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Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 Win32 Mini Box DVD | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft
Category: Software
List Price: £51.99
Buy New: £46.43
You Save: £5.56 (11%)
New (6) from £46.43
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 378
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows 2000, Windows Vista
Media: DVD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7.9 x 2
MPN: 96J-00147
UPC: 882224483827
EAN: 0882224483827
ASIN: B000UIMES8
Release Date: February 20, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | MICROSOFT STUDENT W/ENCARTA PREM |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
MICROSOFT STUDENT W/ENCARTA PREM
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| Customer Reviews:
 Encarta scores again!! February 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Microsoft never cease to amaze with their products.The 2008 version is even better with up to date revisions of current events, and many new introductions.
It wins hands down over Encyclopaedia Brittanica in terms of user frendliness and content.
 Amazon.co.uk sells the US version of Encarta Student, not the UK one. January 18, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
All the words are pronounced in American English, all the videos too... and so on. I already had the US version of Encarta Student since august 2007 (bought from Amazon.com), but I wanted to know the UK version. I had "only" to pay UKP 68.93 to get... the version I already had. Amazon UK does not want to know anything. They say I bought it from a "third seller", not from Amazon.co.uk. But my money was sent to Amazon UK. And I trusted in Amazon UK. No more.
Encarta reference library and much more as well - but you need a recent MS Office as well October 29, 2007
21 out of 23 found this review helpful
This Student 2008 package includes the full Encarta reference library 2008. Encarta hasn't got anything like the depth in articles as Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate reference suite 2008, but I can't imagine many year 9 school children wanting a scholarly detailed account of the action of CD4+ lymphocytes when looking up AIDS. That's where Encarta scores, it's far more kid friendly with fun as well as facts - it's simply infinitely more entertaining than Britannica and ideal as a family reference. Encarta's greater brevity is just right for a younger audience, plus you get a free upgrade to Encarta Premium [on-line] but only until 31st October 2008 [where there's even help for A Levels]. We also have Britannia Reference Suite 2008 as well though - its greater depth suites well read adults, and it has good advice on homework as well, useful if you are helping your kids but a bit too dry for many under 16s to use on their own (and ironically Britannica has a strong US bias that is intensely irritating).
Encarta still presents the information in a more fun way with better use of multi-media content such as instructional videos, games to aid learning and pretty twirling icon links. You need internet access as well though (Encarta & Britannica use it to update as well as web-link), although that's pretty essential for homework anyway. Encarta even goes as far as integrating itself into Internet Explorer (and I often search it by mistake). This 'UK' version of Encarta is far more geared to the UK schools curriculum than Britannica, and Children's Encarta is re-written for primary school children, whereas Elementary Britannica has far too complex graphics, text and images simply borrowed from the main encyclopaedia.
With both the Encarta or Britannica encyclopaedias you really need to sit down with kids under 14 and explain what is being said - and I have to say at these times we vote with the mouse and choose Student 2008 [Encarta] every time. Don't forget checking Children's [Primary School] Encarta in tandem though, as it puts things more simply which is ideal as an extra study aid for KS2 and KS3 (age 9 to 12). Why Encarta for schoolkids?: well search 'evaporation' in Encarta and you get the classic school science text book description with links to 'boiling point', 'condensation' and the visual browser, whereas under Britannica you get a detailed treatise on 'refrigeration'. Elementary Britannica still simply edits down adult information, making little effort to repitch it at the intended primary school level (e.g. under 'Greenhouse effect', images of 'The Mossbauer effect: use in a spectrometer' appear). Plus Encarta looks far far prettier as well.
This Student 2008 package includes much more than Encarta though, there's 'learning essentials' templates, toolbars, tutorials and guides that help kick start any essay - with a wealth of information on how to construct essays. There's also guides to over 1,000 English literature set books (up 500 from Student 2007). Plus for maths there's an equation solver (basic algebra to calculus), graphs and help with complex sums. For languages there's spelling and dictionary translation, with help with writing sentences (using your words and verbs correctly with every tense). The languages French, German, Italian and Spanish are now supported - however the language dictionaries sadly seem to offer relatively few word translations. See Microsoft.com/student for more details. Perhaps one downside is that the Encarta dictionary doesn't spell check so if your child miss-spells a word slightly, unlike Word, you don't get any help offered [although the dictionary does move to words that match the first few correct letters].
Student 2008 is only supplied on DVD though not CD - all the large box contains is the single DVD - you can install using another PCs DVD drive via a network if your kids PC is CD drive only (or replace the CD drive). More importantly you must have Microsoft Office XP, 2003 or 2007. Without Office most of the features simply don't work - so you must buy it as well. There are student versions of Office 2003/7 that aren't too expensive, around 70 from Amazon, and any school kid is eligible (and you can buy secondhand). On the plus side an old PC running XP if fine - the software is stated by Microsoft to be XP only, and not Win98/ME/2000 friendly as billed by Amazon (but even our old Student 2007 ran on our Vista Premium PC). A 1GHz+ CPU is recommended - a 600MHz is the minimum, with 256 to 512Mb+ system RAM, and 2 to 3 Gb of free hard drive space. You also really need internet access (Encarta updates itself 'to Oct 2008'), which is pretty essential for kids homework anyway these days. Student 2008 also runs under Vista on our PC, but I haven't tried MS Office 2007 with it, we have Office 2003, but I expect it will be fine.
Along with web searches, Encarta is an extremely useful aid to any kid's education, aimed squarely at 12-18 year olds [Children's Encarta suits 8 to 11 year olds, but is still useful as a 2nd research tool for year 7s]. Student 2008 won't perform miracles though and is only there to aid homework. However, with features such as the Learning Essentials tools and access to everything Microsoft Encarta has to offer, Student 2008 is a great platform for homework assignments and is thoroughly recommended. Only downside is that the full retail price is 49 to the US versions $49, not that the EEC seems to want to do anything about that. Be advised though that the price of Student 2008 will probably fall to half this when Microsoft Student 2009 is about to hit the shelves - around autumn 2008 when the 'free' on-line subscription of this set [that we rarely if ever, use] runs out.
For U. K. only October 3, 2007
2 out of 11 found this review helpful
I can not order this from Denmark,they can not ship it outside U.K. So I had to buy Encyclopedia Britannica.
Good product - poor pricing August 24, 2007
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
Almost bought this, until an e-mail from Microsoft reminded me it's $49.95 USD. Sorry - not prepared to pay double.
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