Amazon.com: Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007 -Old Version (original) (raw)

If you think that getting the latest Encarta means getting the latest data and information... think again. I got this hoping to update my trusty Encarta 2001 installation (which I have just for the wonderful interactive virtual globe.. now somewhat surpassed by Google Earth but still great). Before uninstalling the 2007 version (Encarta won't allow more than one installation on a machine) I took some screenshots from the 2001 Atlas. Having installed the 2007 version, I did some comparisons... and found the map data is exactly the same! Yup, what you got in 2001, you get in 2007, and nothing more! OK, so there are some political updates in the big, obvious cases - Montenegro, for example, is shown correctly in Encarta 2007 as an autonomous region, a status it didn't have back in 2001. But these differences are few and far between (I could only find a couple). In the main, the *geographical* data is exactly the same as it was 6 years ago. For example, the map of the Aral Sea shown in Encarta 2007 IS EXACTLY THE SAME, pixel for pixel, as the Aral Sea shown in Encarta 2001 - despite the fact that it has shrunk more than 50% in size since then. Already in 2001 the map was a couple of years out of date, but now it's quite hopeless. Placename information is much the same, despite many changes in the real world. Just one example - Meigs Field Airport in Chicago ceased to exist in 2003 but despite yearly updates to the Encarta Encyclopedia, there it is, still cheerfully shown in the Encarta 2007 World Atlas (4 updates later). In fact, the entire Chicagoland area in the 2007 atlas is EXACTLY the same as in the 2001 edition, pixel for pixel, placename for placename.

So, apparently the Encarta Atlas 2007 people think we're too stupid, or igorant, to notice? Or is it just that it doesn't really matter to them to be accurate? Bring out yearly updates but make no changes to the core data? This isn't a very serious reference work, is it? OK, perhaps, for the occasional schoolboy homework assignment, but not for anything more important, is the message they are giving us. I used to think electronic editions of books would make for more rapid updates - but this demonstrates the reverse is true. The latest edition of the Times Atlas of the World is 2005 (hardcover only) and will give you much more up to date geographical information than the 2007 (or 2008) edition of the Encarta. And the previous edition of the Times Atlas was 2001, which just goes to show you - the printed version, in this case, is the more quickly updated version.

As a side note, a change that I find quite unwelcome in the 2007 edition (and in earlier ones after 2001, as far as I know) is that you don't get any choices on what to install. It's either everything, or nothing. With Encarta 2001, you got an extensive choice on what to install. I installed the Atlas only (and consider it alone well worth the price of the full product) and nothing else. Now, that is impossible. Apparently the Encarta people think we're too stupid to THINK about what we're doing when installing, so we are given no options, no choices?

Finally, the interface (for the Atlas) is far superior in the 2001 Encarta. In the later versions, including the 2007 version, it is all integrated with the other content, and it is clunky and annoying. If I am looking for a place on the map, I don't need 20 links to other irrelevant rubbish. Furthermore, you have to click TWICE to search for a placename in the 2007 version - once to get a general list of related content in the entire Encarta, and one reference to a map, which doesn't do a very thorough listing of the Atlas index, then another click to search the Atlas index by itself, which reveals a lot more hits to the Atlas index. In the 2001 version, you get JUST the Atlas hits for placenames right from the get-go, which is what I want.

I uninstalled the Encarta 2007 version and will be selling it on eBay, and have now gone back to the trusty 2001 Encarata.