Publisher: Focus Interactive
Price: £39.99

WE didn't own the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was a child. My family couldn't afford them. The only person I knew with a full set was my wealthy uncle. If I was lucky, during a visit I'd be allowed to leaf through a volume to keep me quiet. Looking at those heavy tomes with their gold lettering and dense lines of text, it wasn't hard to imagine that the complete Encyclopedia Britannica must hold the answers to just about everything in creation.

In one way it's hard to get quite that dumb-struck by the Britannica on DVD - even for a ten-year-old - because it comes on a plain disc.

But consider this: the '09 Ultimate Edition contains more entries, tools and info than my uncle's 20-odd volumes ever did. It actually contains all 74 volumes of the print edition which, were you to buy them, would cost more than £1,500.

Ever since the Britannica moved onto the computer it has been locked in a titanic struggle with Encarta, Microsoft's up-start encyclopedia, for bragging rights.

The Microsoft version used to fall down because of a perceived US bias, but that's long since been sorted, and Encarta is now a very fine piece of research software for any UK student.

Britannica offers something different, though. For starters it's a research tool for all the family with a huge range of articles suitable for young students aged six to ten, the student library ideal for inquiring minds aged ten to 14 and the encyclopedia library itself that's right for students and adults.

The articles are written by Nobel laureates, historians and notable experts then checked for accuracy.

One other thing: Britannica 09 runs just as well on a Mac as a PC.