And now for something educational

As the festive season comes around again, we look at the year's best interactive encyclopedias.

Oxford Interactive Encyclopedia, £9.99

Drawn from the nine-volume Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia, this includes a dictionary and thesaurus, and while it's a bit old-fashioned (no "back" and "forward" buttons), it supports wheel mice which makes navigation easier and searching quick. But maps are poor, some links have gone and content stops at 1997. Not much multimedia either.

Compton's Encyclopedia 21st Century, £9.99

Nearly 42,000 articles, more than 8,000 pictures, a few hundred sounds, movies and maps, a top beginners' guided tour, clear interface and some nice touches: you can double-click tricky words and get an instant dictionary definition. But too many multimedia movies are merely photo slide shows, the maps are inferior, the "online encyclopedia" site has vanished, and with content stopping at 1999, the "21st century" tag is a liberty.

Hutchinson Encyclopedia 2002, £19.99

Contains 54,000 articles, 3,750 images and more than 600 multimedia items along with world maps (nothing special) and a 82,000-word dictionary. Although well laid out, everything's too cramped. There is limited multimedia content.

Britannica 2002 (£69.99 - for DVD version, double CD is £49.99)

Compendious electronic version of former door-to-door favourite includes 85,000 articles, 17,800 photographs and nearly 517 video and sound clips. Easy to navigate, on-line and off, the "Knowledge Navigator" is an unusual, animated way to explore. Well organised for research but complicated and can grind along. It's still excellent.

Britannica Deluxe Millennium Edition, £9.99

Last year's version of Britannica, on three CD-Roms and at a budget price, but still more than 80,000 articles.

Encarta Reference Library 2002, £99.99 for DVD version

No disc-swapping with this, the DVD version of the Microsoft favourite, despite the presence of a huge dictionary/thesaurus and Encarta World Atlas (the best atlas here). Features friendly article layouts with magazine-style contents so you can find photos, links, related articles, maps and websites quickly, and a decent selection of up-to-date sites; updating with new content is valid until next October. Still the one to beat.