Neither Britannica nor Encarta can offer anywhere near the comprehensiveness you'll get from a good session with Google, and both of them know it. Microsoft's Encarta seems to have dealt with the threat slightly better, taking a direction that some will, and some won't, warm to. It's more Web-centric than ever, and the constant referrals to online materials may defeat the object for some people. But they're well chosen materials, and that's going to be a weight off a parent's mind if they're trying to keep their offspring looking at relevant and safe material.

The gap in quality of content is now smaller than ever, though, with Britannica's traditional lead in this area offset by its continued failure to localise everything, and Microsoft's continued deal-making with third parties. Both have done Britannica damage, although ironically - given that this is the area in which it has suffered in the past - its user interface is far improved and pretty much the match of Encarta.

It's Encarta that wins again, yet it's a sign of the times that it has won for slightly different reasons. Britannica is still probably the pack we'd plump for if we were after a disc bustling with content and no kids in the house, especially if we didn't have a decent Web connection. But Encarta's broader approach seems to fit the bill better. It may, long term, lead to the days of Encarta as a piece of published software being numbered, but for the time being it wins the annual face-off between these two packages. Not by much, though.