The annual battle of the multimedia encyclopaedias has, over time, narrowed down to two suspects. While the likes of Compton, Grolier and Hutchinson are still going, you're more likely to find them on budget labels than sitting proudly next to the two products we've got going head-to-head here.

The two left standing are Encarta and Britannica, both of which appear on time every year, and both of which continue to impress reviewers. In this shoot-out we're putting them against each other, although as you'll see, whichever you plump for it's a bit of a no-lose scenario. However, there is a clear winner, whose identity will be revealed shortly.

We've compared the two premium versions of the suites here, and for the purposes of the test we took the option from both to install them complete to our system's hard drive. This gave us a fairer idea of how they compared in terms of speed. Both are available in CD and DVD versions, and Encarta has a Standard version available, missing a healthy chunk of the content, for £29.99 inc. VAT.

We looked for quality of content, its localisation, how easy it was to get around the programs and any extra features that we could find. We also tried to get a measure of how things had progressed from the 2004 editions - Britannica and Encarta - reviewed last year.