PC Pro is unusual on the newsagents’ shelves as it is positively targeted at the IT professional (hence the title!). Most PC titles are aimed at the games player/hobbyist and so present a general overview of consumer products. PC Pro claim to provide a similar service to professionals, ... Read review
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Extreme 3D Pro PC Joystick
When the pressures on, your stick performance is the difference between victory and total ... more
oblivion. The Extreme 3D Pro twist handle joystick will never let you down. The 12 programmable buttons and 8-way rubber hat switch give you optimum control,
Force 3D Pro PC Joystick
Master the skies with the Logitech Force 3D Pro. An improved Force Feedback mechanism ... more
responds more realistically to games that support force feedback, and provides great control even in those that don't. The 12 programmable buttons, precision
Extreme 3D Pro PC Joystick
When the pressures on, your stick performance is the difference between victory and total ... more
oblivion. The Extreme 3D Pro twist handle joystick will never let you down. The 12 programmable buttons and 8-way rubber hat switch give you optimum control,
Force 3D Pro PC Joystick
Master the skies with the Logitech Force 3D Pro. An improved Force Feedback mechanism ... more
responds more realistically to games that support force feedback, and provides great control even in those that don't. The 12 programmable buttons, precision
Nasa PC Navtex Pro
The PC Navtex Pro is a two channel navtex receiver designed to operate on your personal ... more
computer. It will receive navtex messages even without your PC connected. Navtex messages are stored in a vast internal memory for you to download when you get on board. Down loading is quick and the software provided allows you to select the messages you want.Leave the unit on 24/7 then, when you get on board, just plug in your PC and immediately download the latest weather forecast from your local station, or any other message stored in the PC Navtex Pro's memory.Technical Specifications- 518 and 490kHz message reception. - 12 volt supply with very low current consumption. - Connects to standard Nasa Navtex antenna supplied. - Supply voltage 10 to 16 volts DC. - Dimensions 115 x 100 x 30mm. - Antenna length 195mm (complete with 7 metre cable)
PC Pro is unusual on the newsagents’ shelves as it is positively targeted at the IT professional (hence the title!). Most PC titles are aimed at the games player/hobbyist and so present a general overview of consumer products. PC Pro claim to provide a similar service to professionals, but how successful are they?
The magazine has been published for around 7 years and I am currently a subscriber. I was formerly a network support engineer and system administrator so, although not all the articles are relevant to my current needs, I understand (most) of the topics discussed.
The magazine generally runs to about 400 pages, the bulk of which are advertisements. It has a cover CD or DVD, depending on the version you buy. See my footnote about advertising volumes.
News and Editorial ~~~~~~~~~~~
PC Pro dedicated a fair section to short items of breaking news about products, industry related events and personalities. This usually runs to about 10 pages and is one of the most comprehensive news sections of any magazine. It suffers from the problem of all print media that the news is already a month old by the time you read it but it does have the opportunity to cover stories that would never be significant enough to make the TV bulletins.
There are regular commentary pieces from respected journalists. These tackle concerns in or relating to the IT industry or are speculative pieces looking to the future.
Reviews ~~~~~
Reviews are the mainstay of most computer magazines and PC Pro is no different in that regard. The range of products covered is, however, rather wider than you would expect in a consumer type magazine. Recent editions have covered servers, networking products and security systems, for example.
Following the pattern established across the computer press items are reviewed either as single products or as a part of a group test. With group tests a number of similar products are reviewed alongside each other. For example, they might review computers costing £899. The group tests tend to be rather larger than many magazines with the more than twenty products being reviewed in some instances.
The product testing seems to be very exhaustive and the reviews compare favourably with those elsewhere.
Real World Computing ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
‘Real World Computing’ looks at examples and problems in particular parts of the IT world. Typical sections would be Technical Support, Windows, Web Business, mobile Computing, Publishing & Graphics, Server Side Programming etc. An always interesting section is Davey Winder’s look at what’s best on-line.
These sections give truly valuable advice and information to help you tackle some of the common problems that arise. These pages are conveniently colour coded pink.
