Buying PC Magazines

While buying the shopping this month, I noticed how many PC related magazines there now were.

Which ones to buy and read?

What did they have inside them?

The price varies quite substantially as well, ranging from £6 down to £1.

So, I decided to try out some of them.

I have a subscription to ComputerActive. This magazine was one of the first PC magazines I ever tried when I first got a PC, and I have found it to be great value…the sub is under £1 an issue and it is delivered to the door. It doesn’t come with any cover disks or anything, but does have loads of articles aimed at the beginner!!

This means that all the articles can be clearly followed by anyone with a very small knowledge of their computers and can be a Godsend to those who don’t have the time or temperament to try and wrestle with their computers.

Right, I’ll get on and tell you about the ones I bought to try out and how I got on with them. Remember, this is just a quick overview of them.

The first magazine I bought to trial this time around was WebActive.

WebActive is a sister magazine to ComputerActive and is very well priced (even in the shops) at under a pound.

I had shied away from this magazine in the past, I use the Internet frequently, what could it tell me?

The magazine, again similar to its sister publication isn’t all that thick and the issue I bought weighed in at 82 pages, which as you’ll see later on isn’t all that big in the magazine stakes.

Well, unsurprisingly, I got my eyes opened.

The magazine is written in the same style as its sister. Nice clear articles and simply put.

It doesn’t have a cover disk, but, at this price, that’s hardly a wonder.

The magazine covers topics such as interesting websites, networking (something that is getting bigger and bigger rapidly) and safety on the Internet. It also has reviews of games and auctions…quite an extensive list.

I found this magazine very interesting, which surprised me, and read it from cover to cover. It does have ads for all manner of companies, but I didn’t find them detracting from my reading of the magazine. People who don’t want to spend all day searching for a particular type of website e.g. an auction site or something to do with Barbie dolls will find this an indispensable resource. Couple that to learning how to build a website or use an authoring package (it has a tutorial on Dreamweaver), and it builds up into a very useful magazine that doesn’t break the bank. If you want to spend less time searching for interesting sites and want clear concise detail on a particular part of the Internet, I would recommend you pick this up. The magazine is released monthly.

It may not be the most reading, but everything in it I found interesting. The articles themselves were a joy and had loads of information that could come in handy for all those using the net.

Back in the days of the Amiga, I used to buy a lot of Amiga magazines; AUI, Format, CUAmiga etc. and I always managed to find something of interest in them, although my favourite was AUI. I loved their coverdisks!

Anyway, the PC has a magazine called (unsurprisingly) PCFormat. This magazine isn’t particularly cheap and weighs in at just under £6. It does have a cover disk; the one I bought had a CD mounted on it, although there is a DVD version as well.

  Well, remembering the Amiga version of this mag, I expected quite a lot from it.

One thing the PC mags need to learn is the art of sticking a coverdisk to the cover. CUAmiga and the rest had perfected the glue technique and it’s about time the PC versions learnt from it. The ones with covermounts that I bought all used sellotape, which is not an ideal way to put them on. You know what I mean; you end up with either a torn cover or a mess of sellotape on the cover if you’re not careful. Just a small gripe but one that irked me.

Anyway…………….

PCFormat was everything I expected it to be. PCFormat is one of the thicker magazines and the issue I bought came in at 178 pages The magazine had a wide variety of articles ranging from hardware to software. There were articles on networking (told you it was growing rapidly), games reviews, case mods and favourite websites, Loads of news and the latest reviews of a mixed bag of equipment. As you’d expect from this future publication, it has in depth looks at a variety of PC related aspects on the OS and how to get the best out of your software. I did find that it was more orientated towards the major packages than say, smaller free software, but that may well be expected considering the size of the PC market and its demand for faster, more extensive software and hardware. The speed junkies have always driven the PC market and maybe this is one of the major reasons for the downfall of the Amiga market.

The coverdisks, there were two had a variety of trial software, a few complete packages (same as the Amiga disks, older versions but still completely useable), and game demos. This again, helps anyone that doesn’t have a fast connection. Someone on a 56k modem is hardly likely to download a 300mb demo and this is one of the nice aspects of the disks. The coverdisks didn’t have everything on them that the DVD version did, so that in itself is an incentive to buy the DVD version if you have a drive that can read them………and who doesn’t nowadays? If you liked the Amiga version of this mag or you simply want an interesting read that covers all aspects of the PC genre you could do a lot worse than buy this mag. I’d recommend you buy the DVD version of it, though and get full advantage of all the software that they have available for you. The only off-putting part is the price J The magazine is released monthly. Having said that, it will take an appreciable amount of time to read it all, although the likes of case mods passed me by. A very well rounded magazine, which commend readers to it, and is from a company that has specialised in computer magazines for a long time.

The last one I trialled (I’m not made of money) was PCUtilites Plus+.

This, again, was a major departure for me. The magazine trumpets itself as “the biggest software collection that money can buy”. It certainly has a lot of software on it. The covermount on the issue I bought was a DVD. I think that what the plus bit was all about…

Yes, 4.5 gb of utilities!!

Now, as you all probably aware, I am a sucker for software of all descriptions and this is what attracted me to this particular magazine. I thought that this was one of the monthly magazines, but this turns out not to be the case. It may be quarterly and reading the initial blurb gives no clue to its frequency. I’ll dwell on the DVD, since this is what the magazine is entirely about.

As you can see from the cover, there is an awesome collection of software on the disk

The software doesn’t have any professional packages given away, as is the case with PCFormat, but does have loads of free packages, if you see what I mean.

Putting the DVD in the drive starts the disk browser.

 

You first get the obligatory disclaimer, and then onto the software.

The browser is nicely laid out, although I’d have preferred it was grouped better. You can get the same programs listed in more than one grouping, although this seems to be how they have decided to describe the packages.

The browser, as you can see brings up listings of all the packages, saving you trawling through all the directories via Dopus (everybody has installed Dopus, haven’t they?). Just as an aside, I can’t understand anyone, especially if they ever owned an Amiga, who hasn’t installed Directory Opus! since it was given away on one of the PC magazine covermounts, there really was no reason not to have it.

Back to the DVD, the browser gives basic information on all the programs. It gives the size of the program and a quick install button. This is a boon as well and there is even a search on the browser to help you even more. I did a search for Office to try it out…

So, how good is the disk?

Well, that all depends on how addicted to software you are, and how interested in freeware and shareware packages. For instance, I loved this disk, it saved me lots of time, searching the Internet and downloading……….. For you, it may be a complete waste of time.

If you enjoy trialling software, this is the bee’s knees, if not, forgets it. This magazine caters for a very specialised part of the PC market. It does have a few small games on it as well, but, in general, unless you want to see what everyone else thinks is worthwhile writing a program about, it might not be your cup of tea.

The magazine is at the £6 mark alongside the rest of the market, and inside the covers of it, you get a few descriptions of some of the more major pieces of software. The rest of the magazine gives a complete listing of the DVD, detailing all the software by filename on the disk, windows OS required and a one line description of the software as well as the size of the file and its type e.g. free, shareware, limited trial etc.

The number of pages in this issue was 98, so that in itself reveals how many programs are on the DVD. You could do worse than buy this every issue, if you download non-commercial software. 

By Ian Urie