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An Ode To Microsoft Encarta (hanselman.com) 81

Posted by msmash from the blast-from-the-past dept.
Scott Hanselman: Microsoft Encarta came out in 1993 and was one of the first CD-ROMs I had. It stopped shipping in 2009 on DVD. I recently found a disk and was impressed that it installed just perfectly on my latest Window 10 machine and runs nicely. Encarta existed in an interesting place between the rise of the internet and computer's ability to deal with (at the time) massive amounts of data. CD-ROMs could bring us 700 MEGABYTES which was unbelievable when compared to the 1.44MB (or even 120KB) floppy disks we were used to. The idea that Encarta was so large that it was 5 CD-ROMs (!) was staggering, even though that's just a few gigs today. Even a $5 USB stick could hold Encarta - twice!

My kids can't possibly intellectualize the scale that data exists in today. We could barely believe that a whole bookshelf of Encyclopedias was now in our pockets. I spent hours and hours just wandering around random articles in Encarta. The scope of knowledge was overwhelming, but accessible. But it was contained - it was bounded. Today, my kids just assume that the sum of all human knowledge is available with a single search or a "hey Alexa" so the world's mysteries are less mysteries and they become bored by the Paradox of Choice. 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!
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An Ode To Microsoft Encarta

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  • A few gigs yesterday as well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @02:44PM (#59102856)

    even though that's just a few gigs today

    I am no storage master but I think that a few gigs then is the same amount today...

    • Re:A few gigs yesterday as well (Score:5, Funny)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @02:51PM (#59102898)

      even though that's just a few gigs today

      I am no storage master but I think that a few gigs then is the same amount today...

      Well, you do always have to take into account inflation.

      • Re:A few gigs yesterday as well (Score:5, Funny)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @03:19PM (#59103062)

        Well, you do always have to take into account inflation.

        Are we talking about economics or astrophysics?

      • Even more, are those Candian gigs, or US gigs? The exchange rate is about 33% today...

        • A gig is not a Gig (Score:5, Insightful)

          by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @12:11AM (#59104556)

          A modern version of Encata would need at least 100 gigs. Why? Because it can. Same rea

          Once upon a time a gig was was a huge amount of storage that could run entire enterprises. Today I cannot read email with a system that has only a Gig of RAM!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            When Encarta came out back in 1993 most computers were running at 640x400 resolution in 16 colours, or maybe 256 colours if you had a really high spec computer. Therefore there wasn't much need for high resolution, true colour images.

            Most machines of that era would really struggle with video too. You had to buy an MPEG decoder card to play back crappy VideoCD quality movies.

            It would be interesting to see a breakdown of how much of Encarta's size is program code, text and graphics.

          • Encarta had videos and audio clips, that was part of the appeal of having an encyclopedia on a multimedia device: you weren't limited to just text. But the clips were tiny and grainy. You're right that a modern Encarta would be much larger, and one of the reasons is that it can be. Another reason is that it would be much better.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Well yey, wher encarta had a video clip at 300x300 today we usualy have 1280x720 (or grater) at least for newer stuff) and yea codecs are better but i suspect the files are larger anyway, not to mention that when a 15 secon videoclip was accepted then it is probably a lot longer today (why not storrage/bandwith is rather cheap and people ate kind of expecting it)

      • Since the harddisk manufacturers invented Boobiebites it's been harder to pump up their capacities. They were already at triple D cups, people started noticing they were fake.

    • How much storage do you have available? 1990s answer: "Over half a gigabyte!" Todays answer: "Really low ... Under 5 Gig." That was the point.
    • I think he meant to quote it, as in:

      ..even though that's "just a few gigs" today.

      The point being to emphasise the insignificance of the size. Today nobody would say "that's just a few petabytes" (except in a joking/sarcastic manner) but in another 3-4 decades or so that might be a phrase people casually throw out often

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slazzy ( 864185 )
      You can always delete half the files and then the USB drive will weigh that much less...
  • In computing terms, knowledge is both data and application code. What we have today is access to overabundance of facts/data, but this doesn't mean we can make better decisions as we lack knowledge to process it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      In computing terms, knowledge is both data and application code. What we have today is access to overabundance of facts/data, but this doesn't mean we can make better decisions as we lack knowledge to process it.

