Microsoft Encarta no more?

[OilSheikh]

Thank you for visiting the Encarta product page on Microsoft.com.
Microsoft has discontinued its Microsoft Encarta and Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium lines of products.
Customers will receive product support for up to three years from purchase date or through January 10, 2012, which ever date is reached first.
We understand that Encarta customers may have questions regarding this announcement, so we have prepared the following list of questions and answers below. Please keep reading if you would like more information about the changes to Encarta.


Whyyyyyyyyyyy???? It was such a good encyclopaedia software which I used in its early days and loved it. There were articles, sound clips and video clips as well. Very bad decision by Microsoft.

[shadowmaster]

I would say the internet (in particular wiki) probably ruined it. Why would people buy it if they can freely get the info through a bit of searching around. However iirc the quality of encarta was pretty good.

[jim]

Yeah it died a while back, I remember hearing about it.

I bought Encarta about 18 months back because it was really cheap - under a tenner for the latest version, and I couldn't get my laptop onto the school network so it was useful for research purposes. I was extremely disappointed though... most of the topics I looked for didn't exist, and the ones that did were so brief or simple that they weren't of any use whatsoever. In fact the only thing I remember doing with it was getting up pictures of Emmeline Pankhurst's kids because our history teacher said they were really hideous.

If I had the internet available, there was no choice - I didn't even consider booting up Encarta. Maybe that's Wikipedia's fault - I've almost come to expect an article on a 17 year old footballer or a very specific branch of organic chemistry, so going back to a traditional Encylopaedia where a list of US Presidents and a brief summary of how carbon appears in trees, coal and animals and burns well to make CO2 was very strange.

I think it'd probably had its day to be honest.

[mrochester]

I agree, it's probably the internet that has killed off Encarta. Long gone are the days where it was faster to buy, install and look up topics in Encarta than on the internet. All that information is now readily available at our fingertips.

[Greenlizard0]

With Wiki being free there's no real need for e.g. Encarta.

I remember reading an analysis on encyclopedias and Wiki was just as good or better.

[Perfectionist]

Try britannica They actually make an effort to compete with Wikipedia

[Saracen]

Try britannica They actually make an effort to compete with Wikipedia

I'd have said more that Wiki try (and pretty much fail) to compete with Britannica.

But seriously, they're two different types of approach, and I must admit, I use both. I've used EB for years, on disc rather than the net and that, together with the OED (again, on disc), are my two favourite reference works.

I was never that much of a fan of Encarta though. The presentation was much better, or at least much more glitzy, flashy and interactive, but in my view, it had nowhere near the breadth or depth of coverage, let alone the reputation for the pedigree of the information.