The Ultimate Reference Suite is the latest digital edition of the Britannica. Consisting of three encyclopaedias, numerous dictionaries, thesauri, timelines and even an atlas, it's just as exhaustive as its predecessors, covering mountains of topics in impressive detail.
The main program interface is quite simple and easy-to-use. It's comprised of a large search bar on the left (which has the search box up the top and results down the bottom), and the pane on the right is used to display any articles you open in their own windows. Searching for a subject is fairly swift, and results ranked in good, logical order.
The Ultimate Reference Suite actually contains three different versions of the Britannica: the full 32 volume 'standard' edition; Student Library for high schoolers; and Elementary Library for younger kids.
The entries contained within each differ completely and it's easy to see the transition between the three. The entries in Elementary usually consist of a single simplified article divided into subsections by heading, and use short, to-the-point sentences in easy language. Student has slightly more detail and sophistication, but still uses single articles with subheadings. The full edition uses far more breadth that either of these, and usually has several articles for larger topics. Each edition is reasonably well tailored to its target audience.
Entries vary in length and depth depending on topic, but the vast majority are well-balanced and contain enough information so you can understand any topic you choose with a reasonable amount of detail and depth. The entry on cryptography, for example, contains a quick run down on the different methods used ('ciphers' as they're known) and how they work, as well as pieces on its history and applications. If this isn't enough information, there's also an in-depth list of additional reading material, although for this particular subject it seemed to have missed some of the more recent publications.
The Britannica's Knowledge Navigator (KN) is a fairly interesting feature, although its usefulness will depend largely on how you like to access information. The KN is a cross-referenced database of topic headers - you browse to or search for a topic you're interested in and are then presented with a group of related subjects.
The primary topic appears as a few words in the centre of the screen (it can then be clicked on to open a full article) with related topics hovering around it in a circle. The entry on Leonardo da Vinci, for example, contains related links to 'Renaissance man', 'drawing', 'anatomy' and 'light' among others. Clicking on a related topic transfers it to the centre, and you're then given its associated subjects.
It's like surfing a sort of subject-based Web, with one topic leading to another. While the Knowledge Navigator works quite well, its main problem is that most people will use the Britannica for quickly referencing information, and the KN is really designed for brains-torming and roaming for stuff you don't know.
The information contained within the Britannica wasn't always as in-depth as we would have liked, particularly on controversial topics. For example, the entry on Osama bin Laden has information on his birth and schooling, and directly states his responsibility for the September 11 attacks, but it fails to specify exactly how he was involved, and neglects to mention anything about his purported sponsorship by the US during the 1980s.
There are also a couple of glaring omissions that technology focused readers might find annoying. For example, there is no encyclopaedia entry on the growing scientific field of nanotechnology, even though there's a good amount of literature on the topic and universities are even offering it as a major for science degrees.
Taken as a whole, however, the Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite is, as usual, an astounding and enlightening collection of qualified information, and an invaluable resource for any household, especially those with students.