PC Magazine Goes Out of Print

[Newsjock]

Source: Silicon Alley Insider

Founded in 1982 and at times so rich with ads its issues reached as many as 600 pages, Ziff Davis's PC Magazine will issue its last print edition this January, thereafter becoming an online-only publication. Ziff Davis, which recently exited bankruptcy will lay off seven print production employees.

... PC Magazine will become PCMag, part of a network of sites called the PCMag Digital Network.


Read more: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/pc-magazine-goes-out-of-print

[tridim]

1. PCMag started sucking real hard around 1992.

It's a waste of trees IMO.

[and-justice-for-all]

2. I think all mags should be only be online...

and the print version gone the way of the Dinosaur.

[NeedleCast]

3. I agree, people without computers have no right to read magazines

facepalm

[wtmusic]

8. We need a facepalm smiley nt

[uppityperson]

34. Here you go...

[wtmusic]

39. beautiful, thanks! nt

[bitchkitty]

19. LOL n/t

[question everything]

27. Or even to live

:puke:

[WriteDown]

4. Would make my air travel pretty unbearable. nt

[Codeine]

15. Some of us still love print.

I can't take my laptop into the hot tub.

[Born Free]

30. Yes, and some even have a use for the paper afterwards

Reminds me of the long forgotten Amish joke about the guy writing to SEARS catalog to find out how much toilet paper costs, their reply was to check page number 352 of the catalog, so the guy wrote back- If I still had 352 pages in my catalog I would not be writing about toilet paper.

personally I prefer to have printed material - get tired of sitting in front of a screen to read.

[Book Lover]

16. Why? (nm)

[Donnachaidh]

20. oh let's marginalize the poor even more

after all, who gives a shit about the poor in this country? :sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

21. And all sex should be virtual. Who needs that whole tactile thing anyway.

[Angleae]

24. And while we're at it, let's elimiate libraries too.

You can read books online also.
:sarcasm:

[customerserviceguy]

35. As soon as we get better portable devices

we will have more magazines go online-only. I expect that to happen to newspapers, as well.

There is a new type of stripped down laptop computer that has Wi-Fi capabilities and limited software, mostly word processing and an email client. No writable drives, but you can plug a thumb drive into the side to add information from your full PC. I've seen them sell in the $350-400 range, they have processors that will only run Windows XP. As soon as someone makes them into a touchscreen style, I would expect that they will take off. They'll be what you read about President Obama's re-election on!

[4lbs]

5. I'd like them to make a DVD of every issue ever printed from 1982 through 2008 in PDF format.

It's certainly possible, with each PDF format issue taking about 10 or 12 MB.

That would leave plenty of room for the special issues as well.

Total space would be about 4 GB.

[lib_wit_it]

6. What?? I have a paid Sx up until 2011! Crap! nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. Sad.

:cry: All the juicy stuff in 80's computing could be found there. And beat me up if you will, but I like John C. Dvorak.

[okieinpain]

9. I thought they went out of business years ago. the only thing I like

about their spread was guy whose name started with a d. damn now I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to remember his name.

[KamaAina]

13. John Dvorak?

Hadn't thought about him in years.

[LanternWaste]

10. PC Mag was the only print journal I read...

PC Mag was the only print journal I read whilst vainly attempting to stay up and on industry/software trends.

I actually liked it and hazard to say that it was part and parcel of my (limited) knowledge. Shame really... not much else to read in the bathroom these days.

[dothemath]

11. some brilliant editor ...................

A few years ago, when PC Magazine began to realize they had GM'd themselves into a situation where competitors saw the amount of revenue being generated, they looked into ways to cut their costs and stay in business. Whether it came from a consultant or from an in-house genius, an idea sprung forth.

They could, or so they thought, serve all their readers, young and old by maintaining their emphasis on every whiz-bang gadget out there, including some still on a drawing board somewhere. They could cut some of their boiler-plate costs of printing and distributing their magazine in a slimmed down format without cutting articles, features, etc.

And so, the type size began to shrink. There goes many readers who were unwilling to pore over their offering with a magnifying glass. Plus, much of their offering was for gadgets with tiny keyboards, tiny screens and higher prices to purchase and higher costs to use. More readers lost.

And it wasn't the geezer group exclusively. The type of gadgets that were the latest and greatest - and most important - 'cool' were priced out of the reach of a core constituency of readers - the youngsters.

Being 'all things to all men' has never been sustainable and never will. They forgot that the PC in PC Magazine stood for Personal Computer and "got on their horse and rode off in all directions at once".

So long, PC Magazine.

[theblasmo]

12. Irony?

Is this ironic?

