Rating: 
Summary: Go with Oxford.
Review: For a little for money you can get a much better Oxford Dictionary.
Rating:
Summary: Do not buy this lemon!
Review: As a dictionary? It's a dictionary. But, it offers a little "convenience" thig-a-ma-jig that turns out to be very difficult to understand and impossible to employ. I'm referring to its "M-W Link". And, it is exactly this facility that is needed most when using a word processor. My wife, who is a virtual whiz with our computer is really confused. There's nothing good I can tell you about the "M-W Link". My advice is to stay away from this one. Go to another source.
Rating: 
Summary: FOR MOST USES, THIS IS MY DICTIONARY OF CHOICE
Review: Sure, I own "the big one," meaning Webster's Third International, but let's face it, that one's too big and bulky to be convenient. So I use it for winning at Scrabble, or for looking up those very rare words that you can't find anywhere else.But most of the time--this is the one to use. It's small enough to be convenient, yet comprehensive enough to almost always have the word you are looking for. What else could you need? --George Stancliffe
Rating:
Summary: Linguist in L.A.
Review: Merriam-Webster is the leading source of all things linguistic in the English-speaking world on this side of the Atlantic. I highly recommend any publications by M-W.
Rating:
Summary: nice audio pronounciations
Review: Great, although I had wished for more accelerator keys; in example a key stroke to listen to the audio pronounciations without using a mouse double-click.
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Summary: The Icing on the Cake, by fermed
Review: I admit to being a dictionary freak, but never in my fondest fantasies did I think an English dictionary would appear containing precise, concise, euphonic, professional pronunciations of the vernacular as it is spoken (or supposed to be spoken) in this country. And then it showed up! Ah, such joy. English is my second language, but just barely (I learned it when I was about 4 from my Nanny, Miss Smith). Half my family spoke vedy vedy Oxford English, and the other half no English at all, so I was brought up in an absurd greenhouse full of strange verbal emissions; from there I was released into this country to learn my first swearwords and how to pronounce things entirely differently. The result is that I have many pronunciation lacunas: either because I had never heard a word before and so I had to boldly figure it out on my own, or because I just didn't have the phonemes to correctly enunciate words like "nurse" or "bird." As a result I have often engaged in awful arguments about how certain words should be said: my version of "scone," for example, did not rhyme with stone, and was therefore universally derided by some of my American friends as peculiar and wrong. Attempts to settle on the correct pronunciation of words by means the horrific and arcane symbols used in dictionaries was futile. As soon as I installed this program I entered the word "scone;" and on the right side of the screen the word appeared in blue (meaning that the program would pronounce it); and when I clicked on it, the wonderful sound of a properly pronounced "scone" issued from the speakers. Next on my list of peeves came "nuclear;" the dictionary advised me to unpeeve myself off this one, because (according to M-W) our president's "nukelar" is an accepted pronunciation "which has found widespread use among educated speakers, including scientists, layers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president...." Oh, my! Words taken from French (as is usual with English speakers) are correctly pronounced: such as "hors d'oeuvre;" while those borrowed from the Spanish, (as is usual with English speakers) are generally mispronounced (including the two attempts at "rodeo"). Some words are not pronounced at all, at least in my copy of the book, (such as "umlaut"), and I suspect that there are a few bugs in the program that underlies the book. But for now it is honeymoon time and I am spending an inordinate amount of hours loving this CD-ROM and not wanting to perceive that there is anything wrong with it. In a few months I may have to amend this review. The speakers of the words are professional actors, one male, one female, and their diction is a true joy. I highly recommend this dictionary to all residents of the US who are foreign born; and also to Southerners, Midwesterners, New Englanders, New Yorkers...well, you get the picture.
Rating:
Summary: EASY, SIMPLE, CLEAR
Review: The Tenth Edition has words not found in the ninth. I like Merriam Websters because it is not complicated, it is very easy to locate words, and definitions are understandable.
Rating:
Summary: The best abridged dictionary -- period
Review: With online access to every reference material imaginable, some might argue that we no longer need dictionaries on our bookshelves. But for those who want a dictionary handy for quick look-ups, this is the one to get. It's the reference for the New York Times puzzles and many newspapers. And in my own unscientific tests of looking up obscure words in various bookstore dictionaries, this one always wins. Sure, it's not the OED. But who's got room for that on their shelf (let alone the money to pay for it). The Merriam-Webster dictionary has brief etymologies, geographical and biographical sections and definitions galore. You can't go wrong with it.
Rating:
Summary: lacking raison d'etre
Review: in today's environment with easy access to giga hard disks and the Internet, there is no reason to exist for traditional dictionaries, especially such a bleak compendium.
if forced to choose among printed materials, i would take American Heritage eye-candy for entertainment, and Oxford American Dictionary And Thesaurus for everyday use.
i simply have no idea how to do with huge resources and splendid lexicographers in Webster's.
at least for me, this is not an expected mentor.
Rating:
Summary: A Necessity
Review: As mentioned in an editing class I am taking, many publishing houses and professional editors use this particular dictionary. Since not two dictionaries are the same, this one would be the better investment. Not only does this book have the dictionary proper, and pronunciation guide and symbols, but also it has abbreviations (what does AMSLAN stand for?) and symbols of chemical elements (like Ne), foreign words and phrases (mirabilia...which would be italicized since it is a foreign word), biographical names (who was Nicholas Biddle?), geographical names (how high is Churchill Falls?), and a handbook of style (when do you use a dash?). No desktop is complete without this book.
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