      Facts is knowing information. Knowledge is knowing the context of that information. Wisdom is knowing when to apply that information.

      • And thanks for making my point so well ... there is a seemingly boundless amount of misinformation at our fingertips now too.
      • ...and today politics is knowing how to deny that information. The problem is not that we don't know how to process facts/data it's that many people would rather ignore or suppress facts than change their mind about something.

        • You don't have to knowingly ignore facts. There are any number of websites that agree with whatever you want to believe. If the first search result doesn't look right, just keep going until you find one that resonates as true (to you - regardless of actual facts).

          • Um, isn't that exactly knowingly ignoring facts?

            Of course, with so much deliberate disinformation causing a traffic jam on the information superhighway, is it even possible to know what facts are facts now?
            The fact is many facts have become factual fiction of non-factual facts and the remaining factual facts have in fact been regulated to an oblivion where facts no longer count as factual.....oh, fuck, am I ever getting a headache, I THINK that may be an actual fact, but I'm Not Sure....So it's off to Buttf

          • You don't have to knowingly ignore facts. There are any number of websites that agree with whatever you want to believe. If the first search result doesn't look right, just keep going until you find one that resonates as true (to you - regardless of actual facts).

            Or what the source wants you to believe - my copy of Encarta matter-of-factly informs me that AOL is not the internet! Technically true, but I intuit that there was some level of business politics being pushed by Microsoft, since my disk came out just as MS was acknowledging the internet's existence, and just as IE (and later MSN) was coming out.

  • there's really no analog to the feeling we got watching the Moon Landing as a video in Encarta

    I disagree, watching some space related documentaries (like Criterion's "For All Mankind") still brings up that feeling, the thing is you just need more context to understand why something historical was such an achievement.

    I think for modern kids the wonder of YouTube probably gives them that same thrill you used to get from Encarta, as they can look at channels like "SmarterEveryDay" or a million other impressi

  • Encarta also existed in a time when social media wasn't really a thing (at least not at the beginning). Ah, the good ol' days.

  • all human knowledge is not on internet (Score:3)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @02:50PM (#59102888)

    Between copyright and undigitized records that exist as physical media only there is much unavailable on the internet. Hard to estimate what fraction of potentially accessible knowledge isn't online, some low ball it at 5% but others think more than 25%

    • It's probably more than that. But a lot of it you probably wouldn't have found in physical form even if you tried, despite it existing.

      • The nonphysical would include knowledge of humans' experience, hard to estimate size of that. This would include things like last speakers of near-extinct languages that aren't being recorded nor researched, last survivors of cultures that are no more, etc.

        • Sure, but I wasn't talking about things that don't exist in physical form - just physical printed information that is rare, unindexed and very hard to find.

  • Their marketing wasn't very good, though (Score:5, Funny)

    by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @02:52PM (#59102910)

    A couple of years after mad cow disease became a major issue in the UK, while British beef was still unexportable, Microsoft was still advertising Encarta with the tagline "Beef up your brain"!

  • Another program from that era (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @02:52PM (#59102916)

    I really enjoyed Microsoft Dinosaurs [wikipedia.org]. For its time, it was pretty great.

  • Encarta is nothing to be proud of, rather it was just one more milestone for Microsoft's journey into the depths of ultimate evil. In short, Microsoft intended to secure a monopoly on all human knowledge, to augment its monopoly on PC operating systems and office productivity software. Really no different than trying to own the internet by forcing IE down the throats of clueless Windows drones. Sure, you can spin it as high minded and all, but that's just what it is: spin.

    Make no mistake about it, Microsoft

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Encarta is nothing to be proud of, rather it was just one more milestone for Microsoft's journey into the depths of ultimate evil. In short, Microsoft intended to secure a monopoly on all human knowledge, to augment its monopoly on PC operating systems and office productivity software. Really no different than trying to own the internet by forcing IE down the throats of clueless Windows drones. Sure, you can spin it as high minded and all, but that's just what it is: spin.

      Make no mistake about it, Microsoft intended to own the worldwide encyclopedia space, and that was far from the limit of their malign intentions, as was later proved abundantly clear. Proved in the courts no less, and paid far (only in part) with billions of dollars in fines.

