WordFinder 2009 with Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus

Editors' ReviewDownload.com staffNovember 17, 2009WordFinder with Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus is a comprehensive English-language dictionary and thesaurus. Although users looking for an electronic alternative to traditional hardbound reference books should find that WordFinder meets all their needs, some aspects of the interface can be confusing.For the most part, the program's interface is intuitive and attractive. As users start to type a word, the dictionary scrolls through its entries alphabetically; this allows users to see surrounding words, much as they would when looking up a word in a hard copy of a dictionary. It's easy to switch between the dictionary and thesaurus, which operates the same way. In general the program is very easy to use, but there are several references in both the interface and the built-in Help file to translation capabilities. As WordFinder is a monolingual dictionary, this doesn't make sense. We suspect that the publisher has chosen to use the same interface and Help file for both its monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, although we can't be sure. We spent quite some time trying to figure out if this dictionary actually had translation capabilities, but as far as we can tell, it doesn't. Although users can change the language of the menus and interface, the content of both the dictionary and thesaurus appear to be in English only. That's not a bad thing, but references to translation need to be eliminated if such features aren't actually present.WordFinder has a 30-day trial period. It installs desktop icons without asking but uninstalls cleanly. We recommend this program to all users seeking a monolingual English dictionary.