PC Magazine going Web-only in January

pcmagv1i1It makes me sad, although not surprised, to see that Ziff Media will stop printing the paper edition of PC Magazine soon. For sentimental reasons, here is a copy of the cover from their very first issue, back in 1982, that features an interview with a very young Bill Gates talking about how his mother would have trouble using the early PCs, a report on the first Comdex, and ads for VisiCalc, AST memory boards and Amdek monitors (that displayed text in green characters only), and a review of Easywriter word processing software.

Here is the announcement over on Paid Content,  including an interview with Jason Young, current CEO.

I didn’t do much work for Mag, as we in the biz called it, but that was more a matter of circumstance and timing than anything else. When I started at PC Week, Mag set the standard for lab tests and comparative reviews. Here are some commentary from people that worked there during the go-go years, when issues would stretch to 400+ pages and hundreds of products:

Feel free to post your own memories here in the comments section.

If you want to see other computer magazine covers from the early days, check out the ones that I have scanned here.

0 thoughts on “PC Magazine going Web-only in January

  1. Pingback: 80: End of a (PC) Era « Mediablather

  2. So I got my start freelancing for PC Magazine LAN Labs and Frank Derfler. Frank had setup shop in Destin, FL and ran an add in the local newspaper. I had several issues of the local computer user’s group as the total of my writing experience. In my favor I had a BSEE and Frank was looking for someone with a technical background. The rest as they say is history. That was over 20 years ago.

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