Microsoft Student With Encarta Premium 2008 Full Dvd

Try here Microsoft encarta premium 2017 free. download full version - fernmetpaten’s blog. It looks like Microsoft stopped supporting/selling Encarta in 2009, though, so no guarantees about who the provider here is or whether it’s what you’re looking for.

This Student 2008 package includes the full Encarta reference library 2008. Encarta hasn't got anything like the depth in articles as Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate reference suite 2008, but I can't imagine many year 9 school children wanting a scholarly detailed account of the action of CD4+ lymphocytes when looking up AIDS. That's where Encarta scores, it's far more kid friendly with fun as well as facts - it's simply infinitely more entertaining than Britannica and ideal as a family reference. Encarta's greater brevity is just right for a younger audience, plus you get a free upgrade to Encarta Premium [on-line] but only until 31st October 2008 [where there's even help for A Levels]. We also have Britannia Reference Suite 2008 as well though - its greater depth suites well read adults, and it has good advice on homework as well, useful if you are helping your kids but a bit too dry for many under 16s to use on their own (and ironically Britannica has a strong US bias that is intensely irritating).
Encarta still presents the information in a more fun way with better use of multi-media content such as instructional videos, games to aid learning and pretty twirling icon links. You need internet access as well though (Encarta & Britannica use it to update as well as web-link), although that's pretty essential for homework anyway. Encarta even goes as far as integrating itself into Internet Explorer (and I often search it by mistake). This 'UK' version of Encarta is far more geared to the UK schools curriculum than Britannica, and Children's Encarta is re-written for primary school children, whereas Elementary Britannica has far too complex graphics, text and images simply borrowed from the main encyclopaedia.
With both the Encarta or Britannica encyclopaedias you really need to sit down with kids under 14 and explain what is being said - and I have to say at these times we vote with the mouse and choose Student 2008 [Encarta] every time. Don't forget checking Children's [Primary School] Encarta in tandem though, as it puts things more simply which is ideal as an extra study aid for KS2 and KS3 (age 9 to 12). Why Encarta for schoolkids?: well search 'evaporation' in Encarta and you get the classic school science text book description with links to 'boiling point', 'condensation' and the visual browser, whereas under Britannica you get a detailed treatise on 'refrigeration'. Elementary Britannica still simply edits down adult information, making little effort to repitch it at the intended primary school level (e.g. under 'Greenhouse effect', images of 'The Mossbauer effect: use in a spectrometer' appear). Plus Encarta looks far far prettier as well.
This Student 2008 package includes much more than Encarta though, there's 'learning essentials' templates, toolbars, tutorials and guides that help kick start any essay - with a wealth of information on how to construct essays. There's also guides to over 1,000 English literature set books (up 500 from Student 2007). Plus for maths there's an equation solver (basic algebra to calculus), graphs and help with complex sums. For languages there's spelling and dictionary translation, with help with writing sentences (using your words and verbs correctly with every tense). The languages French, German, Italian and Spanish are now supported - however the language dictionaries sadly seem to offer relatively few word translations. See Microsoft.com/student for more details. Perhaps one downside is that the Encarta dictionary doesn't spell check so if your child miss-spells a word slightly, unlike Word, you don't get any help offered [although the dictionary does move to words that match the first few correct letters].
Student 2008 is only supplied on DVD though not CD - all the large box contains is the single DVD - you can install using another PCs DVD drive via a network if your kids PC is CD drive only (or replace the CD drive). More importantly you must have Microsoft Office XP, 2003 or 2007. Without Office most of the features simply don't work - so you must buy it as well. There are student versions of Office 2003/7 that aren't too expensive, around £70 from Amazon, and any school kid is eligible (and you can buy secondhand). On the plus side an old PC running XP if fine - the software is stated by Microsoft to be XP only, and not Win98/ME/2000 friendly as billed by Amazon (but even our old Student 2007 ran on our Vista Premium PC). A 1GHz+ CPU is recommended - a 600MHz is the minimum, with 256 to 512Mb+ system RAM, and 2 to 3 Gb of free hard drive space. You also really need internet access (Encarta updates itself 'to Oct 2008'), which is pretty essential for kids homework anyway these days. Student 2008 also runs under Vista on our PC, but I haven't tried MS Office 2007 with it, we have Office 2003, but I expect it will be fine.
Along with web searches, Encarta is an extremely useful aid to any kid's education, aimed squarely at 12-18 year olds [Children's Encarta suits 8 to 11 year olds, but is still useful as a 2nd research tool for year 7s]. Student 2008 won't perform miracles though and is only there to aid homework. However, with features such as the Learning Essentials tools and access to everything Microsoft Encarta has to offer, Student 2008 is a great platform for homework assignments and is thoroughly recommended. Only downside is that the full retail price is £49 to the US versions $49, not that the EEC seems to want to do anything about that. Be advised though that the price of Student 2008 will probably fall to half this when Microsoft Student 2009 is about to hit the shelves - around autumn 2008 when the 'free' on-line subscription of this set [that we rarely if ever, use] runs out.

