Product: Microsoft Encarta Interactive English Learning Professional Deluxe
Company: Microsoft
Website: http://www.microsoft.com
Estimated Street Price: $130.00
Review By: Julien JAY

Introduction

Who believed a few years ago that Microsoft would become such a great and respectable knowledge software editor? The Microsoft Encarta family is proud to welcome new learning software to help users learning the Shakespeare language. Microsoft Interactive English Learning Professional Deluxe uses the same old good pedagogy methods that in the first Encarta Interactive English Learning title released one year ago in Europe. This new edition is business focused as it concerns in priority businessmen with adapted short training lessons for those who are very busy. English has now begun a kind of worldwide language and speaking it is vital for businessmen in order to treat affairs efficiently all around the world due to the globalisation.

Microsoft Encarta Interactive English Learning Professional Deluxe features:

• A training 70 minutes' CD Audio containing original dialogs, to help users improve their English comprehension wherever they're on the road or at home and where it's not possible to use a laptop computer,
• One good quality head microphone manufactured by Andrea,
• A huge 240 color pages exercise book based on the CD audio stuff to enhance further your skill once your computer is off with various questionnaires,
• 3d environment for a full immersion with the '3D Explore technology',
• Speech Recognition engine,
• 1 hour of high quality Video sequencies,
• Network ready setup,
• Glossary that contains 2500 words,
• Encarta Interactive English Learning Professional users dedicated website.

Setup

As with every Encarta titles the setup of Encarta Interactive English Learning Professional is a breeze. In a few minutes the program and the Lernout & Hauspie voice recognition APIS will be installed on your computer. Then you'll have to restart it in order to first start the software (restarting is needed to initialise Speech APIs from L&H).

Network ready

Microsoft has understood that corporate (or even home users) may want to provide their employees with a quick, low cost, efficient English learning method so the setup of Encarta Interactive English Learning Professional Deluxe is network ready that is to say you can spread it over a whole network with a single mouse click. The most interesting thing is that the users number is virtually unlimited. Finally, profiles can be created for every user so they can track their own results and progress.