      Oh hey, some Microsoft employee wants to deny simple facts and had mod points. Or an account farm, more like it. Typical Microsoft. See, nothing at all has changed. Do not believe that crapspin about new cuddly Microsoft one little stinking bit.

      • Encarta is nothing to be proud of, rather it was just one more milestone for Microsoft's journey into the depths of ultimate evil. In short, Microsoft intended to secure a monopoly on all human knowledge, to augment its monopoly on PC operating systems and office productivity software. Really no different than trying to own the internet by forcing IE down the throats of clueless Windows drones. Sure, you can spin it as high minded and all, but that's just what it is: spin.

        Make no mistake about it, Microsoft intended to own the worldwide encyclopedia space, and that was far from the limit of their malign intentions, as was later proved abundantly clear. Proved in the courts no less, and paid far (only in part) with billions of dollars in fines.

        Oh hey, some Microsoft employee wants to deny simple facts and had mod points. Or an account farm, more like it. Typical Microsoft. See, nothing at all has changed. Do not believe that crapspin about new cuddly Microsoft one little stinking bit.

        Fuck you Microsoft and all your evil minions. Mod me down again, go ahead. Keep in mind that I post in multiple forums and if you want to make an enemy, well... Just go ahead, make my day.

  • Only slightly less biased than the Soviet Encyclopaedia, but with similar brainwashing goals. It's good that neither is relevant any longer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Do you have an actual examples of Encarta being untrustworthy, or are you just promoting the post-truth everything-is-fake-news conspiracy theory?

      What kind of brainwashing did Microsoft engage in, exactly?

  • Encarta would accept edits but only publish them when reviewed by experts. It’s a shame Encarta shut down as we do need a credible alternative to the revert happy editors on Wikipedia.

  • Brings back memories... (Score:3)

    by E-Lad ( 1262 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @04:47PM (#59103368)

    ...of going to the the yearly COMPUTER SHOW AND SALE(!!) at the local fairgrounds and haggling with some sketchy-looking seller for the latest edition of Encarta, a 2x CD-ROM drive, and 8MB of 72 pin EDO RAM, with the goal of getting it all for under $200.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @05:08PM (#59103442)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Who had 120 KB floppy disks? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Even on Apple II computers 5 1/4" floppy disks were 143 KB and 3 1/2" floppy disks were 800 KB.

    When CD-ROM came out on the PC common 5 1/4" floppy disks were 360 KB and 1.2MB, 3 1/2" floppy disks were 720 KB and 1.44MB.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      TRS-80 Model I used FM format, giving 85kB. The original 13-sector Apple DOS 3.2.1 format was 113.75kB. The 16-sector format used by Apple DOS 3.3 and ProDOS expanded the capacity to 140kB. Acorn single-sided 40-track 5.25" disk format was 100kB. I'm not sure if any format was exactly 120kB, but there were definitely formats with less capacity than that.

  • The set of books is called an Encyclopedia. It refers to the set, not to individual books that are part of the set. Just a peeve of mine when that gets misused. Now granted, the original post could have been referring to multiple sets, each making up an individual encyclopedia. Not likely, but possible.

  • Encarta (Score:3)

    by westlake ( 615356 ) on Monday August 19, 2019 @07:14PM (#59103920)

    I have no idea where the geek gets his notion of bias in Encarta, which in its mature form was a sound general-reference encyclopedia for home and family use similar to the World Book.

    You can't write down to this audience, but neither can you overwhelm it with the arcane and the trivial ---- you need clarity and focus.

  • When I was getting into computers in the 90's we were starving for information. The library had out of date computer books. Dialup BBSs gave us tantalizing hints. It was so frustrating to get anything working. Now I can find so much at my fingertips and I continually marvel at it. I also mentor some high school students... And I don't get it. Everything is a roadblock to them. They view searching the internet as hard work. One of the things I've noticed though is that they search wrong. If you have

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      One of the things I've noticed though is that they search wrong

      So many have no idea what questions they should be asking, either of a search engine or in life in general. Knowing the correct question to ask is nearly as important as knowing the answer.

      And yes, please give people a lesson on how to use search engines. Pretty please.

  • There were some explanation vids that were WAY simpler to understand than what is out on YouTube today.

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