Microsoft Encarta
License
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Stable release	2009 / August 2008; 11 years ago
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Type	Encyclopedia
Website	Formerly encarta.msn.com at the Wayback Machine (archived October 31, 2009)

Microsoft Encarta was a digitalmultimediaencyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also later available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription – although later many articles could also be viewed free online with advertisements.^[1] By 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles,^[2] numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive content, timelines, maps, atlases and homework tools.

Microsoft published similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions contained contents licensed from national sources and more or less content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch version had content from the Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia.

In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing both the Encarta disc and online versions. The MSNEncarta site was closed on October 31, 2009 in all countries except Japan, where it was closed on December 31, 2009.^[3]^[4] Microsoft continued to operate the Encarta online dictionary until 2011.^[5]

1History
2Contents and features
3Technology

History[edit]

After the successes of Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia (1989) and The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1992),^[6]Microsoft initiated Encarta, under the internal codename 'Gandalf',^[7]^[8]^[9]^[10] by purchasing non-exclusive rights to the Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, incorporating it into its first edition in 1993. Funk & Wagnalls continued to publish revised editions for several years independently of Encarta, but then ceased printing in the late 1990s.

Launch[edit]

The name Encarta was created for Microsoft by an advertising agency^[11] and launched in 1993 as a $395 product,^[12] although it soon dropped to $99, and was often bundled into the price of a new computer purchase.^[13]^[14]^[15]

In the late 1990s, Microsoft added content from Collier's Encyclopedia and New Merit Scholar's Encyclopedia from Macmillan into Encarta after purchasing them. Thus the final Microsoft Encarta can be considered the successor of the Funk and Wagnalls, Collier, and New Merit Scholar encyclopedias. None of these formerly successful encyclopedias remained in print for long after being merged into Encarta.

Microsoft introduced several regional versions of Encarta translated into languages other than English. For example, the Brazilian Portuguese version was introduced in 1999 and suspended in 2002.^[16] The Spanish version was somewhat smaller than the English one, at 42,000 articles.

Move to the web[edit]

In 2000, the full Encarta content became available on the World Wide Web to subscribers, with a subset available for free to anyone.^[13]

Demise[edit]

In July 2006, Websters Multimedia, a Bellevue, Washington subsidiary of London-based Websters International Publishers, took over maintenance of Encarta from Microsoft.^[17] The last version was Encarta Premium 2009, released in August 2008.^[2]

Microsoft announced in April 2009 that it would cease to sell Microsoft Student and all editions of Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009, citing changes in the way people seek information, and in the traditional encyclopedia and reference material market, as the key reasons behind the termination.^[3] Updates for Encarta were offered until October 2009.^[3] Additionally, MSN Encarta web sites were discontinued around October 31, 2009, with the exception of Encarta Japan which was discontinued on December 31, 2009. Existing MSN Encarta Premium (part of MSN Premium) subscribers were refunded.^[3]

The demise of Encarta was widely attributed to competition from the free and user-generated Wikipedia,^[18]^[19]^[20] which, from small beginnings in 2001, grew to be larger than Encarta,^[21] thanks to popularization by web search services like Google.^[13] By the time of the announcement of its closure in April 2009, Encarta had about 62,000 articles, most behind a paywall, while the English Wikipedia had over 2.8 million articles in open access.^{[citation needed]}

Contents and features[edit]

Encarta's standard edition^[22] included approximately 50,000 articles, with additional images, videos and sounds. The premium editions contained over 62,000 articles and other multimedia content, such as 25,000 pictures and illustrations, over 300 videos and animations, and an interactive atlas with 1.8 million locations. Its articles were integrated with multimedia content and could include links to websites selected by its editors. Encarta's articles in general were less lengthy and more summarized than the printed version of Encyclopædia Britannica or the online Wikipedia. Like most multimedia encyclopedias, Encarta's articles tended to provide an overview of the subject rather than an exhaustive coverage and can only be viewed one at a time.

