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  • #2158238

    What is your opinion of PC World?

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    by tink! ·

    When I first stumbled into IT, it somehow came about that my company offered to pay for a subscription to the magazine, PC World.

    For 2 years I received this publication and thought it to be fairly informative. At least it was to me at that time in my young IT life.

    Lately I have really questioned the integrity of the information and the editors of PC World. I still receive their e-newsletter of downloads and some of the programs they suggest are either sub-par in quality or just questionable in usage. For example – You tube downloader. Seeing as how we already touched on the idea that downloading or capturing streamed music without rightfully paying for it is illegal, should a publication really offer this to their readers? Or is it a trap to see how many people actually download it? (it’s Free)

    I no longer give PC World the esteem that I once did years ago. What does the TR populace have to say about them?

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    • #2772514

      They were a fairly good mag

      by jaqui ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      long ago.
      but they went the way of the home gamer type, making them useless for tech info.

      I remember their multi-page product reviews and listings, which they killed off some years back. That was when I stopped even looking through it for anything of value.

      • #2772368

        I used to refer people to those reviews

        by tink! ·

        In reply to They were a fairly good mag

        long ago. Back when Ask.com was a site forum for “experts” to provide answers.

        If it weren’t for the fact that a few of their download suggestions are actually useful (and free) – I doubt I’d even think of PC World these days.

        • #2773365

          I picked up something

          by boxfiddler ·

          In reply to I used to refer people to those reviews

          called FileGrabber there years ago. I’m glad I keep downloaded installers – haven’t seen it anywhere for years now.
          Handy dandy little freebie – copies Windows Explorer right-hand pane contents allowing for printing of them. Still use it. But wondering how Vista will fare with it. Still haven’t tried it there.

      • #2773155

        Magazines

        by ed woychowsky ·

        In reply to They were a fairly good mag

        They seem to be going down the same path as Byte; ads, fluff and eventual obivion (for pay online corpse). Even Dr. Dobb’s is a shadow of it’s former self.

    • #2772504

      I didn’t subscribe

      by boxfiddler ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      to their magazine. But I did spend a lot of time there reading for awhile. I also downloaded a few handy dandy freebies. Things do seem to have changed over there. The last couple things I downloaded (don’t remember any more what) gummed up the works. Ain’t been back.

      • #2772367

        yes quality really has degraded

        by tink! ·

        In reply to I didn’t subscribe

        I check the reviews and thumbs up/down on the downloads before I try one and lately there’s been alot more down than up.

    • #2772480

      Not bad,

      by charliespencer ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      I subscribe to it at work. It’s cheap enough and give me something to read when I go out for lunch.

      As Jaqui noted, there’s too much home electronics / non-PC content. PC Magazine suffered from the same disease from 2005 through 2007. They got their act back together in 2008, only to stop paper publication at the beginning of 2009.

      • #2773395

        I could have gotten PC magazine

        by tink! ·

        In reply to Not bad,

        too probably. At the time though, I deemed it frivolous to have so many magazines about the same subjects. Plus back then I felt PC Magazine was a little to “hefty” for me.

    • #2773278

      All printed publications are suffering

      by mjd420nova ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      Just like the situation that is happening with newspapers throughout the country, they are suffering from lack of subscribers and as a result the advertising revenue has fallen and it becomes a vicious circle. I spend a couple hours a week at Borders, settled in a chair, reading the mags I’m interested in but seldom buying. Why, most have broadened their scope of articles in an attempt to increase their readership and it has backfired on them. I see many publications that have slanted their reviews towards rating their advertisers higher than the other manufacturers. I see this as just a way of keeping the advertisers they do have happy. This gives them a bad reputation and again drives more subscribers away. I can find almost all of the info I need on the web and save myself the cost of a subscription. Many years ago, actually over 40, I had close to $500. worth of yearly subscriptions to various mags, then they decided to start making some extra money by selling their mailing lists. I began changing the name under which I subscribed by using different initials and apartment numbers and department names. This allowed me to track where certain junk mail was getting their mailing lists and I cancelled those pubs. This didn’t halt all the junk mail though, some of the publishers were selling mailing lists that were a couple years old. How many out there remember the BYTE magazine? At first it was a very good read until the pages of advertising outnumbered the article pages. It went from a modest 75 to 100 page mag to over 500 pages that was close to 75% advertising. My mailman really let me know he wasn’t happy lugging that thing around once a month.

    • #2773255

      It was very good a LONG time ago

      by jackofalltech ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      I maintained a subscription for several years way back but cancelled when the things you mentioned started happening.

    • #2773106

      Seems I read all those years ago

      by dadspad ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      I agree with what others are saying here. I found I was losing interest in reading the mags, did not renew any but PC Mag, then found they were doing the same. Used to like the product testing the magazine’s did.

      However, like others said, it became obvious their advertisers were the top rated. I have not read any Computer Mag in years.

      On an aside, I stopped reading car magazine’s for the same reason. 🙂

    • #2773091

      Same

      by shellbot ·

      In reply to What is your opinion of PC World?

      Used to read it..been a while since though, because its not worth the time now.

      PC Plus used to be good..its going down the same road though…

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