Poll of the Day > Did you ever use Microsoft Encarta as a resource (before wikipedia)

(+) Yeah! (+)

did you ever use Encarta as a resource for research papers before wikipedia?

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Yep. Encarta was great. Completely obsolete now by every measure, but it was pretty handy back in the day.

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adjl posted...

Yep. Encarta was great. Completely obsolete now by every measure, but it was pretty handy back in the day.

Yup, I loved it.
Aside from using it for school and such, I listened to a bunch of obscure music samples through it, still remember enjoying that. Thanks to Encarta, I learned what an Oud was, for example.

Dmess85 posted...

did you ever use Encarta as a resource for research papers before wikipedia?

If I had absolutely nothing better to do right now, I would use a ton of VPNs to vandalize the living hell out of Wikipedia just for the sake of it (to avoid getting banned).

But then again, I would rather not waste my time corrupting edits to articles that nobody ever reads, just to have those edits reversed immediately.

only a little bit, but yes, I think I did. geez, that's an ancient memory...

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Encarta was pretty neat back in the day

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TheWorstPoster posted...

If I had absolutely nothing better to do right now, I would use a ton of VPNs to vandalize the living hell out of Wikipedia just for the sake of it (to avoid getting banned).

But then again, I would rather not waste my time corrupting edits to articles that nobody ever reads, just to have those edits reversed immediately.

But then again, youd also like to avoid actual employment.

I remember using it a few times, but it was never very helpful. Google was a thing by the time I started high school though, so maybe I just didn't have many real research needs before it became obsolete.

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I only used it to to some quiz game and access the internet. Really.

Back when my college (high school for you guys) finally got internet, Internet Explorer was locked down, student accounts didn't have it accessible normally. Only with a teachers note would the librarian log students into the internet account. But we did get to use Encarta 97 without meeting special requirements, and that would launch the IE browser for some of the stuff it did. From there, I used the internet to do... well, probably not much of anything. What existed back in 98?
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I've never heard of it. What exactly was it?

No, I owned actual encyclopedias.

I never actually owned a personal computer capable of running Encarta until after I was out of college - prior to that I was mostly either ghosting off public terminals or I owned computers that were 1-2 generations old (and thus weren't running modern software). In college I basically just used general Internet and the school's research library.

By the time I COULD theoretically use Encarta (I bought my first full PC around 2000 or so, after I graduated and no longer had access to my school computer lab), I was already out of school and didn't need it for anything. Even when it comes to Wikipedia (which wasn't created until a year after I was already out of school), about the only "research" I ever really do with it is read historical articles for backstory ideas for RPG characters/stories.
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Yea, I think around high school or late middle school I got Encarta. Before that, I had 2 sets of encyclopedias I used to use (my dad's old set from the 60's and a set my parents bought for me when I was 6). I still have both of them stored away in my old room at my dad's house, but I have no idea what happened to our copy of Encarta, I imagine my dad still has it in his CD rack.

I never used it that much outside of the "game" it came with though, I would just use the library for studying and research.

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I don't remember. I wouldn't be surprised if I did use it once or twice for research but to me it was mostly a curiosity.

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Yes, it was useful.

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