A few weeks before my dad's birthday last January 3rd, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. He asked me to replace his old 20-volume encyclopedia. Printed encyclopedias are prohibitively expensive. I offered to buy him a computer-based encyclopedia for his birthday, but he didn't like that idea. My dad said he didn't think he could learn how to use a computer-based encyclopedia. For his birthday, I ended up buying him a general reference book instead of an encyclopedia.

On a recent visit to the Apple Store, I saw the World Book 2008 electronic encyclopedia. An idea occurred to me. I asked Maria Arguello, MLMUG's Vendor Liaison to try to get me a free copy to review. Maria came through for me!

I figured that I would see if my 78-year-old dad would enjoy using this electronic encyclopedia. Since my dad knows little about computers, I installed the World Book software for him. Installation was easy. I just slid the DVD in the G4 Cube's optical drive. I double-clicked on "World Book 2008 installer" icon and it installed.

We sat down and I showed my dad how to look up a few things. My dad recently had a hernia operation so we looked up "hernia". Then we looked up "Dubai." I asked my dad to try the new encyclopedia for a week.

The user interface looks great. The left portion of the GUI is intended for targeted searches while the right side is used for general browsing. Information can be looked up in the encyclopedia, atlas, and an English language dictionary.

An automatic update feature is available free for one month. After the free period, then you have to pay in order to continue receiving the updates. My dad will not be able to take advantage of the automatic update feature because he doesn't have Internet access, nor does he want it.

The content is in audio, video, and textual format depending on what you look up. The audio includes classical music selections and their history. Video content includes news clips of historic import.

Some information is explained entirely in text format. Other information is explained visually and/or verbally. For example, when my dad looked up "hernia" he was presented with a text-based article. Key words were highlighted in orange text. Double-clicking on a keyword caused the computer to speak that word.

In contrast, looking up the word "tornado" yielded an article with both an audio/video clip of a woman explaining how tornados form. There was also a button that brought up another in-depth article about tornados. The article on hernia was very basic. The article on tornadoes provided a wealth of textual and audio/video information. You can also export articles to an iPod.

A few days after installing the 2008 World Book encyclopedia on my dad's G4 Cube, I asked him if he used it. His said yes. He then said he finds the software interesting. When I spoke with my dad again a few days later, he said he was much more comfortable with how to look up information and that he really likes this software. He also said he is impressed that the World Book 2008 has more information then he has ever seen in a printed encyclopedia.

Despite my dad's lack of computer acumen and his initial disinterest in an electronic encyclopedia, he gave it very favorable feedback. As such, I consider my experiment a success! Thanks to Maria, my dad now has a new encyclopedia inside his G4 Cube!

My dad gave this software a rating of five out of five apples.