn't remember. Yes, it will also tell you about Martin Luther. Also Martin Luther King, Jr. I digress. The 99 version allows you to put the whole thing on a hard disk (about a gig) in a straightforward way. There are directions on the web site to do it. A Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary comes in the package (this is the reference suite). A 16-bit, clunky-interface to a superb dictionary with regular-expression searches. THE most powerful search I've found in pc dictionaries. Such a clunky package, but use it for anything having to do with words and you can forgive a lot. Better than RHUD (which I have three versions of). Not a better dictionary, but a far superior search engine. RHUD's interface is clunky too, BTW. (RHUD is the Random House Unabridged.) To top it off, the package includes the Rand McNally New Millennium World Atlas. Now I admit, I'm a map freak as well as a word freak, and I have forked out $$$ for PC based Atlases (including the Encarta World Atlas) and have come away at best half-satisfied by half-vast implementations of half-assed atlases. Atlas shrugged off the PC, I thought. But this McNally New Millennium as a gorgeous, detailed, well-implemented Atlas with a very good interface. Near perfect if they could give up cutesy slithering menus and that kind of horse biscuits. It also lacks a right-click context menu, but I almost don't care: The maps are detailed, the navigation's a snap, the world is at your fingertips in eye-popping detail. I'm map-junked out on it. I just can't believe I could be this enthusiastic, and yes I would suggest a bunch of improvements, in the interface, but it is incredible nevertheless. I only wish I had Sean's Alps printer to print some of these maps on! Darn thing runs incredible detail up to 1280 x 1024 (as high as I go) despite claims of limits to 1024x768 in the documentation. I think I'll push it to 1600 to see what happens. Top that off, I've put all of this stuff on one of my new PCs, and yes, copied all of the CDs to a hard drive, and can access them over the networks with minimal installs on another PC. Takes a little registry and INI file jiggering, but easily doable. I don't know about licensing legitimacy here, but as I'm the only user I'm in spirit at worst. Well, enough. G'night, mates. Spots