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Is PC World Still Worth the Subscription?
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?"
How should I know wheither you should subscribe to a magazine or not? What's next? Ask Slashdot: should I wear my green T-shirt or my yellow one? Make up your own mind! We're all different! :)
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Most of those mags are readable online. Online suppliers advertise products more cheaply than those in the magazine, and I don't have any more respect for the reviewers in the mag than online, because you're trusting people who are likely to not want to upset the manufacturers and retailers who supply the magazine with review kit that they can subsequently keep, rather than people online who've bought the stuff with their own money and used it - often for extended periods of time. Also, you get much more in depth reviews, with much more accurate information online, especially if you surf around and check out a few sites. Finally, you're left with a few hundred pages of paper to through away at the end of the month. I see no point in buying computer magazines any longer.
In my opinion, no. I quit reading compuer magazines in mid-90-ies because they do not really give anything new that is not present in the Internet. And besides, the magazines publich everything on the internet as well. Plus on internet you have various sites like Slashdot that first, filter only the most interesting articles, and second, provide very insightfull and witty discussion, third, help you understand whether article is a genuine news article or a hidden advertising for one big company or another.
Subscribe to a real magazine! Say...New Scientist! Once a week...incredibly up to date. There's been MANY times where I read something in it to hear it on the news a few days later. Seems to be a source that everyone (including Slashdot) seems to use.
I don't know about PC World. I think if I ran Windows, it might be worthwhile, but I don't know.
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.
I miss Byte magazine. It was vastly better than PCMag.
-=Maggie Leber=-
And the reason is simple. 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.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
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.
Wow, they've added that much content in the last six or seven years?
What really annoys me about computer magazines nowadays (apart from them being mostly spam you have to pay for) is that they do seem to arrive from the future, but carry news from the past. Every single one seems to arrive a few months before its time and carries `news' you could have read on the internet a few months earlier. Nevertheless, there are occasionally interesting articles, but for actual information they're often not the best source. I would not go for a subscription on any of them at the moment, but do buy them occasionally.
I've subscribed to Linux Journal for almost 13 years, and long ago bought up all the back issues I could so I have a near-complete collection. For years it's been the only worthwhile print computer magazine around.
- Free-beer software on the cover. Later this turned mainly to shareware or things I could download anyway if I wanted to (which I usually didn't).
- News. Later this became 'things I had read about a month earlier online.'
- Up-to-date complete catalogues for lots of different computer suppliers. Now I check prices online.
I cancelled my subscription about five years ago, and haven't missed it. For the last year I didn't read much other than the Mac column, which was an old bloke bitching about how much new stuff sucked.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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...
Dreamers, shapers, singers, makers... Elric, the Techno-Mage