Share Your PC World Memories as We Turn 25
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So the March issue of PC World--which, in confusing magazine fashion, will reach subscribers in early February and hit newsstands in the middle of that month--is our special anniversary issue. (That's its cover above.) It includes some nostalgia, but also a lot of just plain useful stuff, and some thoughts about where technology is likely to go over the next 25 years.
(Side note: PCW was formally announced on November 29th, 1982, at the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas. And it was kind of big news at the time, since our founding staff consisted of almost everyone who worked at another publication called PC Magazine. So in a sense, we're already 25--but we like to count our days on this planet beginning from when we first existed in tangible, dead-tree form.)
We have countless memories of our first quarter century of life, some of which we're going to share in a story for PCWorld.com. But we'd also like that story to include memories from you, the folks for whom we do what we do.
If you have any thoughts about PC World--whether you're someone who was there in 1983, or a PCW newbie--we'd love to hear them. Post 'em in a comment on this blog post, and we might use them in our feature. (Or, if you're not a registered member and don't feel like joining, feel free to e-mail me your memories--I'm harry_mccracken@pcworld.com
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I am a new PC world Subscriber and like the magazine. I find the articles interesting. I go to the PCworld.com alot. I have Pcworld.com as my home page.
My first computer was a Commodore 64 that I bought for about $150 in 1984. I ran for awhile with a tape recorder, because the floppy drives were VERY expensive. I finally hit the state lottery daily number and could afford to buy a disk drive. It cost $400 and the instructions for formatting a disk were on page 83 of the manual. There was no Internet as we know it now, but there were BBS's that we could communicate with via speedy 300 BPS modems. There were also several national services like Compuserve. I subscribed to Quantum Link, a Commodore only service. I met my wife there--she had a Commodore 128 and it was love at first type. I started reading about real PC's in mags like PC World and built my first clone PC in 1987. The CPU was an AMD version of the 80286 that ran at a blazing 12 Mhz if you pushed the Turbo button--otherwise it ran at 10 Mhz. Today my wife and I connect to the I-Net by satellite and appreciate the passage of history that we have witnessed.
Im a proud pcworld member because when I first became a member it changed the way I look at computers (pc's).I enjoy the magaziens with all the technology thats up-to-date thats what i love.And yes most of the advice they give in the magazine and website are reliable and trustworthy.This most of the reasons why i visit pcworlds website every day.And for 25 long years of hard work and detacation i give a kudos to all of the pcworld staff for making pcworld what it is today!You are defenatley my technoogy resource!And ill continue you keep visiting this site for as long as possable because no other site is like this one.Go pcworld!
Another guy from the Commodore 64 generation, though a complete newbbie to PC World community. We and the computers have come through a lot, and we?ve only just begun geeeez!!!
Greetings from an argentinian reader who enjoys the sweet sarcasm and fine irony in your articles (somewhat a revenge for the headaches programmers and manufacturers usually give us). Happy 25th and let?s make it many more!!!
Your readers might be interested to know that in the early days we thought there would be dozens of word processors. One for doctors, another for students, another for mathematicians, etc. The idea of one encompassing do everything for everybody word processor (MS Word) would have seem ludicrous to us. For one thing, memory was precious and expensive and for another there were thousands of application software companies. In a way I think it is a shame how consolidation has really limited the choices we have but on the other hand, we didn't see the Internet coming either.