Microsoft Closing Books Forever on Encarta

[JMcEntegart]

Microsoft has announced that the company’s long-standing multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta will be discontinued on Halloween 2009. With Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica available, we assume not too many of you will be upset...

Microsoft Closing Books Forever on Encarta : Read more

 

[seboj]

Sad day. I used to use Encarta all the time for homework back when I was in grade school. But, that's the way it goes.

 

[captaincharisma]

man is that still around? i haven't seen that program sense 1997

 

[JMcEntegart]

That was our reaction too! One of the lads said it had just completely fallen from his memory, like it never existed. That said, he later recalled he had a copy lying in his homeoffice, STILL.

The only reason I remember it is because I had a copied version and the RW CD was all glossy and gold and blingin'. Those were the days.

 

[aalkema]

That existed?

 

[rigaudio]

Didn't they give those away on "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?"
My childhood is wilting away. :C

 

[rigaudio]

[citation][nom]rigaudio[/nom]Didn't they give those away on "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?"My childhood is wilting away. :C[/citation]
Never mind, it was Britannica.

 

[mtyermom]

Yup, I have fond memories, but am in now way sad to see it go...

 

[commonlove1985]

I use Encarta Dictionaries as my main vocabulary source. It's far better than any other online or offline dictionary/thesaurus I've ever seen.

 

[juvealert]

i'm not an encarta freak, but why don't they make it available online like wikipedia?

 

[waikano]

Never used and to be honest thought it had died a long time ago. Well in internet years that would be about 2 years.

 

[Greatwalrus]

Used Encarta in grade school and quite often found it useless. But nevertheless, it was a good-minded project. Kind of forgot about it with Wikipedia available and all.

 

[rooket]

i've never got use out of any encyclopedia for computers for school projects and most school projects make use of a regular encyclopedia useless to begin with. to me encyclopedias are just for personal reference. i used to buy britannica for pc, it's nice to have but just something to have sitting on the shelf mainly. i'm not sure how it compares to the book version which is a great deal more expensive.

 

[Maxor127]

Yeah, I used Encarta '94 and '95. It was a good source, especially since our encyclopedia books were from the 60s, and it allowed me to cite sources for papers without having to go to the library back before the internet was popular. Oh well.

 

[FlayerSlayer]

I had an old copy of Encarta on my Windows 3.1 machine, with system requirements like "256 color graphics and 4 mb of memory". It didn't even fill the CD. Honestly, that was the last time I used Encarta, and I wasn't even aware it was still around.

 

[seboj]

[citation][nom]Maxor127[/nom] It was a good source, especially since our encyclopedia books were from the 60s, and it allowed me to cite sources for papers without having to go to the library back before the internet was popular. [/citation]

It's like you're me. Or maybe I'm you. Total Malkovich moment.

 

[mpasternak]

I don't think i used Encarta since the the 90's. in todays age. it's just antiquated. Funny. I still have a full set of britannica Encyclopedias in my bookshelf i used more often though

 

[Guest]

When I think of Encarta I think of the 300 ReMix: "This... is... ENCARTA!!!" *Kick to chest* :3

 

[warezme]

that was my first encyclopedia on disk, I feel old now. My parents were amazed at how much information fit on one little disk.

 

[sublifer]

[citation][nom]rigaudio[/nom]Never mind, it was Britannica.[/citation]
I still liked the Where in Time is Carmen SanDiego reference. I had actually forgotten about that... Used to play it on my Tandy 1000 with 32KB of RAM and no hdd

 

[hellwig]

When I was in high school, we were actually forbidden from using Encarta as a reference for our papers. Probably because Encarta was written by a bunch of software people who didn't quote their own references, meaning anything you found in their wasn't verifiable. Newer Encarta's might have changed that, but the Encarta '97 was pretty worthless. Same with lots of Wikipedia references, but since I'm no longer in school, its not like I'm ever going to write reference papers again.

 

[deltatux]

Ah crap, I use MSN Encarta's online dictionary all the time. Now I gotta find a new one eh?

I hate dictionary.com ... grrr...

 

[Flameout]

hahaha die ms die

 

[Guest]

In the 90s I had a PC Computer shop - I remember Encarta, it was the first disk I played when parnts came in with there kids! Not many walked out of the shop without being amazed and with an order for a PC (for their childrens education!)

 

[Guest]

What? No Obama stimulus package to keep it alive? Not fair!