Microsoft Encarta 2006 Premium

Microsoft Encarta 2006 is the #1 best-selling encyclopedia brand*. Microsoft Encarta Premium 2006 helps families and lifelong learners explore a world of knowledge that's accurate and engaging. Encarta Premium offers more engaging multimedia and more carefully reviewed, age-appropriate information than ever before—with over 68,000 articles, over 25,000 photos and illustrations, over 300 videos and animations, over 2,500 sound and music clips, and an interactive atlas with over 1.8 million map locations. Encarta Premium also gives you the all-new Web Companion, which automatically pulls up information from Encarta alongside your Internet search results. Whether you’re searching online or offline, Encarta Premium is the trusted way for everyone in the family to easily find just about anything on just about any subject. New! Faster, easier interface! Find more information, more quickly, with new options for searching and sorting.

New! Web Companion Streamline your Internet searches with relevant information from reliable sources—provides trusted content from Encarta Premium alongside your Internet search results.Encarta Search Bar Get instant access to Encarta from the Windows Task pane—so Encarta doesn't even have to be open to be available. Encarta Kids
engage learners as young as seven with pictures, games, and multimedia information in a colorful, easy-to-navigate environment designed just for them.Videos from the Discovery Channel Bring a variety of subjects to life with 32 high-quality videos from the Discovery Channel—available only in Encarta Premium. Continuous updates
Keep content up to date with automatic downloads that add new information directly into articles.

Encarta seems, more than ever, to have adopted an 'if you can't beat them, join them' approach. Upon loading the program for the first time, we were prompted that updates were available for download. Smashing, we thought, and we clicked the relevant buttons, to be told that we had to join Club Encarta to be able to receive them.

To be fair, this allows you to keep content up to date until October 2006, but why should we be asked about our address, whether we teach kids, whether we're parents and suchlike? Okay, this isn't compulsory, but that's not clear at all from the sign up page; it's only when you click Submit and the form accepts your answers that you find that out.

But then that's all part of the Encarta package. For your purchase price, Microsoft will keep it up to date for a year with regular new content (broadband clearly helps here), and the developers do allow you to access Encarta Premium online for a short while. Yet that's the point at which you naturally ask questions about whether it's best simply to subscribe to a constantly-updated Web resource rather than stump up for a DVD-ROM. You do get the impression that Microsoft would prefer a regular monthly payment over a one-off fee for selling the software in the first place.Still, once you're into the guts of the Encarta disc, it's as easy as ever to get engrossed. Microsoft continues its policy of sourcing third-party content from partners who have more expertise than itself (The Times and the Discovery Channel, for instance), and it pays off. You get the impression that much of it has been carefully selected too, which is a further bonus.

It's also prominently badged as the UK and Ireland edition, which is backed up with fully localized content in both the main and Children's Encarta that you get with the pack. It passes the football test with ease. What's more, the Children's Encarta is directly tied into Key Stages 2 and 3, something that will reassure parents.

The slick interface has had a bit of work done to it since last year, and it's still as straightforward as ever to find what you're looking for. Interestingly, Microsoft has also pushed the Web angle further: there are umpteen Web content recommendations that sit alongside the articles themselves. Online safety is something that both Encarta and Britannica use as selling points.

Yet that all hints at what Encarta is increasingly becoming. Instead of it being the ultimate resource that it was once regarded as, it's now coming across as a reference work that's chosen its content. It's as if the developers appreciate that it can't compete with the Web head-for-head, so instead choose the battles carefully and win them with ease. The achievement, therefore, is that in a market where the multimedia encyclopedia threatens to become less relevant than ever before, Encarta has never been more so.