Slashdot Mirror
PCWorld Magazine Is No More
harrymcc writes "After slightly more than 30 years, PCWorld — one of the most successful computer magazines of all time — is discontinuing print publication. It was the last general-interest magazine for PC users, so it really is the end of an era. Over at TIME, I paused to reflect upon the end of the once-booming category, in part as a former editor at PCWorld, but mostly as a guy who really, really loved to read computer magazines."
Good riddance to it I say!
Ah, but in the early days, the ads were the best part. I rarely even bothered to read the articles. When each issue arrived, I would open it up to the cheap yellow "tombstone" ads near the back. You could run an ad there for $100/month. There was always some fascinating new gizmo that some guy was making in his garage and advertising there. After a month or two, most of the products disappeared, but some of them grew into successful startups. Reading those ads was like watching the history of technology unfold.
I remember getting 3.5" floppies loaded with great stuff. Amazing to me that there was so much fun to be had on 1.44MBs. I loved the Doom shareware demo and it led to a sale of the full game. The "economics of FREE" in action.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
I remember in the early days when they weren't "bought" like PCMag. But eventually they succumbed. I distinctly recall the day when the worst version of Norton in history won when it slowed your PC down by half the moment you installed it. It was accompanied by Norton ads all over the magazine (back cover, centerfold, inside front cover). I knew then that it was bought for sure.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Or they could be browsing the internet on a PC. They could even buy a cheap tablet with wifi access to carry into their bathroom so they could read from more useful resources than an ad-filled magazine even while they relieve themselves. The reason that PC magazines died off is because they are an absolutely outdated medium, not because the people who would read them are now hipsters.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Completely agree - I fondly remember picking up Computer Shopper to see what the best deals were for buying cheap memory, hard drives, etc. Zines like Byte and PCWorld were ok for general purpose reading, but Dr Dobbs was one of my favs for programming. Along with 2600 and Phrack for stuff on the fringes.
Thanks for the memories - I hate to say it, but today's tech is nowhere as exciting as those wild-west days were. I feel privileged to have been part of that.
Now get off my lawn!
The death of BYTE magazine and Creative Computing Magazines hit me HARD. I subscribed to them in high school after I spent $3,000 on a Apple II with 32k RAM. I could not comprehend how such amazing magazines could die. I can't even raise a brow at any magazine that vanishes now, especially when the world of Internet information is at hand.
Ah, the good old days! The most insane overclock I ever saw back in 486 days was a friend of mine who dragged his 386 around to play a bit of Doom. We were all running 486DX33 / 486DX66 machines which powered through Doom and figured the 386 would be a pretty poor contender - right until he fired it up and loaded the game. It was screaming along as well as the 486s were, and that's when he told me he had overclocked it to something like 99mz. He reckons it took ages to find a chip he could do that to, but there were tons of them at his work no longer in use so he swapped them in and out till he found a really good one :D
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.