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I Miss Microsoft Encarta

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Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#121

Post by potta_coffee »

fsiefken wrote: post #12

There also was the Encyclopedia Brittanica, not sure how it compares to Encarta. I remember getting it on DVD or CD and choosing it instead of Encarta. No idea where it went. I'm not sure if the information is better or more complete then an offline Wikipedia dump combined with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Brittanica was the king of encyclopedias at that time, as far as I can remember. I had a set of those, and I remember comparing and finding other sets to be less good. I was pretty young but I spent a TON of time with them. I don't have experience with the Brittanica CDs but my guess is the content was of similar quality.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#122

Post by ryacko »

jancsika wrote: post #93

> In a world of 4k streaming video, global wireless, and high-speed everything, there's really no analog to the feeling we got watching the Moon Landing as a video in Encarta - short of watching it live on TV in the 1969! For most of us, this was the first time we'd ever seen full-motion video on-demand on a computer in any sort of fidelity - and these are mostly 320x240 or smaller videos! I remember watching that vi…

It is a combination of novelty and uniqueness.

Novel because it was the first time the author saw the moon landing.

Unique because we are bombarded with videos all the time.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#123

Post by blueboo »

People fondly remember using Encarta as children. It was a child's encyclopedia for children.

> In a world of 4k streaming video, global wireless, and high-speed everything, there's really no analog to the feeling we got watching the Moon Landing as a video in Encarta - short of watching it live on TV in the 1969!

This is just absurd nostalgia. Even back in the author's good old days, kids also watched this stuff on VHS and LaserDisc. These days, kids watch SpaceX landing reusable rockets live on their phones.

What was special was being able to freely browse it. Wikipedia crushes it in every imaginable respect, from being more readable, to having more rich media.

It's fine to cherish your memories of Encarta...but kids have it better now and experience the same things more richly. Sorry, dad!

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#124

Post by meerita »

The problem with products like Encarta was bias and the speed of updating the mistakes, misinformation, etc. I had Encarta, and Internet wasn't an option back then, I had it in a CD. But today it would be nice to have some product that competes with the vastness of Wikipedia.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#125

Post by tasogare »

smacktoward wrote: post #60

I would also add that I miss Microsoft Cinemania ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Cinemania ), which was to IMDB what Encarta was to Wikipedia. The sad bit is that in some ways Cinemania in 1997 was superior to IMDB as it is today . IMDB is more comprehensive, but Cinemania was better designed and more fun to just browse through.

I have the one on musical instruments: https://archive.org/details/microsoft-musical-instruments. Spend hours in it even if I wasn't that interested by music.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#126

Post by ryacko »

leemailll wrote: post #17

I miss it and I also miss a real encyclopedia collection. They both offer a thing Wikipedia always lacks: consistency, in writing style, in topic depth, in error rate. I still remember the weekend in 90s when I had a copy of Encarta and threw the whole weekend to click through topics after topics, and amazed at things it offered. It’s so much fun.

Have you looked at Citizendium? It is the closest thing there is to a community curated encyclopedia.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#127

Post by InitialLastName »

pastage wrote: post #87
asdfman123 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a kid growing up, Encarta was far superior to anything Wikipedia offers today. Sure, Wikipedia wins in sheer volume but that's it. Encarta was a well curated collection of knowledge that was consistent and perfectly suited for its audience. More is not always better.

When it comes to knowledge and data more is by definition always better.

That's only true if your brain is perfect and consistent at absorbing and verifying information. Even then, it's unnecessarily reductive.

If you have an enormous amount of information, but know that some unknown 10% of that information is inaccurate (at a facts level, not just in a "I don't agree with the presentation or perspectives portrayed" way), that's dramatically worse than having slightly less information that you can be fairly sure has been (at least factually) verified.

Same with writing quality; a huge amount of information written in a way that your brain can't absorb efficiently (whether because it's in a foreign language, written incoherently, or interspersed with profanity and editorializing) is less useful and worse than less information written in a clear and consistent style.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#129

Post by MarcScott »

I was lucky enough to grow up with a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica in my house, that my Dad purchased in the early eighties. The set was amazing, and an endless help when researching homework.

Then I encountered the BBC's Domesday Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project) and was blown away by the quantity of information that was available on a laser disk in my school library.

Then came Encarta, which similarly impressed, and now Wikipedia.

I can't even contemplate the quantity of information and in what form it will take, when my son reaches my age, but I bet it would blow my contemporary mind.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#130

Post by withinrafael »

Tokkemon wrote: post #84

One of my favorite CD-ROMs from my childhood was an Encarta offshoot called Microsoft Exploropedia, World of Nature. Basically Encarta for natural sciences but tailored for kids. That game was the bomb.

It was also bundled with the Microsoft EasyBall, the giant mouse with a yellow ball [1].

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=22...

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