I don't know. I was in 4th and 5th grade when I did the Dacta class and was probably in 6th grade when I got Mindstorms. I got it right after it came out, I don't think any of the new IDEs that are available now were available right at the release.

If I was still interested today, I'm sure I wouldn't be disappointed. In my Intro to ECECS (Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science) Lab, we made a Mindstorms robot that had to traverse an obstacle course. The IDE we used still used "blocks" to represent functions, but it wasn't as simplistic as the LEGO IDE. I think you could even look at the code behind the blocks if you wanted to.

My brother and I went to a "class" thingy that used LEGO Dacta. Dacta was basically the precursor to Mindstorms, just less n00bified. You wrote the programs in actual code, not using LEGO's horrible GUI with blocks. Shortly after we completed the class two years in a row, LEGO released Mindstorms. I got it for Christmas that year and was very excited. That is, until I tried to program one of my bots. The stupidly-simple GUI for writing programs killed my interest in the whole thing.

My brother and I made some pretty awesome models including a conveyor belt that sorted based on color, a temperature controlled green house, and a black and white autofeed scanner. The scanner was epic. It was so cool to see the picture we drew show up on the computer screen.

After poking around, it looks like you can still buy the stuff: http://www.legoeducation.com/store/?global=usa

Indeed. It's always faster for me to grab an xvid copy of a movie from newsgroups I own on dvd than to rip it myself. Same with music. And like you said, they probably did a better job than me. Trying to understand what deinterlacing method to use gives me a headache.