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I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

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I want PC Magazine to be about personal computers, not MP3 players or HDTVs.

For a full explanation of where I’m coming from you can read my blog:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5254-6257-0.html?forumID=99&threadID=173910&messageID=2067351&id=3268665

[b]How do you finish the thought?[/b]

Topic

It is not longer useful.

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Like you I found it has moved more to consumer electronics.

Also, they used to have sections that pertained to the professional. They often reviewed enterprise level solutions. I have found that they dropped most of that. So I dropped them.

Doesn’t matter

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

What magazine you buy, they are trying to buy new subsribers, and that means broadening their field. Appealing to more users, across a larger cross section of the public. BYTE started out as a small mag, maybe 100 pages. My mailman almost refused to bring mine after a while, when it blossomed to 400 pages. Most of which was advertising. After all, that’s who puts the money up to get it on the presses to start with.

I dont

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Get the paper magazine but I use it on line for free. And if you register online there are alot of free downloads.

My answer

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

….because it’s all on the Internet, somewhere, if you just know where and how to look; and since the Internet is free, while a subscription to PC Magazine is not, it’s a no brainer.

The f’ing ads…

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Who the hell wants to pay $8/issue for 10 pages of content and 250 pages of ads?

There is this new thing I like to call the garvnet. It allows read magazines via your computer. You to use, what I call a garvin looking tool, to “travel” to the magazine that you want to read.

it’s not worth it

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Too much money for too little content that I can get elsewhere.

The only thing remotely worth reading is Dvorak, and even he has his off days.

My comment to Mark’s Blog

In reply to it’s not worth it

My PC Magazine experience.

Once upon a time I worked for a software company that was coming out with an amazingly good first product. It just so happened PC Magazine was coming to town with a roadshow, and both the editorial writers and others were coming.

I was excited, we were going to meet the editorial staff and do a demo of the last version before production model. There was also a mini trade show where we could man a booth and show invited readers what we were working on.

Our demo was at 9 AM. John Dvorak, someone whose columns I read avidly, arrived late and really never was “there”. The others were not terribly interested in what we had to show. They just didn’t get it. That software by the way sold millions of copies, and made the company into a powerhouse. When Dvorak wrote about being in our city, he was more in a tiff about software rentals and copywrite laws than about the software.

What I experienced at the mini trade show was the salespeople (me) became the customer. The hunter became the hunted. Ad sales reps from PC Magazine put on the full court press. We were lead to understand what it would take for the editorial board to pay attention. And that was a big ad buy.

I became a little more cynical about PC Magazine after that experience. Maybe you can’t buy love, but you can buy attention.

James

Meeting the Mighty

In reply to My comment to Mark’s Blog

I met Wayne Green of 73 Magazine under similar circumstances. (Pre PC’s) he had my resume under consideration as a columnist. When we met for dinner, he was in a sharing meals mode, and talking about his new magazine venture.

Never did get around to talking about writing, which may have been just as well.

I’ve met Prime Ministers

In reply to Meeting the Mighty

And several of them, who were less self important than John Dvorak.

James

I still subscribe but……

In reply to My comment to Mark’s Blog

When renewal times comes, I hesitate for a long time, and say ‘what the heck’ and send them another check. However, I agree, there is less and less PC material and more and more commercial drivel. One thing that almost gets me to toss the thing is the foldouts in the front and back and at various places. If you are reading the mag in bed, which I often do, the damn foldouts get in the way. They get so irritating, often when I get the magazine from the mailbox, I sit in the car and tear out the foldouts, then take the mag home. PLEASE…More PC tech and less commercial ‘govno’.

Dvorak on FoxNews.com

In reply to it’s not worth it

And many of Dvorak’s columns are available on FoxNews.com even before the current issue hits the newsstand!

What is so good about MP3 Players?

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Yeah when I was a teenager at school, when walking to school or during recess times, I had a cassette walkman, but as for now, I don’t have to time to listen to music as get around, yes I listen to MP3 music when I am at home, or in the car, but as for MP3 or portable players I haven’t used one on months, I do have a mp3 player, it comes in handy when I go camping, but hey, every second kid you see out there has one hanging out of there ears, so I suppose these MP3 ads are working. Just a matter which MP3 company can advertise the best I think. But yeah, you buy a computer magazine to read about computer technology, not music technology. Maybe magazines should produce a seperate magazine just for MP3 and DVD stuff.

