<story><title>I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)</title><url>https://www.hanselman.com/blog/i-miss-microsoft-encarta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Aardwolf</author><text>Hmm, to me the term &amp;quot;multimedia PC&amp;quot; already sounded outdated from the start, similar to the &amp;quot;a CD ROM can contain a whole library shelf worth of data&amp;quot; hype.&lt;p&gt;I just thought like, this 386 PC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 &amp;quot;where do you want to go today&amp;quot; movie, but does that warrant all this hype of being called &amp;quot;multimedia&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Oh well, that was the 90s, things moved so fast then so of course things would sound outdated and cheesy very fast.</text></item><item><author>kar1181</author><text>That whole period of the PC industry where &amp;#x27;multimedia&amp;#x27; 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 overran the other home computers.&lt;p&gt;Games and applications were evolving at break-neck speed and the pace of change really made you feel anything was possible. Encarta was really a product of that time.&lt;p&gt;If you were doing primary &amp;#x2F; secondary school during the 90s, you&amp;#x27;d have had to do projects where paper encyclopaedias were your primary resource. For me in a rural school it wasn&amp;#x27;t until the mid 90s we had 486PCs with CDROM drives and going from Britannica to the searchable rich media database that was Encarta was a massive force multiplier. It was a remarkable demonstration of how positive an effect technology could have on the learning experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dehrmann</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;a CD ROM can contain a whole library shelf worth of data&amp;quot; hype&lt;p&gt;CD-ROMs were pretty incredible for their time. Remember that when they became mainstream around 1994, hard drives were only 200 MB and floppies were 1.44 MB, so they really were game changing.</text></comment>
<story><title>I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)</title><url>https://www.hanselman.com/blog/i-miss-microsoft-encarta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Aardwolf</author><text>Hmm, to me the term &amp;quot;multimedia PC&amp;quot; already sounded outdated from the start, similar to the &amp;quot;a CD ROM can contain a whole library shelf worth of data&amp;quot; hype.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;where do you want to go today&amp;quot; movie, but does that warrant all this hype of being called &amp;quot;multimedia&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Oh well, that was the 90s, things moved so fast then so of course things would sound outdated and cheesy very fast.</text></item><item><author>kar1181</author><text>That whole period of the PC industry where &amp;#x27;multimedia&amp;#x27; 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 overran the other home computers.&lt;p&gt;Games and applications were evolving at break-neck speed and the pace of change really made you feel anything was possible. Encarta was really a product of that time.&lt;p&gt;If you were doing primary &amp;#x2F; secondary school during the 90s, you&amp;#x27;d have had to do projects where paper encyclopaedias were your primary resource. For me in a rural school it wasn&amp;#x27;t until the mid 90s we had 486PCs with CDROM drives and going from Britannica to the searchable rich media database that was Encarta was a massive force multiplier. It was a remarkable demonstration of how positive an effect technology could have on the learning experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theandrewbailey</author><text>I see your multimedia PC, and raise you an &amp;quot;information superhighway&amp;quot;. That sounded cringey from the start.</text></comment>