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May 13, 2008
Computer Magazines on one hand and the Forum in the other
We were talking the other day, about the monthly computer magazines. I ventured the opinion that they were getting really "yesterday".
The computer books have been disappearing from the suburban books shops for some time. Once, on the train to Melbourne City, you would see blokes with open Novell CNE and the Microsoft MCSE books. Later, that gave way to a few CISCO references. Now, they're almost all gone, replaced by time poor executives or students making red circles on A4 proposals and printed email.
I get the feeling that computer magazines in Melbourne have also been trimming down. One would wait eagerly for APC, PC User and the ilk, even hmmm, PC Update.
Recently I flipped through some pages of the remainders.They appeared to be pedantic, boring, earn-your-keep written jobs. A few topical discussions - except that their news impact would have been one month old - if you follow popurls and our bleeding edge forum, topics retain context and freshness for only a few days. Lots of tips on how to make Vista like Windows XP and vice versa - again, although some tips are indeed worthy, most of them would have been in web community bookmarks for a long time.
On the other hand, digital photography mags are becoming more prominent - especially those catering for Adobe Photoshop or dee ess el arrrs.
So, is this the end of the road for the formerly flourishing IT magazine business? Or will it re-invent itself? What's your EWAG?
Posted by Anandasim at May 13, 2008 09:24 PM
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Comments
I don't buy any anymore - I was finding that the news was outdated, product reviews or comparisons were too limited in range, prices mentioned of pcs or components were always way off what I knew to be available...
Lots of "how-to" articles that claimed you had to use the exact pieces of obscure software that they'd provided on the cover cd and seemed to make the process twice as complicated as it should be...
I remember wondering how it could be that what I assumed to be massive geeks working for the magazines could still be seemingly so out of touch and completely NOT "bleeding edge"...
Posted by: raoul at May 13, 2008 11:53 PM
After keeping up a ten year or so subscription with PC User magazine, I've decided to stop.
I found that it has little to interest me these days, and the product comparisons are rather meaningless or very limited in scope.
You can find better information on the internet.
Also, what do you do with 10 years or so of cover CDs & DVDs? They've taken over the house!! And I am reluctant to just chuck them in the garbage as it seems so wasteful and ungreen.
Posted by: vainglory at May 14, 2008 05:46 PM