Kind Regards,
Jim

When they dropped Pen Jillette’s column

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I miss his never ending Uma Thurman raves and his complaints about how everytime he went to a hoolywood party, the host ended up asking him to fix his PC for them,,
Yeahh,,
Didn’t they drop him over the trouble he caused with his laptop timer countdown joke that he told readers to use at airports?

Not PC Magazine

In reply to When they dropped Pen Jillette’s column

I’m pretty sure that Penn wrote for PC Computing. And yes, I think that they dropped him after the airport incident.

I was stubborn … it’s a family trait

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I know PC Magazine has been marginal for quite awhile now, but I stubbornly held on to the subscription for sentimental reasons. I was in denial about once was my favortie mag.

I know they want to appeal to a bigger audience, but I don’t care about that – I want what I want.

Now that I have a laptop with wireless networking, I guess I’ll have to adopt the Internet solution for my fix of geek insight.

they kill trees!

In reply to I was stubborn … it’s a family trait

With the wonderful thing some of us call the INTERNET, there really is no need for magazines anymore. Really…. anything printed is a waste of trees in my opinion. Hell, I don’t even carry around paper money anymore! And 90% of the correspondance I have with companies are via e-mail now-a-days (which hopefully contributes to the reduction in “Postal” incidents) I very rarely write checks to pay my “regular” bills.

Plus the fact that PC MAGAZINE became “Electronics magazine” and started to look more and more like “Computer Shopper” (50% or more advertising) with each passing issue.

Killing Trees May Be An Advantage

In reply to they kill trees!

Logging is one of the few industries that you can’t send over to India because the trees aren’t there. They are here.

PC Rag, CompShop & trees

In reply to they kill trees!

Since both of them are owned by the same publisher it makes sense (to them) that they look alike. I even discovered that they duplicated articles on the same month or a one month offset. Now that was a waste of trees.

However, I prefer to be able to hold my reading material, take it to the restroom if I want or read it upside down. My PC and laptop just aren’t equipped for that. Heaven forbid if I wanted to read in the bathtub…

Since I work in front of a screen all day I don’t need or enjoy reading from the screen in my leisure time. With proper foresting techniques God’s trees will be around for some time to come (assuming someone doesn’t get bomb crazy).

BTW – I dropped my subscriptions also. I wasn’t interested in general CE information.

I know your pain, Mark

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I too had dropped my subscription to PC Magazine, although a few years ago. I just didn’t see it worth what I was paying for it.

I, like you with PC Magazine, have been a subscriber to Computer Shopper magazine for better than 15 years (maybe longer…can’t remember that far back).

In that time, CS has gone from a magazine as thick as a small encyclopedia volume with an ad section in the back that would make Sears catalog jealous to something I can roll up like a small-town newspaper. One of the best things about it was back then, they had reviews of equipment and software…relatively few commentaries…and the ads weren’t every 4th page. Now, it’s like someone forgot to organize it each month before printing.

The magazine has now shrunk from that behemoth size to something that looks like it was made to fit on a doctor’s office table…they’ve signed some of the “big names” whose commentary I’d read in other magazines and found to be technically antiquated or benign (can you say…Norton? Dvorak?), and now the PC ads are practically every other page breaking the articles into miniscule chunks. The last thing I want to do is be reading an article about the newest technology in CPU or memory design and have an ad from TigerDirect pop out a mail card at me.

Essentially, CS went “trendy” like a lot of magazines have in the 21st century. The marketing and sales firms and “consultants” have probably gotten to the executives and told them these were “necessary” changes to “streamline” and “be responsible to the shareholder”.

Even tho I know it’s not environmentally responsible, I miss the big old “tree killer” Computer Shopper with it’s massive section of less-than-page sized ads on color glossy and black and white plain paper.

I am looking again for a good PC magazine to get that has insightful, cutting-edge information, a funny edge to it (CS used to have Alice and Bill’s column…about the lab of doom and Pepsi…I think…been too long since I’ve seen it…), and I could find ANYTHING for a computer in those old ads…even a place that sold printer ribbons for my old Commodore MPS-803 printer as well as my Panasonic 1091i.

