Encarta 2000 - Good Content Poor Technically

[mtan]

Having spent many hours getting this product to work, I was quite
disappointed with this product evetually. Generally I find the content
is OK, but the technical aspect is appaling. Before I officially
complain, I just want to make sure the followings are not confined to
my system only:

1. Try seaching on my favorite plane, Beachcraf. The system crashed
with a msg about illegal operations. Why should this happen? If it
couldn't findanother thing, just let the users know.

2. Find "architecture". There were many articles returned. If I click
on the top Article whcih should give me an outline, I got another
crash. Unaccpetable..

3. How many times you got mesages about "outdated link" or "unable to
process links". If they are outdated, why keep them?

Let's see if we all have the same problems...

Happy new year,

Michael Tan
Canberra

[Clay Schneider]

1) when I search for Beachcraf it finds 'Beach Raf', 'Baetica', and six
other close matches -- no crash. If I search for Beachcraft, it finds only
'Beach Raf' -- no crash. If I search for beachcraft, it finds 'beach
craft', 'beach Craft', and 'Beach craft'. If I select the first of these,
it finds five articles with the words 'beach' and 'craft' -- no crash.

2) when I search for architecture, I get a bunch of articles. If I select
the top highlighted one [Architecture in bold type], I get the primary
article on Architecture -- no crash.

3) I don't recal ever seeing an 'outdated link' message, except perhaps when
following a link to a link to a link via the web, where it is somewhat
expected that some site references will always be old or out-of-service.
However, I don't remember ever seeing an 'unable to process links' message,
so perhaps we are not talking about the same thing.

[PS. -- also, it didn't take me 'many hours' getting it to work either --
just a straight install. This, together with the problems you are having,
make me think that whatever problems you had installing were not fully
corrected and you do not have a proper and complete install.]

Clay

mtan <mc...@tpg.com.au> wrote in message
news:386dc9a5...@can-news.tpg.com.au...

[R. C. White]

Michael, you might have better luck searching for "Beechcraft". I get nothing under Maps or Dictionary, but Encyclopedia lists 7 articles containing that word. Of course, you might want to make sure you have the current article and not the archives. The first one includes the line:

"Beechcraft vice-president Leddy Greever estimates total sales for 1960 were over $200 million as against $173 million the year before. He notes the industry expects to double annual business by 1965.

"1960: Aerospace Industry," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
r...@corridor.net

["^]

" <mw...@email.msn.com> Subject: Re: Encarta 2000 - Good Content Poor Technically Date:

[mtan]

Thanks for the posts so far.

It's frustrating. I have spent my whole holiday, doing nothing but jst
trying to get this damn thing to work!@#$%!! Re-installing a thousand
time, from Windows98 up. Al I can say, it is non-productive. Seemed to
get different results depending on the sequence (of other programs)
and components (encyclopedia alone or others) I chose to install.

I have given up. I'm not spending anymore time. And I dont expect much
help from Microsoft either. I will use it as is. Enclopedia will crash
if I type 1 letter too many (like "beech" is OK, "beechc" will crash
the damn thing..invalid page fault by msspell3.dll)

Let's enjoy our new year....