Just to let you know. I am one of the ones who would really love to run a anti microsoft crusade but one of their products really caught my eyes. It was ENCARTA 2003 Premium. My friend got me a copy from UK. The product was unbelivable.
Detailed information about countries, people, cities imagine finding kalyan, ulhasnagar, badlapur getting distances and a always required self update feature. Not to forget loads of maps, multimedia features.
Space requirements are huge if you want all the features to be installed onto the hard disk and plus you would require loads of memory.
Lastly a thing I did not like is POK being shown as a part of pakistan and plus I did not know that even china had eaten up a bit of kashmir probably this is why this editions are not sold in INDIA.
Anyways, the product is a very good product specially when ever you require huge referencing of cities, Encarta search really comes handy.. Remember the game we used to play when we were kids.. finding cities on a map. Try it out now.. with encarta its a piece of cake.