Grolier Year 2000: A Solid Encyclopedia for Students

These days all multimedia encyclopedias come with more or less the same set of features and information; the difference is in the interface. Grolier's latest multimedia encyclopedia title, Grolier Year 2000 Deluxe Edition, is a great example of an interface done well, and as a complete PC study aid for young family members, this $60 two-disc set is an outstanding value.

Grolier Year 2000 is aimed squarely at middle-school and younger high-school students, and it hits the target with well-tailored design and content. The package offers easy access to a wealth of articles and multimedia components, with the nice bonus of integrated supplemental information via the Internet.

Generous Content

Grolier's two CD-ROMs include 37,000 articles, 15,000 images, 1200 maps, 177 videos, 150 3D panorama photos, and more than 16 hours of audio. The competition--IBM's World Book and Microsoft's Encarta--post similar numbers at similar prices. But Grolier Year 2000 is a better buy for students in its target age group for one reason: simplicity. The slightly boxy interface isn't as aesthetically pleasing as World Book's fluid menus, but it is more efficient and easier to use for kids and computer newbies.

The newly revamped Research Starters section is nicely organized, grouping content into seven overarching subject fields likely to be relevant to secondary-school students--geography, social studies, U.S. History, and so on. The Millennium Timeline feature is another nice point of information access for students. The integrated dictionary, which lets you simply double-click on a word to get the definition, is also well conceived.

Grolier Year 2000 covers all the bases online as well. Via your default browser, it offers access to two supplemental online encyclopedias: the grade-school-level New Book of Knowledge and the college/adult-level Encyclopedia Americana. Together, these add another 22,000 articles to the collection.

World Book and Encarta can't beat Grolier for the young teen age group. However, if you want a general-purpose encyclopedia for older students or the whole family, the recent World Book Millennium 2000 is a better choice. If you have a DVD-ROM drive, all of the encyclopedias mentioned here are slated for DVD-ROM release later this year. Grolier says it plans to ship a $99 DVD-ROM version by December.