Microsoft Student 2007 (Incl. Encarta Reference Library 2007) (PC DVD)

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
STUDENT WITH ENCARTA REF LIB V2007 EN

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2007-08-15 rating:
Encarta reference library and much more as well - but you need a recent MS Office as well
At the moment this software is going for a song (we paid just £29 from Amazon). The package includes the full Encarta reference library 2007. Encarta hasn't got anything like the depth in articles as Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate reference suite 2007, 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 Encart Premium [on-line] but only until 31st October 2007. We also have Britannia Reference Suite 2006 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. However this UK version of Encarta is far more geared to the UK schools curriculum than US biased Britannica.

This Student 2007 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 many English literature set books. 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. See Microsoft.com/uk/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 [other than the dictionary moving to words that match the first few correct letters].

Student 2007 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 or 2003. Without Office most of the features simply don't work - so you must buy it as well. There is a student version of Office 2003 that isn't too expensive, around £70 from Amazon, and any school kid is eligible. 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. A 1GHz+ CPU is recommended - a 500MHz 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 2007'), which is pretty essential for kids homework anyway these days. Student 2007 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. Student 2008 is about to be released, hence the low price of this version I expect.

So a great help for any school kid (from 12 to 18), and worth every penny. It 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 2007 is a great platform for homework assignments and is thoroughly recommended.

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