A sidebar could display alternative views, essays, journals or original materials relevant to the topic. For example, when reading about computers, it featured annals since 1967 of the computer industry. Encarta also supported closed captioning for the hearing impaired. A separate program, called Encarta Research Organizer was included in early versions for gathering and organizing information and constructing a Word document-based report. Later versions included Encarta Researcher, a browser plugin to organize information from Encarta articles and web pages into research projects. Content copied from Encarta was appended with a copyright boilerplate message after the selection. The user interface allowed for viewing content with only images, videos, sounds, animations, 360-degree views, virtual tours, charts and tables or only interactives.

Encarta was originally available for sale on 1 to 5 CD-ROMs or a DVD.^[23]^[24] Some new PCs were shipped with an OEM edition of Encarta.^[25]

Encarta 2000 and later had 'Map Treks', which were tours of geographic features and concepts. Microsoft had a separate product known as Encarta Africana which was an encyclopedia of black history and culture. It was integrated into the standard Encarta Reference suite starting with the 2001 version.^[26]Encarta 2002 and onward feature 3D Virtual Tours of ancient structures, for example the Acropolis; 2D panoramic images of world wonders or major cities; and a virtual flight feature which allows users to fly a virtual airplane over a coarsely generated artificial landscape area. Version 2002 also introduced the ability to install the entire encyclopedia locally to the hard disk drive to prevent frequent swapping of discs.

Encarta 2003 incorporated literature guides and book summaries, foreign language translation dictionaries, a Homework Center and Chart Maker. Encarta's Visual Browser, available since the 2004 version, presented a user with a list of related topics making them more discoverable. A collection of 32 Discovery Channel videos were also later added. Encarta 2005 introduced another program called Encarta Kids aimed at children to make learning fun.

Encarta also included a trivia game called 'MindMaze' (accessible through Ctrl+Z) in which the player explores a castle by answering questions whose answers can be found in the encyclopedia's articles. There was also a 'Geography Quiz' and several other games and quizzes, some quizzes also in Encarta Kids.

For years, Encarta came in three primary software editions: Standard, Premium, and Reference Library (price and features in that order). Beginning with Encarta 2006, however, when Websters Multimedia took over its maintenance, Encarta became a feature of Microsoft Student. Although it was possible to purchase only the Encarta encyclopedia separately, Microsoft Student bundles together Encarta Premium with Microsoft Math (a graphing-calculator program) and Learning Essentials, which provides templates for Microsoft Office. In addition, the Reference Library was discontinued, absorbed into a newer, more comprehensive Premium package. Encarta's user interface was shared with Microsoft Student, and was streamlined to reduce clutter with only a Search box which returned relevant results; however it became no longer possible to simply browse all the encyclopedia articles alphabetically.

World Atlas[edit]

The dynamic maps were generated with the same engine that powered Microsoft MapPoint software. The map was a virtual globe that one could freely rotate and magnify to any location down to major streets for big cities. The globe had multiple surfaces displaying political boundaries, physical landmarks, historical maps and statistical information. One could selectively display statistical values on the globe surface or in a tabular form, different sized cities, various geological or man-made features and reference lines in a map.

The maps contained hyperlinks to related articles ('Map Trek') and also supported a 'Dynamic Sensor' that provides the latitude, longitude, place name, population and local time for any point on the globe. Encarta also generated a visible-light moon atlas with names of major craters and hyperlinks. However, it did not include a planetarium, but instead had a small interactive constellation-only map.

In addition to database generated maps, many other illustrative maps in Encarta ('Historical Maps') were drawn by artists. Some more advanced maps were interactive: for example, the large African map for Africana could display information such as political boundaries or the distribution of African flora.