Cover Disk ~~~~~~
As with most magazines there is a cover disk (or DVD), unusually the contents are actually useful. There are usually one or two featured software items, typically a full (but superseded) version of a business application. I assume that these are released by the publishers in the hope of encouraging sales of their current versions. In most cases there are reduced rate upgrades offered to the latest editions.
Recent disks have featured, for example, Omnipage Pro (V 9) which originally retailed at £395. The current version is about V 12, but this edition is more than adequate for most users. Incidentally, I know the quoted price was accurate because I actually paid it a few years ago (although I should say it was for business, not personal, use).
One of the most useful features of the cover disk is the set of utilities that is supplied every month. These alone make the magazine worth buying a couple of times a year. Virtually all the utilities that you so painfully download are available here in the latest versions. Around fifty items of software form the ‘PC Pro Essentials’ – well worth checking here before spending two hours downloading anything.
Conclusion ~~~~~~~
PC Pro is aimed at the IT professional but is not exclusively of interest to them. The presentation can be rather dry and some of the topics are very specialised. If you can live with this the material is very good and as I said it is probably worth buying a coupe of times each year if only for the utilities on the cover disk.
I enjoy this magazine but I can see that for many it would just be too heavy. Look out for subscription trial offers – I got three months for 1p! At that price it’s worth trying.
To check it out on-line look at; www.pcpro.co.uk## Footnote ##
Advertising in magazines -----------------------
It seems that virtually every magazine review I read complains about the volume of adverts. This seems to show that the writers are ignorant of the commercial realities of magazine publishing so for those who are interested I offer a couple of notes here.
Magazine publishers are commercial organisations that exist to make a profit. They publish magazines in order to provide profits not for any philanthropic motive. Most of the cost of publishing magazines is covered from advertising revenue. The cover price does not in any way reflect the true cost of publication. Publishers are interested in circulation figures only because this determines the value of advertising. If magazine A sells 200,000 copies and B sells 10,000 copies, the advertising in the former will be more expensive (all else being equal).
Don’t despise advertising, not only does it provide potentially valuable information to the reader but it supports most of the cost of the magazine. When some reviewers gloat that a new magazine has little advertising yet has a low cover price my first though is to wonder how long it can survive.
Advantages: It is a comprehensive magazine which gives views and usefull information Disadvantages: The adds are annoying, thickness of the magazine is a disadvantage for the reader
...been a regular subscriber of pc pro for about a year now, it is an informative magazine about the pc and Internet. The focus of this magazine is for the business user hence the PRO part. They have various sections about real world issues, a round up of users problems and much more. As the magazine caters for the business user most of the content is about workstations, servers and Microsoft which I find very dull after a while because I am not working ... ...I mentioned their labs pc tests which are very good, but when they evaluate 20 PCs for under £999 they do not add V.A.T so these computers actually cost the buyer over £1020 so there not exactly under £999 for the majority of the viewers.
The cover disk provided is generally very good with usually three game demos and they give away some free software worth £££ whatever. The rest of the disk is usually the same every month with WinZip, get right ...
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Advantages: Great features, authoritative comment Disadvantages: Loads of ads
...is Dennis Publishing's fine offering, PC Pro, which you can also access via their extremely good website at www.pcpro.co.uk - the mag itself is some 400 pages thick, although as usual with this type of mag, there are more than 100 pages full of computer related advertising. It's a truly excellent buy at a cover price of £2.99 and there is something here for anyone with an interest in anything vaguely PC-related.
I'll base my review around one particular ... ...certainly shows...
In general, PC Pro's market is the PC user with a fair amount of technical nous and savvy and it shamelessly focuses on the needs of an IT Manager in a typical organisation. According to the mag's own figures, they normally sell just over 150,000 copies every month.
---Cover disc
All computer mags boast a freebie disc containing software and PC Pro is no exception. What is slightly different, however, is the quality of the programs ...
