The Complete Reference Collection, 1998 Edition
The Learning Company
$45, Windows 95
Phone 1-800-227-5609
Everyone from grade schoolers to professional writers can benefit from this offering from the editors of Compton’s Encyclopedia that combines 10 reference works in a single CD-ROM.
In head-to-head competition with Microsoft Corp.’s Bookshelf, The Learning Company adds two features Bookshelf lacks:
– The Columbia University Complete Medical Guide’s 1,200 articles cover anything the most rabid hypochondriac could ever dream up and offers a wealth of useful reporting about drugs and diseases.
– Merriam Webster’s Concise Handbook for Writers offers quick and easy-to-find advice on grammar and writing style.
Researchers with limited hard drive space will appreciate a feature that lets those willing to sacrifice speed to confine hard drive space taken up by the CD-ROM to around 100 kilobytes instead of the 10-plus megabytes required for optimal speed.
Particularly noteworthy is Compton’s Concise Encyclopedia, with 9,000 detailed articles on major topics, complete with footnotes and bibliographies.
Another major feature is a collection of 4,000 Web sites that embellish on major topics covered on the CD-ROM. Those sites proved to be relevant and their addresses reliable.
