I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#1

Post by zdw » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#2

Post by groundlogic » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

Obviously this is pure nostalgia. Wikipedia + Google is superior in pretty much all imaginable ways. And available to people "in the developing world". (I don't really get why Scott included that part. The number of people who have access to a PC with a Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM and also don't have web access via their phones.. my guess is that the total number is about 17, globally.)

That said, nostalgia is fun sometimes.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#3

Post by GordonS » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

I was going to submit this earlier today, but I thought "nah, nobody else on HN is going to be old enough to remember Encarta" :)

I remember when our family first got Encarta, and I spent hour after hour reading and marvelling about how all this information could be so easily accessible! I think we had a 14k dial-up Internet connection at the time, and the web was barely getting started - I really had no idea how things would turn out!

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#4

Post by draw_down » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

That came from a different era, a different world of software and product development. Everything is MVP now. We care about how it drives the metrics/KPIs, and if it doesn't, you better figure it out or it's gonna get shitcanned.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#5

Post by atonse » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

Not Encarta but I remember a CD ROM we got about the San Diego Zoo with our Packard Bell computer in 1994.

Boy, my brother and I learned too much about Aardvarks (because they were the first item on the list).

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#6

Post by paxys » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. Encarta was freaking magic back in the day, but I'm certain that if I or Hanselman or anyone else were forced to use it exclusively today they would throw the computer out of the window in frustration.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#7

Post by michaelvoz » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

Encarta had a time and place when I, as a child, had access to disks and wikipedia did not exist yet. What is the point today? Vastly inferior in terms of content by volume, controlled by a single corporation with black box changes to articles (as opposed to Wikipedia's history tracking), impossible to dynamically update after release... I could go on.

Edit: I absolutely cannot stand the smarmy "I wrote code that you use" on his homepage. Sorry buddy, you probably don't.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#8

Post by octosphere » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

There's a few copies of Encarta lying around on Archive.org if anyone is interested in getting a copy:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=encarta&and[]=mediatype...

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#9

Post by wilsonrocks » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

I remember moving schools at age 12 and the computers in the library had encarta. My friends had PCs with CDROMs and could print out Encarta for homework where I was stuck copying stuff out from a paper encyclopedia. Memories!

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#10

Post by antognini » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

groundlogic wrote: post #2

Obviously this is pure nostalgia. Wikipedia + Google is superior in pretty much all imaginable ways. And available to people "in the developing world". (I don't really get why Scott included that part. The number of people who have access to a PC with a Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM and also don't have web access via their phones.. my guess is that the total number is about 17, globally.) That said, nostalgia is fun somet…

> Wikipedia + Google is superior in pretty much all imaginable ways.

Ah, but does Wikipedia + Google have MindMaze?