At this point, I’m sorry to say that after better than a decade of CS subscriber I am considering letting my subscription lapse to it when it runs out in 2008 (I bought 3 years to get a huge discount).

I want real content…not flashy names…or trendy products. I’m a computer geek and end-user…not a South Beach fashion junkie worried about if my blackberry and iPod matches my new ascot.

I hope the computer magazine industry gets their content back and focused on what computer techies and junkies want to see…computer gear and technology.

You PAID for it?

In reply to I know your pain, Mark

I have gotten it for the last three years, and continue to get that and a few others as a “professional courtesy” type of thing. I figured they want to increase the number of subscribers so they could charge more for advertising.

I never fill out the renewals, and they still keep sending them to me!

I don’t even want it for free

In reply to You PAID for it?

Hey there JD.

When I first got the subscription, I was not elligible for a complimentary version. Now that I am elligible, I don’t really want it.

I think that is what makes me so sad at letting it go.

Same here

In reply to I know your pain, Mark

I could have written JCK’s comment, nearly word for word. Whether it be ComputerShopper or the legendary LOTUS magazine… 22 years ago I took a job that required skills in Lotus 1-2-3 (the predecessor to Excel, for you kidlets out there). The day I accepted the offer, I bought a book on 1-2-3 and subscribed to the magazine; considering no one in the company knew anything about 1-2-3, I was an expert.

Over the years, the mag became almost like a newsletter at a magazine price. The magazine soon after folded.

So I switched to PC Magazine. More than 5 years ago I found it lacking anything immediately relevant to my career; (Top-100 websites… oh boy…)

I thought it was my getting older, perhaps its partly that, and partly the industry, itself.

CShopper vs. PC Mag vs. Pop Mechanics vs. PC World

In reply to I know your pain, Mark

Anymore, I prefer Computer Shopper to PC Magazine. Heck, PC Magazine now has columns about autos! I think PC Mag is trying to morph into Popular Mechanics magazine, but PM covers everything at least “very good” if not “well”…PC Mag isn’t even doing that.

CShopper lost a lot of luster with me when they dropped the Alice and Bill’s “The Hard Edge.” If PC World ever picked up Alice & Bill, I’d subscribe to them in a heartbeat.

That reminds me…I think PC World is probably the best of the big 3 right now. I also enjoy Maximum PC, but it’s a little on the pricey side (but has more depth to justify the purchase).

Pop Sci

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I hear ya. PC Mag has become a combo of Popular Science, with a bit of Car and Driver tossed in. When my two months subscription runs out I’ll not resubscribe.

http://www.smartcomputing.com/, for my money

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Smarter Computing, with its tech support,is a good read and can help get you out of a hole quick…

Smart Computing, etc.

In reply to http://www.smartcomputing.com/, for my money

I enjoy Smart Computing, one of the few American computer magazines worth reading. Most of the computer magazines I subscribe to or read are British omes.

Incidentally if you subscribe to the paper Smart Computing you can also get much info from their electronic version as well as all their other magazines!!!

The same happen to me

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I used to buy both the american and the mexican or argentinean edition. In some point I asked my self if they should pay to me for reading an advertising catalog instead of a magazine. I’m up to the cap of “how marvelous the world will be after you buy our vaporware”.

Dr. Jorge Ricaldoni
Divicom Cine & Video
Argentina – France

Treat it like any other free computer rag…

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

or catalog. Do a quick scan, tear out the one or two interesting articles or items and throw it in the waste basket to conserve space. It’s not worth keeping anymore, but then most of the magazines I subscribed to in the past have all gone that way. They’re forcing us to quit subscribing, they’ve pretty much surrendered, turned tail and run from their audience.

Car Reviews

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

The final straw for me was the car reviews.

For me, it was…

In reply to Car Reviews

The sex aid and cigarette ads. If I want to read those, I’ll pick up a copy of Popular Mechanics.

Larry

Same here

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Magazines like PC Magazine were at one time geared for more than mortal man. Today it’s market is the end loser.

Magazine Subscriptions

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I haven’t subscribed to any magazine except TV guide for over 5 years. I don’t have time to read them what with all the stuff to look at on the Internet. Technology is moving so fast, that they only way to truly keep up to date is to seek things out on the net. I remember years ago, there were dozens of computer magazines coming out every month. I notice that there are a lot fewer today.