[Spike89]

14. PC was an institution, but the time is gone

Back in the early 90s when I was working on tech magazines, PC was the gold standard in an extremely hot magazine segment. In fact, we changed our magazine title to capitalize on their success. I was told by a corporate VP that the next issue had to have a bright red PC as part of the flag. PC Graphics & Video lasted about 5 years after that.

Almost all the general topic computer magazines have folded or been hugely diminished, but the real carnage has been in the niche areas. By the late 90s I was freelancing, mostly doing hardware and software reviews. About 6 periodicals regularly used me, giving me a fairly stable base, then over the course of one summer, 4 of those shut down and 1 other killed its entire freelance budget. I got a "real" job, with one of those red-hot Internet companies, well, that was another fun ride while it lasted.

It's sad to see PC go away, but I've pretty much done my grieving for the sector years ago.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

17. There are about 43 million...

PC Hardware sites out there, where you can get a complete, objective and unvarnished review on just about anything that comes out, with testing results that I have never seen in a print mag. One of the best examples of that is guru3d.com, but hardly the only example. PC Cooling is another one for just fans and heatsinks and they the truth, every time, with exhaustive technical data.

The problem with the PC mags is they kinda got perk'ed into irrelevance. MickeySoft was a great one for doing that to writers, to the point that if you were to believe the writers, that M$ made the only OS and software on the planet. That's just silly.

On the other hand, Dvorak was always a supporter of the Amiga, to this day, and for that, he gets a lot of passes from me. I must say, however, that he does have that ability to test the depth of my goodwill, especially in his writings at Marketwatch.

[Paulie]

29. i have Dvorak's Predicts book somewhere

He said OS/2 would take over the world. My OS/2 server cert has yet to buy me a cup of coffee this century. :)

Other mags I miss were Byte and 99er.

[OhioChick]

18. I'm sorry to hear this. n/t

[regnaD kciN]

22. Damn! Farewell to "Abort, Retry, Fail?"...

...or whatever they were calling it in recent years.

About the only reason to read that magazine, IMHO.

[baldguy]

23. Remember the old Computer Shopper?

10 in x 15 in & packed with 1000 pages of tiny ads every month. God I loved that mag!

[OhioChick]

25. Brings back memories! n/t

[moondust]

31. Pick up an old copy

and look at the prices for PC components way back when. Gasp!!!

I had a subscription. It was great!

[bigworld]

38. It's still around oddly

but far from the glory days. I bought many parts and such from the ads in 'Shopper.

[DS1]

46. That Mag was a trip

so many small vendors selling identical systems.

[Blue_in_Mass]

26. Less demand for paper.

Fewer trees chopped down.

[Book Lover]

36. I'm a liberal treehugger too, but trees planted for paper are a renewable resource

Paper companies poison the waters; they don't denude their forests.

[Blue_in_Mass]

40. What about all the pollutants that go into turning pulp into paper?

The buck doesn't stop at the tree.

[Book Lover]

41. As I said in my post,

paper companies poison the water; they don't denude forests. That is the extent of my point.

[Blue_in_Mass]

42. But you are ignoring how the two are entangled!

Can you show me an example of a paper mill that does not have a significant toxic waste stream?

[Book Lover]

43. Geez, are you this obtuse on purpose?

n/t

[Blue_in_Mass]

44. No, the issue is that you are ignoring cause and effect.

The paper industry is a filthy toxic one. Regardless of what you might think of books. In fact, I hope you are interested in what the content of the books is, and not the paper itself.

[Book Lover]

45. Nothing I said conflicts with what you are saying

Get over my username. In my nearly 20 years in the publishing industry, I have personally and professionally done more to make eInk and eBooks a reality than you have, unless you work at Xerox. Do you?

Yes, the paper industry (in the US and Canada - I can't speak for anywhere else) is a polluting one. It pollutes water ways. It does not, however, denude forests - they grow their own trees and keep a rotating crop going at all times.

If you are interested in making a point past the fact that the paper industry is irresponsible and polluting, chime in.

[IDemo]

28. So if you want to comparison shop before buying a PC, you have to buy a PC first?

[customerserviceguy]

32. If you are shopping for your very first PC

then PC Magazine might be over your head. On the other hand, how do you know that you want your first PC unless you've already tried out a friend's, or used one at the library or school?

[tinrobot]

33. As someone who has written for them... magazines are a dying market.

Particularly in the tech sector, where people already get most of the information digitally.

I say good riddance, trees will be much happier when magazines disappear.

Now if we could do something about all those catalogs I get in the mail...

[tjahome]

37. Call me old school

I simply love to sit down and read hard print. Tried the Kindle from Amazon. Nothing compares to books, magazines and hard print paper. Always recycle though.