Here’s an interesting comparison: here in Britain, it’s still going! Ours is owned by Dennis Publications and still brands itself as “Britain’s biggest technology magazine”. I’ve been reading it for over two decades, so I hunted up an old ‘mammoth’ copy from the ’90s – I keep a few, say one every five years – to amuse myself looking at how things were, esp. the ads. You know: full height 5 1/4 inch hard drives, 80MB for $1000!

Issue 91 of September 1995 was £2.25 with a cover CD (not the cheap floppy edition, then) of goodies. That price was about $3.50, then. It had 708 pages and weighed 3 1/2 pounds, not counting the loose ads. About a third of its bulk was catalogues from small PC builders and component suppliers, and that paid for a lot of editorial – it was one of the leading reviewers, which is why I bought it. That wasn’t the biggest: they got up to over 1000 pages a couple of years later.

Issue 264 of February 2010 is £4.99 with a cover DVD (they recently dropped the CD option at £1 less). That would be $7.99 in the US. It has 164 pages and pretty-well the same format and recipe – even still has a Dell ad on the first few pages. Lots of updates in looks, of course, but recognizably the same product.

The question is, how can this be when in the US, the whole market’s folded? I reckon there are three factors here:

1) the cover price is higher (and buyers here have always been willing to pay it);

2) the goodies are valuable, bringing a regularly-updated collection of useful tools onto one disk (saves time trawling the net) as well as regular last-year’s-version of expensive software;

3) and those reviews, especially the head-to-head ones, are in depth and authoritative – I trust these guys. Yes, it’s all on the web, too, for free, but having it collected to read when you can’t get online, and having a section of new products with updating Best Buys to compare with at the front of the mag is CONVENIENT. And I’ll pay some for that.

Overall, this mag does it’s job still – it keeps me up to date painlessly, and I can always get back to stuff on the web later if I need it. That’s worth the (reduced) subscription price I pay.

Any comments?

I think CS was a better read than PCW because they devote too much to cell phones. They should call it PC & Cell Phone World. They didn’t even mention the CES show and they let go of my favorite contributing editor, Stephen Manes (“Full Disclosure” – last page of every PCW) That was the 1st article I read every time.

I think I had every issue of Analog and Antic until my wife sold them in a garage sale.

Someone should do a list of the greatest computer-magazine editors and writers, but I’m too close to the subject–and I’m happy to say I’m friends with a bunch of ones I admire and have learned from. I do think that Jerry Pournelle kind of invented writing about computers for intelligent human beings in an interesting, non-technical way; all of us who’ve done it since he began doing so are in his debt. I also think of two folks who are no longer with us: Andrew Fluegelman (the first editor of PC World) and John Anderson (Creative Computer and MacUser–a wonderfully smart writer).

And yes, I think the majority of people who have ever been tech journalists–including those who are doing it now–will end up doing something else before they call it a day.

–Harry

Your next list should be of the Who’s Who of the computer press, Michael Miller, Paul Somerson, Jerry Pournelle… Anybody who ever published the code for DOS batch files… Where are they now? Who’s still in the business? Judging by LinkedIn, most of us have changed careers.

Just to show what an old saddo I am, I have kept the cover floppies from ‘way back when they were 5 1/4″- PC Plus, What Personal Computer, What Micro and PC Shareware Magazines feature there, going back to the 1980s.

If you need any more I could delve to the back of the cupboard and find others.

Through the eighties, I read 4 to 5 periodicals from cover to cover, every week to stay abreast of new developments which could affect/benefit my customer. I was a Communciations Project Specialist, at EDS, on the GM Account for 9 years. My head finally exploded in 1993 and I didn’t attemp to be up on every new development across several plarforms, inculding DEC mini’s… DECUS was their journal; IBM 4300 mainfraimes and HP workstations (OS/2.1), unix, and Sun Workstations. BTW, I was the librarian who sorted and retrievd the hot new issues so a 45 person account could share a single-subcription to eah magazine. Computer World went straight to the Account Manager, I got the Data Communications magazine and eventually all of the subscriptions, to manage. A library used to be a cool hub of knowlege and enjoyment, but the Ineternet has replaced THAT, too! One day, they take my underware and tell me that there’s a widget, that I can download, to save on real-mode clothing.

Still cannot remember that big rag’s name.