Is PC World Still Worth the Subscription? 110
alexwcovington asks: "I've subscribed to PC World magazine since 1996, but my subscription is up for renewal this year, and I'm not sure if I need it anymore. I love reading the Stephen Manes rants and hoarding back issues in my closet, but I find myself getting virtually all the hard information I used to turn to PC World for from the Internet. What's the relevance of a print IT publication in modern times?"
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not. [uncleclive.co.uk]
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If you're afraid of seeing that happen, wear YELLOW.
If you're all for it growing, wear GREEN.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Funny)
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Wear your pink one.
http://pinkforoctober.org/ [pinkforoctober.org] Real men wear pink.
I now have a pink one. My wife washed it with a red shirt.
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You hit the nail there. When I was a kid I used to love reading the Amiga magazines for all the weird stuff in the tutorial pages in the back. The stuff I had no hope of understanding and/or couldn't finance exploring (not having a genlock or hard drive or second floppy drive or whatever else). When I visit my in-laws' house I read his Mac magazines — they generally have some interesting tutorials on Photoshop and the like, which I try to apply to The GIMP.
But it's been years since I even felt the u
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Source code for games, basic word processing and spreadsheet stuff.
No. (Score:3, Informative)
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It's probably less than that now - magazines are less desirable places to advertise, because they're taken less seriously now. I remember PCW when it had a section devoted to assembler subroutines, proper programming tutorials, a column about numbers/problem solving etc - even fiction. Not it's just glossy photographs of Dell keyboards and mobile phones. Great - well worth £5 a month. Oh, and don't forget the CD full of shareware. Th
subscriptions and subscribing (Score:2)
I remember PCW when it had a section devoted to assembler subroutines, proper programming tutorials, a column about numbers/problem solving etc
I remember when Byte magazine [byte.com] was a printed magazine and would subscribe in a heart beat if it in print again.
even fiction. Not it's just glossy photographs of Dell keyboards and mobile phones.
I especially loved the columns in "Byte", Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor [byte.com] and Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar [circuitcellar.com] , which now is his own magazine.
Oh, and don't forget t
Read Slashdot Instead. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Agreed.
I stopped buying computer magazines when they started becoming more about advertising and superficial reviews. I remember in the "old days" magazines used to have courses on programming, and really much more thorough reviews. Even the letter sections have decreased in size/technical content.
Now they look prettier, but the content is severely watered down compared to things you can find online.
Its a shame, because I do appreciate having something physical to read in my hands, but the peak of con
real content in magazines (Score:2)
I remember in the "old days" magazines used to have courses on programming, and really much more thorough reviews.
Like the print edition of Byte magazine [byte.com] ?
Its a shame, because I do appreciate having something physical to read in my hands, but the peak of content has passed.
Same here. If I'm going to read something more than a page I'd rather it be hard copy not on my monitor. Admittedly my monitor is a CRT and LCDs may be better but I don't know if they are. I'm hoping to get one by the end of t
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-uso.
Re:Read Slashdot Instead. (Score:5, Funny)
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Monthly magazines are death (Score:2)
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I cancelled my subscription about five years ago, and haven't missed it. For the last year I
No. (Score:1)
You'll have your hold-outs who desire a physical product, or the aesthetics/tactile feedback of paper, but with the coming advances in e-ink and e-paper, it's only a matter of time before paper media will be relegated to the realm of the courier on horseback riding from town to tow
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I don't want to sit in front of a PC screen to find out what's on at the movies - I want to be able to look at my newspaper while waiting on yet another two minute traffic light and decide whether I should divert to the Mall Movie and see the latest release.
And, do I want to lug around a 7 lb laptop, or a 6 ounce paperback book to read the latest Sci-Fi thriller on
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The new might be a couple of hours out of date but its enough of a review to know what happened last night.
Ontopic, unless there is something specific in a monthly magazine I would avoid it nowadays.
The world does move faster nowadays.
laptops on planes (Score:2)
(Would I even want to take the laptop at all to the vacation destination?)
