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They're not a "programming magazine", but every month they do have programming related columns. It's a UK magazine, but it's available in the US at places like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million. http://www.pcplus.co.uk/

Microsoft's Acrylic is based off of "Creature House Expression", which they recently acquired. As it turns out, the software isn't all that similiar to Photoshop, most of the tools are actually vector based. Read a short review of the original Creature House Expression here.

• If they're going to focus on USB2, why include a single 1.1 drive? The fact that it has a very bad built-in camera seems a poor excuse to waste space on it.
• Although Corsair does claim that the Flash Voyager is water resistant (nobody claims "waterproof" anymore), the reviewer didn't consult the product literature. He just saw the rubber case and said, "Hey, let's see what happens if I drop it in a glass of water!" Not very bright.
• Its pretty sad that none of the file management software reviewed appears to have Windows Shell integration. Or perhaps some do, and the reviewer didn't notice.
• I've never heard a USB drive referred to as a "memory stick". The term usually refers to a kind of memory card.
• The review of the SimpleTech Bonzai Upgradeable fails to note the most obvious flaw in the product -- a USB drive with removeable media doesn't make a lot economic sense. The USB interface isn't so expensive that you have any real savings in separating it from the media. But then, I made the mistake of buying an Iomega Peerless, so I'm in no position to sneer.

Its a shame. I (heart) my transmeta based notebook, (i got it for £500 3 months ago) its so tiny. I may not be able to play back video very well, but its under a kilogram and incredibly small. Perfect for webbrowsing and email on the move :(

Who will make processors for these kind of notebooks now?

Users first notice the problem when they try to retrieve e-mail. They are greeted with an error message instead: "The connection to the server has failed." The server is identified as "127.0.0.1" or "pop3.norton.antivirus." Obviously, that's not the name of a normal ISP's POP3 mail server.

Norton AV 2002 installs a layer which intercepts all POP3 and SMTP communications and filters it for virus infection before proceeding. In practice, both incoming and outgoing mail is scanned before being saved and sent for solid security. The new approach means you can use any POP3 mail client, and no additional configuration of your mail server addresses and suchlike is needed, unlike the 2001 version.

.. and go down the G5 PowerPC route instead. This is my story of the nightmare that is Dell Hell:

Dell's Labryinth of Departments

and the nightmware that is technical support when trying to upgrade my previous Dell machine was just surreal.

PC Plus has two years of downloadable PDFs (2000 - 2002).

This kind of thing? (PDF file) (The original webpages linked to by the reg have gone. Here is an ugly mirror

I just picked up the December issue of the UK magazine PC Plus, the only general interest PC mag that I ever find interesting these days. I do not find their reviewers prone to hyperbole or to glossing over negative points. Having said that, make what you will of the following...

The review was of a new 3D program Movie3D supplied by a company called Aist. From the review: "It is a full 3D modelling and rendering package and, without question, the best value one ever to come under the PC Plus spotlight. Bryce, trueSpace, Amorphium and Amapi all pale in comparison."

OK, but maybe not relevant to the aspiring professional or heavy-duty amateur artist, but then they say: "For a mere £129 you get a package that is both as powerful and flexible as many of the big names in the industry, such as 3D Studio Max or Lightwave, not to mention coming with some high-end features that you would ordinarily expect to have to buy a plug-in for, such as scene chareography." Heady stuff, if true. Any corroborating or contrary experience out there?

The program must be very new because it is hard to find a web page besides this one: http://www.aist.com/products/movie3d/movie3d.html on the Aist or any other sites.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

http://pcplus.co.uk is the correct link. It is the link given on the cover of their magazine. I can't get into it now though :-(

I am a freelance journalist, having written Linux related articles/workshops/reviews for Future Publishing's titles PCPlus and Linux Format and I can say, hand on heart, that I have never given a favorable review to a product that didn't deserve it. I have given some bad reviews to what I believed to be bad software and I have never been co-erced by anyone to alter the outcome of a review.
Journalistic integrity is obviously of the utmost importance, but we are just people and it is more than likely that you may not agree with our opinions. In the world of free software that's ok because you can still evaluate the software we are reviewing to see if you like it and not have to worry about feature limited demos, timeout, nag requesters, etc.
In my opinion, reviews of free software should be taken as a guide to what is available - it's then down to each user to determine if they agree or not.
To reviewers, if you are co-erced by companies to give good reviews then it seems almost certain that they are not confident in their products and probably don't deserve good reviews. There is no point encouraging people to use/buy crap software - the world has enough crap software already.

• Several magazines, e.g. PC Plus, have cover-mounted DVDs (or CDs if you like) with all kinds of stuff: programs, clip-art, et.c....
• Encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica or Microsoft Encarta fit better onto a DVD than several CDs.
• Several games are available on DVD, for example Blade Runner.

You can't *legally* download delphi.

Copyright infringement could potentially damage the reputation of both the lead maintainer, and anyone else involve (not to mention legal suits if copyrighted units are distributed).

Now, if you were to write the whole thing from scratch (no vcl, no pre-manufactured units), you'd A) be wasting lots of time and B) be fully legal to distribute under anything you wanted.

Well, the magazine PC Plus (British) has been taping full copies of C++ Builder V.3 on the cover for a few months now (Standard version a few months ago, "Professional" last month, one of the Java versions this month) so Borland is opening up, at least with regard to free personal-use versions of their one or two version old products.

I think it's carried on all Sunsite mirrors. In the UK it's located here. The UK magazine PC Plus has also previously distributed it on it's cover CD. PC Plus has been running a string of linux hands-on articles since the middle of last year mainly based on the SuSE distribution.