Yessir

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I stopped subscribing to PC Magazine several years ago for that reason. Our library subscribes and of course there’s the website, so if there is anything interesting out there I can find it.

PC Magazine abandoned UK years ago

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because they no longer circulate the UK version that I used to subscsribe to. I was quite surprised to see that the US version can still be found in newsagents, but I was never offered the option to subscribe to that one instead. Pretty poor marketing I thought.

I think PC Magazine has been bought out by adds.

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

PC Magazine at one time was about PC’s but now it’s about everything but PC’s. I wish they would go back to what ths magazine was before.

I feel your pain

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Mark,

I feel your pain. But, you know the problem is not the magazine. The problem is the PC itself. If PC Magazine covered only PCs, it would probably be gone.

Some subscribers think that their subscription fees pay for the magazine. If that were true, there would be no ads and the magazine would cost $200 per year.
Magazines live and die on their ad volume and that volume is way down for PC Mag. By covering non-PC topics, PC magazine isn’t trying to expand. It’s trying to SURVIVE.

Some metrics:

– There are few PC makers left today — Fewer advertisers competing to sell.

– PCs are very reliable, mature, and cheap today when compared to the “good old days”. There is not as much stuff to write about.

– The current version of Windows (XP) was released in 2001. That’s an eternity ago in the PC industry.

– It was a really big deal when the 486 went from 25 MHz to 50 MHz. Today, fewer people care when CPU speeds increase from 2.5 GHz to 3.0 GHz.

– Comdex was “the” computer trade show to attend and hundreds of thousands did annually. The last Comdex was in 2003.

– ZDTV/TechTV is gone. Insufficient ADVERTISERS to be profitable.

– It used to be called the “IBM PC”. Even IBM no longer makes PCs.

– And finally: Bill Gates can afford to do anything that really matters to him. The PC no longer matters enough for him to stay on full-time at Microsoft.

—

The PC is dead. Long live the PC!

I subscribed to Boot.

In reply to I feel your pain

I dropped PC Mag when Boot started publishing. When they changed to Maximum PC, I continued subscribing. There was way more content than PCM. I haven’t looked back since. I don’t subscribe to any paper PC magazines now. It’s all online and 95% free.

Maximum PC

In reply to I subscribed to Boot.

Maximum PC does a good job at their focus. It is good reading if you’re interested in building PCs, bleeding edge PC hardware for gaming, and digital audio/video. They cover other topics as well.

http://www.maximumpc.com

Oh I agree – but who wants to be rational

In reply to I feel your pain

I agree with your reasons why PC Magazine has changed, but I still want a magazine about the PC. I don’t want reviews of cars or other “cool” stuff that appeals to the younger demographic.

Maybe this is more a function of getting older then what PC Mag is or is not these days, but either way I can find no reason to subscribe.

There have been some good suggestions in this thread that I will check out. Thanks all.

stick to sound systems – not pipe dreams !!!

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

when discussing futuristic systems only hits very small percentage when audience looking for items to advance their knowledge to keep abreast with progress. magazine to advance our knowledge, not to overpower our interests !! ( not space ships )

Don’t preach the choir. Tell PC Mag!

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I agree that PC Mag is now a Car, appliance, photography etc magazine and no longer a decent PC magazine. On one particularly bad issue I e-mailed them and told them that if mediocrity continued I would not renew my subscription. If everyone does the same perhaps they will see the error of their ways and return to a computer magazine. Otherwise it will die after we have stopped sending them money.

I did just that !

In reply to Don’t preach the choir. Tell PC Mag!

I sent them an email with the link to this discussion also.

Not only PC Magazine

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I was the same. I had subscriptions to several magazines but they all became the same, crowding out the articles to be replaced by more and more ad pages, up to 3/4 or better of the magazine. With what the advertisers were paying to place their ads why was I still being charged for it. When some of them sent a letter asking why I was not renewing, I told them why, I got no reply. Imagine that!

I’m paying for advertizing to be sent to my mailbox.

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Not enough articles on things the average user finds usefull. Please get rid of the blow-in cards. I wish someone would file a lawsuit after slipping on one. And just think, I work for a very large printing company that probably prints this god awful magzine. It should be free because it’s turned into junk-mail.

