MSS16.

5min_encarta 3/1/03 8:38 pm Page 106

Encarta
With Encarta, there’s a whole world of information suddenly at your
disposal. We show you how to conquer it from your computer screen
or years, Microsoft
KEY DETAILS
YES YOU CAN!
F Encarta has set the
standard for PC
encyclopaedias. It’s hard to
find a school without at least
one copy sitting in its
computer room, and it’s saved
◆ Find out virtually any piece of the life of more than one
information homework-stricken child on
◆ Travel the world without moving multiple occasions. Moreover,
a muscle because its contents are put
◆ Expand your horizons
◆ Prove your MindMaze and Orbit together by a huge team of
skills to the entire world agents and researchers, it’s
accurate (unlike trawling the
MORE INFORMATION internet for answers).
PROGRAM The majority of Encarta’s
◆ Microsoft Encarta entries are in plain text
PUBLISHER although many come with
◆ Microsoft
PRICE
photographs, movies, sounds
◆ £29.99 – £69.99 and other multimedia content
WEB to help bring to life the
◆ http://encarta.msn.com subjects under discussion.
Looking up the history of a
particular country, for
example, will usually result in
Encarta returning text, the
national anthem and perhaps
a couple of photographs. For
the most part, these entries
5 Minute Guide
can be copied and pasted
directly into your favourite
word processor (automatically
adding any copyright notices
that you may need), or
gathered in the integrated
Researcher tool.
Find what you need
For finding information, there
are several tools. You can
search on any word to locate
a particular topic (from some
67,900 articles in the most
advanced edition), as well as
follow timelines from the start
of a particular subject through
to its conclusion. Almost every
article is liberally scattered
with hyperlinks to other pages
in the massive collection,
making it simple to follow a
particular train of thought.
Alternatively, you could
approach your country
research, for example, from
several other directions.
There’s the Atlas view that’s
provided in the Reference
YOU CAN EVEN JUMP ABOARD
VIRTUAL FLIGHTS THAT SOAR
ABOVE THE EARTH’S SURFACE
Library edition of the program.
There you can work through all
the entries for a country
yourself. Or you might prefer
to play a simple game to lead
you around the information.
Encarta’s multimedia
sections have always shone.
The most famous is the game
Orbit, which challenges you to
set the orbital path of the
moon, but later revisions have
added an incredible number of
interactive exhibits. You can
take a full 3D tour of several
historical landmarks around
the world, or witness the sights
from a 360-degree panorama;
and hotspots link to other
areas and to in-depth articles
on the subjects at hand. In
the DVD version of Reference
Library there are even Virtual
Flights that soar above the
Ear th’s sur face.
And that’s not all, you also
have access to a full
dictionary and thesaurus,
worldwide stats collection and,
in the more advanced
packages, curriculum guides,
literature guides and a
collection of quotations.
Having bought Encarta, you
can connect to the net to
download news updates, as
well as follow the weblinks
that are scattered throughout
many of the articles. In the
latest version – connection
dependent – there is an
additional option, which will
play live radio from around the
world as you browse. But a
broadband connection is
recommended for this. ■

STEP BY STEP FINDING INFORMATION IN ENCARTA

Despite the incredible amount packed on to your CDs or DVDs, the business of searching could scarcely be easier

Jargon
Reference library
◆ There are many versions
of Encarta available, from
Standard through to the
Premium Suite. The more
that you pay, the more you
get in the package – from 1 ENTER A KEYWORD
Enter a Keyword in the Pinpointer box.
2 CLICK A HYPERLINK
Each topic contains plain text and
3 EXTRA INFORMATION
The boxes on the right of the screen
the basic encyclopaedia You don’t even have to press [Return] – as hyperlinks, marked in blue. Clicking on one link to additional info about the topic. This
itself through to atlases, 3D you type, Encarta automatically sorts its of these immediately whisks you away to a ranges from multimedia – images, video
flight simulators, video clips, vast collection of data and lists possible related article, and provides an excellent and sound – to web links and short games
sounds and all manner of topics of interest. Click on one to select it. way to browse for additional content. to give you more insight into the subject.
other valuable research tools.

106 Windows XP: The Official Magazine March 2003