Would you even be allowed to bring a laptop on board with you? I'd love to be able to take my laptop and have WiMax access while on vacation, but unless I were allowed to bring it with me into the passenger cabin I'd leave it at home. I wouldn't put it into cargo, even if airlines covered damage but we aren't now.
Now, as for reading, I'd rather have the book or magazine to read.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
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Cheaper? The newspaper on the bus is free. No electronic device can come close to that price. I can read a newspaper in all sorts of situations where it would be unfeasible to take a laptop.
No, not since slashdot. (Score:1)
I don't know... (Score:2)
Me neither. (Score:2)
I think its equally odd that there's a market for computer books in 2006, but that's another story...
VERY difficult indeed! (Score:1)
ALL I DO IS RECYCLE THE DAMNED THINGS! (Maybe I'll just say that...)
"But sir, our magazine is full of informa..." "I don't read it."
AAAARRRGGGHHHH
reading online (Score:2)
I think its equally odd that there's a market for computer books in 2006, but that's another story...
Unlike some, you maybe, I prefer to read hardcopy, a book, if it's more than a page. Even when I read something online if it is more than a page in length I will print it out to read. Unless and until displays are as easy on my eyes as paper I will continue to prefer books. Even when they get that way I'll still prefer reading books, I don't need to have a computer running to read a book, and I take ea
real magazine (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:real magazine (Score:4, Informative)
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Somewhat off-topic, but last time I followed any of the pop-sci magazines, Scientific American seemed a closer to the science than the more summary articles in New Scientist, which usually struck me as decent overviews but lacking any real depth. (I'm not from the US, BTW; this isn't some sort of national pride thing.)
We get New Scientist at work these days, and some of the articles are quite interesting surveys of a particular area for those who don't study this stuff full time any more, but the general
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I agree heartily, it's informative (expensive though, outside the UK :c(), intelligent yet entertaining in a humorist way (just like we all want to be, don't we?). MacAddict is another story though: middle of the 90's GOOD, YUMMY, nowadays BAD, PTEW! Time Magazine: good too. And cheap. Bit biassed though. Anyway I would not subscribe to a computer magazine unless I really wánted it. If I doubted, I wouldn't, and save the money to send it to http://www.justgiving.com/phrichar [justgiving.com]
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New Scientist is a good one, I second the economist [economist.com] as a teatime reader.
Though I read "New Scientist" and "Nature" I prefer Sciam for science. Now, I also like "The Economist" and if I could justify the cost I'd subscribe to it as well.
Falconnot much of an "economics" magazine despite name (Score:1)
The Economist? Hard to take them seriously. They predicted [economist.com] $5 per barrel oil when price was $10. And now it's north of $60. And before anyone says "9/11", or "Iraq war", this chart [wtrg.com] shows that their article pretty much called the absolute bottom. Oil went from $10 to $30 between their article and 9/11. The Economist just overlooked the fact that India and China were growing and would need increased supplies of oil. Duh.
Re:not much of an "economics" magazine despite nam (Score:2)
What? They've been writing for 150 years and it's hard to take them seriously because in 1999 they once guessed wrong about the future? You ignore, of course, that they owned up to the mistake [economist.com] by the end of the year. They examined the reasons behind it, and looked at several other mistaken predictions as well in an article titled, "Goofs: We wuz wrong".
Personally, I think it's great that they're willing to be co
Well... it depends on you. (Score:1, Informative)
Most Important Criteria (Score:1, Funny)
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Readers Digest.
I like linux magazines (Score:4, Insightful)
I really like linux magazines, and I think they offer good counter examples to the print dynamic that a lot of people describe. Yes, it's true the web is free, and yes, it's updated all the time. But I find that print magazines tend to point out things to me I hadn't noticed before, and that they often have pretty good writeups.
It's not that you can't find information about some software project on the web -- it's that you might have heard of that project before, so you don't know to google it. The magazines do a good job of flagging interesting new stuff.