Encarta Dictionary[edit]

When Encarta was released as part of the 'Reference Suite' in 1998 to 2000, Microsoft bundled 'Microsoft Bookshelf' with the other programs (Encarta Encyclopedia 98 Deluxe Edition, Encarta Desk Atlas, Encarta Virtual Globe 98, Encarta World English Dictionary, and Encarta Research Organizer).

'Bookshelf' was discontinued in 2000, and in later Encarta editions (Encarta Suite 2000 and onward), 'Bookshelf' was replaced with a dedicated Encarta Dictionary, a superset of its printed version, The Encarta World English Dictionary (later Encarta Webster's Dictionary).^[27]

There was some controversy over the decision, since the dictionary lacks the other books provided in 'Bookshelf' which many found to be a useful reference, such as Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (replaced with a quotations section in Encarta that links to relevant articles and people) and an Internet Directory (although many of the sites listed in offline directories no longer exist).

Print versions of Encarta dictionaries have also been published, including:

Encarta World English Dictionary (St Martin's Press, ISBN031222222-X/ISBN978-031222222-2)
Bloomsbury English Dictionary

Second edition (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, ISBN074756243-1/ISBN978-074756243-6)^[28]

Microsoft Encarta Dictionary: The first dictionary for the Internet age (St. Martin's Paperbacks, ISBN031298362-X/ISBN978-031298362-8)
Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary: The First Dictionary For The Internet Age (St. Martin's Press, ISBN031228087-4/ISBN978-031228087-1)
Encarta Webster's College Dictionary of the English Language

Second edition (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, ISBN158234510-4/ISBN978-158234510-9)^[29]

Encarta Webster's College Dictionary

Second edition (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, ISBN1-59691-085-2/ISBN978-1-59691-085-0)^[30]

Regional versions[edit]

Robert McHenry, while Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica, criticized Encarta for differences in factual content between national versions of Encarta, accusing Microsoft of 'pandering to local prejudices' instead of presenting subjects objectively.^[31] An article written by Bill Gates addressed the nature of writing encyclopedias for different regions.^[32]

Technology[edit]

Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2007 running on Windows XP.

Before the emergence of the World Wide Web for information browsing, Microsoft recognized the importance of having an engine that supported a multimediamarkup language, full text search, and extensibility using software objects. The hypertext display, hyperlinking and search software was created by a team of CD-ROM Division developers in the late 1980s who designed it as a generalized engine for uses as diverse as interactive help, document management systems and as ambitious as a multimedia encyclopedia.

Encarta was able to use various Microsoft technologies because it was extensible with software components for displaying unique types of multimedia information. For example, a snap in map engine is adapted from its MapPoint software. The hypertext and search engine used by Encarta also powered Microsoft Bookshelf.

Encarta used database technologies to generate much of its multimedia content. For example, Encarta generated each zoomable map from a global geographic information system database on demand.

Microsoft Encarta Premium 2008

When a user used the copy and paste function of Microsoft Windows on Encarta on more than five words, Encarta automatically appended a copyrightboilerplate message after the paste.

User editing[edit]

Early in 2005, Gary Alt announced that the online Encarta started to allow users to suggest changes to existing articles.^[33]

Encarta's content was accessible using a conversational interface on Windows Live Messenger via the MSN Bot 'Encarta Instant Answers'.^[34] The bot could answer many encyclopedia related questions directly in the IM window. It used short sentences from the Encarta website, and sometimes displays full articles in the Internet Explorer-based browser on the right. It also could complete simple mathematical and advanced algebra problems. This service was also available in German,^[35]Spanish,^[36]French^[37] and Japanese.^[38]

Updates[edit]

Each summer (in the Northern hemisphere) or winter (in the Southern hemisphere), Microsoft published a new version of Encarta. However, despite the inclusion of news-related and some supplementary articles, Encarta's contents had not been changed substantially in its later years. Besides the yearly update, the installed offline copy could be updated over the Internet for a certain period for free depending on the edition. Some articles (usually about 2,000) were updated to reflect important changes or events. When the update period expired, an advertisement prompting to upgrade to the new version was displayed to the user occasionally.

Reception[edit]

The editors of PC Gamer US nominated Microsoft Encarta '95 for their 1994 'Best Educational Product' award, although it lost to the CD-ROM adaptation of The Way Things Work.^[39]