Man Encarta brings back memories. My parents got me the CD box set, putting into the drive, the anticipation and awe when it loaded and hours spent going through the quality content. Take it for granted how far along we have come.
I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
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Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#52Encarta was an amazing product that I fondly remember using in school. It was essentially wikipedia before there was wikipedia with the upside that it had curated and citable sources and generally a much higher quality of writing. In my eyes, over the years, wikipedia has caught up a lot in terms of quality of writing and wikimedia now has a lot of images and video. I wonder if there is a way to just download the who…
Check out Kiwix: https://www.kiwix.org/ “Kiwix is an offline reader for online content like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, or TED Talks. It makes knowledge available to people with no or limited internet access. The software as well as the content is free to use for anyone.”
I used this in Cuba. It was immensely useful, both to pass the time, and to look up many things of interest along the way without waiting to go to an internet zone.
I was a passenger in a car driving through central Cuba and thought I saw a sign towards Australia. Breaking out Kiwix I found the article and was relieved to see I wasn't going crazy.
Later on I was in an Uber in Australia driven by a Cuban man, and I thought I'd impress my friends with my worldliness by mentioning that there's a town in Cuba called Australia. The driver furrowed his brows and said flatly "no there's not", much to their delight. Can't win em all!
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#53That whole period of the PC industry where 'multimedia' became mainstream was pretty magical. I know the Amiga was well ahead of the PC ecosystem for a long time in capability but it never hit schools (at least where I grew up in South Australia) like PCs did. So with the emergence of VGA and Super VGA, widespread availability (and relative affordability) of 486 DX class PCs, Soundblasters and Optical Drives, the PC…
One thing I remember from those times : even knowing there was an encyclopedia on the school library computer, I would not use it, because it just sounded impractical. I would need to ask for permission to use the computer, then wait for it to start, then figure how to do a search, while the competitive proposition was just picking the encyclopedia volume for the correct letter and finding my page! How much a few dec…
It's odd, I'd rather go to a library and read a book than dig on the web now.
to be honest: I like the web for shallow access, but when I need focus and depth, a library and a book is way more fit for my brain.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#54Encarta was fun. Also I remember having some "specialized" encyclopedias on the CDs - about cats, about Formula-1 etc. It was very interesting to just look around random articles, like Scott says.
On the slightly related note - I've found recently that Wikipedia has several lists called Vital articles which compile the best and most essential articles. It feels a bit like those old encyclopedias. So I've decided to read through level 3 articles for fun, as a personal project.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#55Remembering those huge, plate-sized CD roms fondly. Laser Discs.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#56That whole period of the PC industry where 'multimedia' became mainstream was pretty magical. I know the Amiga was well ahead of the PC ecosystem for a long time in capability but it never hit schools (at least where I grew up in South Australia) like PCs did. So with the emergence of VGA and Super VGA, widespread availability (and relative affordability) of 486 DX class PCs, Soundblasters and Optical Drives, the PC…
Hmm, to me the term "multimedia PC" already sounded outdated from the start, similar to the "a CD ROM can contain a whole library shelf worth of data" hype.
I just thought like, this 386 PC could make sound and graphics and games. This Pentium can do it too, granted with more colors and a CD ROM drive and a fancy "where do you want to go today" movie, but does that warrant all this hype of being called "multimedia"?
Oh well, that was the 90s, things moved so fast then so of course things would sound outdated and cheesy very fast.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#57I downloaded a 3gb file today that contains information about the human genome. But it was just an accessory file that lists a bunch of variations within the genome - not even the genome itself! Amazing to think how many books would fit into those same 3gb and yet we casually use it up with routine science now.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#58That whole period of the PC industry where 'multimedia' became mainstream was pretty magical. I know the Amiga was well ahead of the PC ecosystem for a long time in capability but it never hit schools (at least where I grew up in South Australia) like PCs did. So with the emergence of VGA and Super VGA, widespread availability (and relative affordability) of 486 DX class PCs, Soundblasters and Optical Drives, the PC…
Hmm, to me the term "multimedia PC" already sounded outdated from the start, similar to the "a CD ROM can contain a whole library shelf worth of data" hype. I just thought like, this 386 PC could make sound and graphics and games. This Pentium can do it too, granted with more colors and a CD ROM drive and a fancy "where do you want to go today" movie, but does that warrant all this hype of being called "multimedia"?…
Exactly. Back then it seemed like a word that people not much into the computer scene or non-specialist magazines would use, while to geeks the word was a joke.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the sort of person who writes Wikipedia articles about Pokemon would not go and write articles about Nigerian history instead if Pokemon articles were not allowed, and vice versa. Wikipedia contributions are not really a zero sum game.
Well, for storage (and thus offline) purposes it is of course exactly a zero sum game. I for one would really like a say 3 GiB version of English Wikipedia without Pokemon and Porn, or a 33GiB version with useful images. However broad and non-deltionist might be best for online Wikepedia, a more curated i.e. deletionist version would certainly be very useful for offline usage and quite a few other purposes.
> I for one would really like a say 3 GiB version of English Wikipedia without Pokemon and Porn, or a 33GiB version with useful images.
There are several offline snapshots of different sizes of Wikipedia that do exactly this. Some of them are more thoroughly curated, others are a snapshot of the most popular articles, etc.
What I could not find easily was a full English Wikipedia with images and all available in an easily accessible format (like the Kiwix snapshots). I'd put a whole hard disk for this purpose, because the size is in the gigabyte-terabyte range.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#60I also remember the CD-ROM era (and before that). It was also the time when software just worked. There was no other way.
The content on those CDs was permanent. Software rarely needed an updated, it didn't called home with telemetry and it didn't needed a constant internet connection to work. There wasn't subscription models for most of the software.
So you want to do some 3D renderings? Just install this CD with 3DStudio. It works.