An Improved Encarta

Michael Nadeau

MICROSOFT ENCARTA 94, $395

Last year, the Encarta electronic encyclopedia set a standard for multimedia CD-ROM. Now, Microsoft has topped itself with Encarta 94, a significant improvement of an already-great Windows product.

Encarta is based on the full text of the 29-volume Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia, but this is just the starting point. Microsoft has added video and audio clips, animations, photos, interactive maps, and more around an easy-to-use interface. You can find any of the 25,000 articles using keyword searches or by browsing through category lists.

The real power of the product, however, lies with its interactive nature. Visual cues such as highlighted text, menu buttons, and icons lead you through the components of a given topic (e.g., text, video, and m ap) or through various levels of related topics. Exporting text is a simple matter of copying it to the Clipboard.

With many multimedia CD-ROM titles, the various elements seem to have been put together with baling wire and chewing gum. Transitions are choppy, and the interfaces are often confusing. This is not the case with Encarta 94. You can navigate smoothly and logically from text to video to other hyperlinked references and back again without getting lost.

The material is up to date, as you would expect with an electronic medium. The ever-changing boundaries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet empire are mostly current, for example.

To get the most out of Encarta, you need an MPC 2-compatible system (although it will run on MPC 1 systems). This means you need at least a 486SX CPU, a double-speed CD-ROM drive, and a good sound board and speakers.

As a general reference for the home or small business, Encarta 94 is a great value. It is not, nor is it intended to be, the las t word on any given topic it covers, but you will be entertained by the way in which the information is presented.