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Advantages: Useful Reviews Disadvantages: Very Technical (Could be an advantage)
...is definitely aimed at the PC user who either works in the field of IT or has a great understanding of the field. The normal structure of the magazine opens with information concerning the free cover discs. These are available in two flavours CD and DVD, obviously the DVD version is more expensive than the CD version which retails at £2.99 an issue unless the reader decides to subscribe. The monthly CD normally comes with a one full software package ... ...with a lot of retail PC magazines, such as PC Format and PC Answers, so nothing startling is on offer with this magazine. Where the magazine does come into its own is with the level of advice, the letters help page is always worth a read to learn something new. Also the section written by John Honeyball titled advanced window has been a great aid although this is mainly aimed at NT users. The section written by Simon Jones is normally an interesting ...
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Advantages: very concise and accurate publication Disadvantages: seems out of date too quickly web based publications are more relevant
about four years ago, i started getting heavily into computers and the associated software and hardware. at the time there were only a handful of magazines around, and most were biased towards the big players in the industry. most magazines praised the likes of intel, microsoft, 3dfx, etc.
this made making decisions very much a buy and hope affair. but out from the crowd a saviour arose. pcpro magazine was honest, concise, best of all accurate.
... ...has become very much behind the times. the reviews and articles are still amongst the best in the industry, but unfortunately, the reviews seem dated, and to make things worse, the magazine, as with all others, seem to have a date on the cover which is sometimes two months ahead of the actual magazine.
for example the magazine for december, was delivered in late october?
surely there is a reason for this, but i'll be damned if i know why?
p.s. ...
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Advantages: Good writing, good progs Disadvantages: Sometimes a bit dull
...even to this day is PC Pro. I really like this mag and always find something of interest in it every month.
I think it's the columnists which I find the most enjoyable part of the mag. They're very good writers and very informative. They vary from web site design to music creation and recording, to graphics and internet advice.
The magazine provides a lot of good reviews of a consistently high quality on all things computer related, including both ... ...very dull.
Like most PC magazines, most of the back of the mag is taken up with ads, but these are always useful when you're looking to buy stuff.
Another thing which is very strong with PC Pro is the content of the cover disk - the programs are normally very good and very robust - I got into both Dreamweaver and Fireworks from using the ones they provided - and I've rarely had probs with their disks. ...
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Advantages: Web builder, Net know how Disadvantages: Some of the writers' style
....net Magazine is one of the better of the monthly PC mags around and it always provides a really good read. There's the ubiquitous cover disk included, but I have to say that I've tried a number of these and decided pretty early on that they're more trouble than they're worth. That gripe aside, however, I find this a brilliant magazine and it's one of the few such mags that you buy for more than the ads.
My favourite read is PCPro, but .net always includes good sections on web building and has some interesting articles. I'm not sure I'm too keen on some of the writers who do get a bit flippant at times, but that's really just a matter of taste.
There's a section at the back of every mah on the 100 top web sites to get started with, but as they don't change that much from month to month, you soon get tired of that particular...
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Advantages: Very well laid out Disadvantages: Not for PC boffins
...In my opinion Computer Buyer is the best PC mag I have ever bought, it offers advice the "new" people to computers and a few tips for the people that know alot about PC's. As with any computer magazine each moth they have a "lab" test where they test a group of PC's from well-known companies within a price range. The thing that makes Computer Buyer stand out from the crowd is that it is so easy to read and well laid out. The reviews are in my opinion better then the likes of PCPro and Computer Shopper because they are more detailed and offer 4 separates marks in different area of the PC - Performance, Expansion, Overall and Ergonomics. In my opinion if you are new to the computer world then this is the magazine for you and it is also the mag for people who know lots about computers...
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Advantages: Well layed out & good content Disadvantages: Back pages full of ads.
...Web user- A good read if you want to know where to find good sites, tips on software and great new gadgets on the market.
Basics:
Internet magazine produced fortnightly. Costs £1.20. Website
www.web-user.co.uk
Covers:
News
Best New Websites
New Products
Shopping Challenge (which I appear in this week’s – issue 15 pg. 20)
Most wanted – hottest products
Practical – how to sections
Workshops – projects using featured software
Online games
Readers hint & tips
My opinion:
This magazine is aimed for the beginner to intermediate Internet / PC user.
This magazine is in a different category to magazines like PCPro, which
seem to contain advice on buying PC’s, accessories and software. This
magazine is for users that have a PC and the net that want to know how to
use their software...
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19.02.2001
11.01.2001
