Technology Tales

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TOPIC: DENNIS PUBLISHING

Ditching PC Plus?

28th June 2007

When I start to lose interest in the features in a magazine that I regularly buy, then it's a matter of time before I stop buying the magazine altogether. Such a predicament is facing PC Plus, a magazine that I have been buying every month over the last ten years. The fate has already befallen titles like Web Designer, Amateur Photographer and Trail, all of which I now buy sporadically.

Returning to PC Plus, I get the impression that it feels more of a lightweight these days. Over the last decade, Future Publishing has been adding titles to its portfolio that take actually from its long-established stalwart. Both Linux Format and .Net are two that come to mind, while there are titles covering Windows Vista and computer music as well. In short, there may be sense in having just a single title for all things computing.

Being a sucker for punishment, I did pick up this month's PC Plus, only for the issue to be as good an example of the malaise as any. Reviews, once a mainstay of the title, are now less prominent than they were. In place of comparison tests, we now find discussions of topics like hardware acceleration, with some reviews mixed in. Topics such as robotics and artificial intelligence do rear their heads in feature articles, when I cannot say that I have a great deal of time for such futurology. The section containing tutorials remains, even if it has been hived off into a separate mini-magazine, and seemingly fails to escape the lightweight revolution.

All this is leading me to dump PC Plus in favour of PC Pro from Dennis Publishing. This feels reassuringly more heavyweight and, while the basic format has remained unchanged over the years, it still managed to remain fresh. Reviews, of both software and hardware, are very much in evidence while it manages to have those value-adding feature articles; this month, digital photography and rip-off Britain come under the spotlight. Add the Real Word Computing section, and it all makes a good read in these times of behemoths like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe delivering new things on the technology front. While I don't know if I have changed, PC Pro does seem better than PC Plus these days.

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