Encyclopaedia Britannica 2015 Ultimate E Hardcover – 28 Nov. 2014

I already bought the last MS Encarta (in cooperation with Winkler Prins, a famous encyclopedia over here in the Netherlands) way back in 2009. Unfortunately MS discontinued the product and after 6 years i felt it was time for an update. With Encarta discontinued, I turned at Brittannica.Content is easily accessible through the search function and there is also some special thematic content (e.g. Heroes & Villains).One of the strenghts of the current Wiki-trend has also on occasions proven to be one of its weaknesses. ANYBODY may contribute and content has been biased (written by employees of companies and some unfavourable bits and pieces were left out or downplayed) or just incorrect. Usually someone will correct it, eventually, but there's no guarantee that the correction itself is 100% accurate.Now I don't say that any bought encyclopaedia is totally correct and unbiased. Both Encarta and Brittannica have, of course, been authored with a Western view of the world and it's history. Some people from e.g. Russia or North Korea or China might hold different views and question the accuracy of certain articles. But the point is that these encyclopaedias have been compiled by a professional staff, experts in their field. And of course you KNOW that these are products of a western civilisation. With Wiki, the source of the articles may not always be so clear.Therefore I prefer to have Brittannica and Encarta as a reference source on my computer.Now a bit more about Brittannica itself, albeit compared to (the Dutch Winkler Prins) Encarta, and, at times, Wiki.Of course, Brittanica is more up to date than my Encarta. However, as for the timeliness of new info, of course, nothing beats Wiki. The moment David Bowie passed away, it was already on Wiki.Brittannica makes extensive use of multimedia and has a special Video section with the videos thematically bundled. Subjects include Animals, Space & Astronomy, Geography and a lot more.But Heroes & Villains and Videos are not the only special sections. There are a lot more, including World Leaders and Great Minds and Classical Music. Take your pick or just search by keyword!Aren't there any things which have room for improvements, then? I must admit Brittannica is not perfect. First of all, startup is slow. It's installed on a computer with a i7-3820, 32GB RAM, 2 SSDs with a decent ASUS NVIDIA GT740 Graphics Card. While this is not exactly a gamers wet dream it's still far more than average so there should be no reason for this slow startup other than the program itself.Then the maps/atlas section. When compared to Google Maps and my Encarta atlas, the maps are, quite frankly, rather poor.Brittannica holds a dictionary as well, but only English-Spanish/Spanish-English. While Spanish and English are both world languages, I feel that French, Italian, German and Russian would not have been out of place. 'Au contraire', they would have been a welcome addition! (By contrast, my Encarta has Dutch/Spanish/French/German/English. One could also argue for languages like Chinese, Japanese or Portuguese, of course, and I understand that Brittannica can never have everything for everybody, but just English and Spanish is rather minimalistic in my opinion.For the above mentioned possible improvements, it does not earn full marks. However, for those wanting an encyclopaedia compiled by a professional staff which will also function offline and which provides a wealth of information, it's certainly a product I do recommend!

A valuable reference to anyone in need of a research manual. I have used the Encyclopaedia Britannica for many years.