My main problem with these mags is that the ones from Europe are priced at insane levels here in the States. I was looking at one the other day on the newsstand, and I wanted it, but it was something like $15.99. It comes with a DVD, but what's that worth when you have broadband?
The problem isn't that the content isn't good, and the problem isn't that $16 is a huge amount of money in the scheme of things. The problem is that you sort of feel taken advantage of at that price. No one wants to feel like a chump, but at $16, that's where you end up.
But a linux journal subscription, which is something like $25 for a year, is a great deal.
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That's a major issue in .no as well, unfortunately there's a de facto monopoly on magazines here. So Linux Journal comes in at USD14+ and that's got no cover cd. The magazines that have some junk on the cover jump up to USD23 - 30.
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That's why any publication worth its salt would beam the contents to a local "print shop" and have it distributed locally. As far as I know, anyway.
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Are you kidding me? (Score:2)
yeah well (Score:4, Interesting)
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I miss the early Byte magazine. Later Byte was just another trade rag. "15 dot matrix printers compared." [YAWWWWWN!] Boo-ring.
Byte still owes me for a half year subscription, from when they finally bailed. I never got notice of anything they were offering to replace it with.
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That's true enough. But back in the days of the Robert Tinney covers, or even earlier when it was still thin enough to be stapled.
I remeber the first time I saw a copy of Byte...it was in the hands of another geek at the MITS Mobile Computer Caravan...Micheal Hunter was touring an Altair 8800 and a Teletype around the country in an RV.
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You didn't miss much. I had just resubscribed (a 3 year sub iirc) because I liked their cross-platform focus. So what did they send as a fullfillment? A Windows magazine! What the hell, at least I use windows at work... A while later this one folded also and I ended up getting a video game magazine. I am not a gamer, so I ended up passing these on to a cow-orke
"Circuit Cellar" (Score:2)
I do agree that that Byte in its last years was a mere shadow of its heyday (Circuit Cellar era).
Hey, at least Steve Ciarcia publishes "Circuit Cellar" as a magazine itself now. Only if Jerry Pournelle came out with a "Chaos Manor" magazine.
FalconI miss Byte magazine. (Score:2)
Ah, another one who misses "Byte, the small and homebuilt computers magazine". Gosh it seems like ages ago when I first read it, back in the mid to late '70s. I really liked Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor". If "Byte" started a print edition again I'd subscribe in a heartbeat.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
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Jerry Pournelle's self-indulgent pieces were the only thing I didn't like about Byte - just about everything else was perfect.
His columns made for light reading and they showed what could be done by regular users.
FalconWired (Score:2)
D
Wired is a LifeStyle Magazine (Score:2)
Anyone who is so "technorati" as to be within Wired's alleged target audience is not reading paper.
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Always a need for print magazines (Score:4, Insightful)
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They're hit and miss. The one in Fountain Valley, CA, is pretty well-organized, and doesn't have a lot of open space to traverse. The one in Anaheim, CA, is less well-organized (the CD section is split in two by a pseudo-cafe), has much more open space (an issue when running in for a part at 8:58pm, which I do more often than I should), and lacks some very basic parts that a large computer store should have (such as SATA-PATA adapters
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Kudos for being one of the few people who actually know that quote (Frank Zappa - Cosmik Debris).
I wish the record companies would get their act together again so I can buy Zappa's stuff on iTunes once more.
On a related note, Zappa died in 1993 of prostate cancer. Breast cancer is not the only thing people have to worry about.
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Offtopic, but hear hear. Men are more likely to get prostate cancer than women are to get breast cancer, but in Australia at least, prostate cancer only receives 8% of the funding that breast cancer does. What's wrong with this picture?
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A magazine is the perfect size to take into the toilet with you. Unless you want to sit there with a laptop? A magazine is the ultimate in portability, as well.
But can you really stand the embarrassment of walking into a shop and buying that sort of magazine?
You're stealing from the magazine industry (Score:5, Funny)
You wouldn't steal a magazine, would you? Downloading information from the Internet is no different than walking into a magazine store, stuffing a magazine in your pocket, and walking out without paying for it. What you do hurts the magazine industry. With the new legislation (paid by the Magazine Industry Association of America), you can (and will) be sued in criminal court.