Magazine Alternatives to PC Magazine

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

Yes, sadly PC Magazine has gone consumer, I have subscribed since issue 1 but now I have had to seek much of my tech mojo elsewhere.

Here are my suggestions to fill that aching tech void.

In addition to Maximum PC let me suggest two publications from the United Kingdom.
PC Pro and Custom PC which are both published by Dennis Publishing Ltd.
PC Pro is as the publisher states:

“PC Pro is the UK?s biggest selling PC monthly magazine, and your source of professional IT news, reviews and tests. Combining in?depth industry comment and analysis with rigorous product testing ? PC Pro will keep you ahead of all the developments in the IT world.”

It is kind of like PC Magazine used to be in the old days but on steroids….
In my opinon the product tests exceed even the old PC Magazine in their breadth and depth.

The URL is http://www.pcpro.co.uk/

One can subscribe from the publishers site as an “overseas subscriber”, that is a Britishism for those who are not part of the “Empire”.

Alternatively and less expensively one can subscribe via Amazon’s magazine subscriptions service. The Amazon subscription offers the CDROM edition of the magazine, print magazine + CDROM with featured software, shareware, freeware and editiorial material from the current and previous editions. The CDROM edition through Amazon is less expensive than direct from the publisher. Unfortunately the DVD edition that is available by subscription in Europe or at overseas newstands is not available to overseas subscribers either from the publisher or from Amazon. I make a point of picking up copies of the DVD edition as it usually has five or more full edition software packages per DVD which are usually a version or two behind the current version sold retail. Great way to try out software without time limitations or crippled options. If you like a software package there is often a significant discount offer to upgrade to the current version.

In New York City Barnes and Noble bookstores (in the magazine section) and Universal News Magazine shops do sell the DVD edition of the magazine at about $15-17 a copy.

The sister publication to PC Pro is Custom PC
It is as Denis Publishing puts it:

Custom PC is the magazine for people who are passionate about PC technology and hardware. Whether you?ve been building and customising PCs for years or you?ve just started performance ? tuning ready made systems, all the information you need is now in one place.

URL: http://www.custompc.co.uk/

Custom PC is kind of like Maximum PC on steroids…
Custom PC is nirvana for the nuts and bolts PC geek who loves to build their own system and mod, mod, mod. Some but not all of the material in Custom PC is derivative to the articles in PC Pro. It definitely has a hands-on bent, the articles on enterprise computing present in PC Pro are totally absent in Custom PC.

Custom PC is unfortunately not available through Amazon by subscription so you’ll have to subscribe as an overseas subscriber. In New York City Barnes and Nobles does carry Custom PC in the magazine section but I have not seen it in Universal News.

Both of these magazines are much more inclusive of non-Windows platforms and there is coverage of Linux and Apple products. There are also several excellent European magazines that exclusively cover Apple products.

I am cancelling my subscription too…

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

because all I get now are HDTV, iPod & hi-tech cars. Not to mention ALL the advertising…it’s finally too much. I do, however, intend to continue my subscriptions to Smart Computing & PC World…both are still very useful, but I think PC World is going the way of PC Mag. We’ll see…

CARS????

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I’ve subscribed to the download version for about 2 years now. And although it’s not what I want to read about in a computer magazine, I’ve turned a blind-eye to the big screen TVs, mp3 players, and other miscellaneous gadgets. But, when they start reviewing cars!!! Hey, I’m done when my subscription runs out.

Add me to the list

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

I’m going to let my current subscription lapse. I don’t care about home audio, tricking out my car, televisions, and other entertainment peripherals.

The articles seem to repeat every year. A security issue with the same tips. A multimedia issue with the same tips. The “Best of the Web” issue is usually okay, but many of the annual “Technical Excellence” awards go to products not covered in previous issues. If these products are so hot, shouldn’t they have been covered earlier instead of the latest GPS receiver or satellite radio?

I don’t mind the advertising; I understand that’s how they pay the bills. But there just isn’t enough “computer professional” content any more, and too much “consumer electronics”, especially non-personal computer electronics.

PC Mag dumped me

In reply to I no longer subscribe to PC Magazine because ….

They went “big slick”, dumped the articles and writers that were the basis of the magazine and started looking and reading like People magazine. Good riddance. Thanks God for Tech Republic.

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