Remember, kids: downloading information from the Internet is stealing.
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I think I read that from a photographed PC World article a while back.
UID 176,174
Get with the times man.
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only magazines worth subscribing to (Score:1)
I used to have a subscription for sysadmin magazine, which I enjoyed, but I dropped it because whoever t
only if it is free (Score:2)
You need to decide that for yourself (Score:2)
I think the computer print media is dead. (Score:2)
I have a list of sites I check daily (of which Slash is one), and sites I check bi-weekly (like arstechnica). There's also a few Apple specific sites I check up on occasionally being a Mac user (appleinsider, macrumours etc.). I get a pretty well-rounded viewpoint I think on most upcoming tech, and I can make a decision on my future direction in technology from this.
Question, will those websites still be open if the magazine folds? I plan on switching to Macs and get a MacBook Pro when Apple releases on
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OT: I've been well impressed with my Yonah-based Macbook pro. The only problem I've had with it so far is I have a flaky Bluetooth module (I'll call this in to Apple when I can afford to be withou
MacBook (Score:2)
A good question, but one that the magazine publishers need to ask instead of the readers. It's really down to them to find a new business model, one that works in the modern age. If not, there are plenty of other sources of information that you can go to. Are the sites I mentioned associated with a magazine? Hmm...
I don't know if the sites you cite have print mags, but some like the subject of this article, "PC World", is a print magazine. While print is "old" and websites can be kept up to date many of
I very much doubt it (Score:1)
Anyway, I got nothing out of the magazines I looked at. The information within was rather scant and I found my own experience with a lot of the equipment reviewed proved only that the reviewers weren't spending enough time with the requipment to write very informative reviews (the article I am thinking of in q
Future of the past (Score:2, Interesting)
Editorship makes the difference (Score:2)
If the editors are good, they find the things I and others are interested in, and filter out the dreck. Their magazines are worthwhile.
If they'e not, all you're paying for is a bundle of ads (;-))
--dave
Linux Journal is the only one worthwhile (Score:3, Interesting)
PC World and other dinosaurs (Score:2)
I gave up the paper copy of PC World in 1995, and many others since. I used to get 8-10 mags a month but I am now down to one. The reason is simple, the internet has replaced the paper. Articles are now timely and places like Slashdot make it even more timely. And if I want the article at work I don't have to go home to get it, just remember where I saw it.
I do have a grievance with some old time online publishers with their insatiable popups and "overadvertised" presentations. I understand the need f
One question (Score:2)
I Blame the Dot Com Boom (Score:3, Insightful)
When the dot com boom was at its height, all the major publishers got fanatical that print was dead, everyone was going to read everything on the net, and it was time to readjust. Byte arbitrarily canceled my subscription, since they were going to a web only base. The rest of them shrank to half the page number, and what was left was mostly advertising. Even the trade rags got rid of most of their decent columnists, since they somehow concluded nobody wanted opinion pieces, basically making them boring and worthless. The only print mag I read now is Smart Computing, since they have some interesting tips and good reviews every now and again.
No, I didn't leave print mags, they left me...
sensational (Score:1)
1999? (Score:2)
Crimeny! I never subscribed to it so I never had to decide to suspend a subscription, but I even stopped buying PC World off the newsstand backin the mid/late-80s. I thought it starting sucking even back then. Byte lasted a couple of years longer before it wasn't worth the money (i.e., it started being less and less about microcomputing in general but, instead, mostly about Windows). I'm not sure what you're looking for in a hardcopy magazine. Product Reviews? Programming tips? Tutorials? I can't imagine co
I didn't even know PC Mag was still around... (Score:2)
paper or Internet? (Score:1)
No (Score:1)
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I was a charter subscriber to PC Magazine and my subscription to PC World started with the 2nd issue. Gave up both subscriptions by the late 80's. Both magazines were started by Dean Bunnel and his crew - the best looking being Cheryl Woodard...