I didn't plan this, honestly, but here we are, on a different format just one month prior to the last Mags post, but also an interesting happenstance, as here is a general PC publication that was trying to cater for the growing home user demographic who are rocking DOS/Windows as their OS's of choice, and an interesting read it is too.
Oh, and ignore the hyperbole on the front cover: you're not getting a full version of Microsoft Money, just a 60-day trial. You want more, you got to pay £29.95, a twenty quid discount for those interested. Anyway, to the news...
Well, for a home user magazine, the first news page is a bit... professionally orientated? Improve for Windows and Freelance Graphics for Windows from Lotus? Spea and their range of Windows graphics accelerators? Creative's Video Blaster card? Nah, this seems, if not business-like, then certainly pro-sumer level stuff.
Ah, the next page makes things a bit more homely, with news of AA Milemaster 2 for your driving needs, and 3D Designer from Europress for your virtual gardening planning.
Oh, I see what they've done - there's a separate news section for entertainment, and, well, yeah. I accept it's not a games magazine, but howay, people! Well, they tried.
Thence follows a two page report on the Winter CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas - all shiny CD stuff, before there's an editorial speaking about, you guessed it, more CD goodness. Given their recent reader survey resulted in learning that over half of the readership either had or wanted to own a CD-ROM drive, the decision was taken to expand CD-ROM coverage. Ah, bless, physical media...
We have a letters page before the cover feature where you'll see handily illustrated guides to upgrading your machine. It's all pretty straight forward stuff, yet also feels kinda quaint.
3D Construction Kit v2 is another olde-world call back to a lost era, yet for £50 back then, it would have been a decent introduction to 3D object creation. There's coverage of a True Type font pack (£92 inc VAT!), as well as desktop publishing, PC connectivity kits, and a Windows Program Manager replacement. In those days, if the OS did something you didn't like, you could buy a workaround. These days, if you're a Windows user, you just have to accept the shitshow that is Microsoft's approach to operating systems.
The first hardware review offers a Cyrix 40MHz 386DX-powered desktop for £835 ex VAT, £982 inc, from Myway Marketing (one of the many "Accrington Stanley's" box builders of the period) The standard 4Mb of RAM sits alongside an 85Mb hard drive, and a 1Mb SVGA card coupled to a 14" SVGA monitor. Slightly passing a 486SX 25MHz in performance tests, it's a reasonable machine, lacking only a decently placed PSU and that Intel-inside comfort so beloved back then. Hasn't that changed in recent years too... If you want a good reason as to why the PC was becoming the platform of choice for many, the price cuts initiated by Intel to fight off processor competition from the likes of Cyrix and AMD would be a reasonable choice. Sure, Atari were pretty much off computers by this point of '93, and Commodore were dead but didn't know it yet, but maybe more on that in a later post...
Amstrad's Mega PC also gets a review, and for £999 inc VAT is... well, not a bad idea, but not good enough to matter. Looking at the PC offerings advertised elsewhere (and covered below), for a grand you could pick up a similar spec 1Mb/40Mb from a box builder for about £750 inc, leaving you £250 from that official RRP to pick up a Mega Drive elsewhere for about £150, bundle depending. Sure, you'd need a TV for the Mega Drive, but you probably had one anyway(!) and that still left a PC for more "serious" uses... Let's also not forget the aforementioned Cyrix-powered system in the previous paragraph.
Games reviews next and at least there's more here than the news section. Lemmings 2 tops the scores with 96%, although Stunt Island looks a canny flight sim at 90%, and Space Quest V shows that Sierra can still provide some laughs if you get the humour.
There's educational software too, as well as a CD-ROM round up. The Ultima I-VI Series was a good choice (even if only to spare the floppies), and yes, kids, the CIA World Tour and CIA World Fact Books were a thing, though a tad pricey at £68.15 each. The Internet (it was always capitalised in those days), would see such discs off.
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| Could you even call yourself a PC user if you didn't have such software? |
Shareware Shopper takes a gander at home accountancy packages (such things were so real back then) but it's a canny editorial choice when you consider that demo disk on the cover, before the final funny page takes us to the end of the magazine.
Editorially, this is a good mix, and with writing pitched just right at the target audience, not a bad attempt at broadening the appeal of the PC beyond the then-typical Computer Shopper/Personal Computer World/What Micro? reader. But what about the advertisers?
Not even to the contents page yet and we have this Sierra Discovery advert. Oh, that horrible 90's term, edutainment. These probably weren't bad titles, although the "Your child will have fun AND your child will learn. Guaranteed" promise at the bottom is more than a little passive aggressive...
We have our first box builder next, RES Consultancy, and the pricing here isn't bad at all... if you check out the Options box. A base 386SX 25MHz for £568 ex VAT - nice! Just remember to add £35 ex for DOS, and £40 ex for Win 3.1. I've never liked that kind of advertising, and the practice did stop, but still kinda shady. You'd also be better off with a couple of Mb of RAM to take it up to 4Mb, and that 44Mb hard drive really is too small, so there's an extra £39 ex for the jump to 85Mb. If you compare like for like for the 386DX 40MHz from RES with the Myway system reviewed that issue, you're saving about £15 with this builder here, so the pricing really isn't that bad... once you have everything you need/require.
M6 Computers are a dealer with quite the array of Amstrad kit, and below Alan's RRP's, too. The Mega-PC (remember the list price of £999 inc), could have been yours for £695 ex, so £817-ish inc, a better deal than list, but still a smidge pricey for the 386 PC you get from elsewhere, although as you can see, Alan's other 386's are priced closely enough to make the Mega-PC tempting. That being said, Amstrad were no longer the go-to budget options of choice compared to just a few years earlier. For those wanting the proper old-school approach, your CP/M needs would be handled by the still on sale (but why???) PCW range. Sure, it would have handled your immediate needs, and I have a place in my computing heart for it, but by mid-1993, its time had most definitely passed.
They also have some Amiga's, including the now perilously obsolescent CDTV, but it's the pricing of that standalone A1200 that confuses me... where did they get that from to be able to sell it for that amount, especially compared to the (admittedly) bundled A600's? Hmmm...
Thripplewoods offer an interesting counterpoint to M6's Amstrads. The rather useful NC100 is £16 more expensive here, and the Mega PC is £100 more. Yet Thrip's comes back with the ALT-386SX for £127 less than M6's offer, and the colour ALT-386 for nearly 3/4 of the M6 price! It definitely paid to shop around!
There's other box builders in here too, but they's all much of a muchness in the style of Res Consultancy, although at least Myway, when they sell you a system, really do sell you the complete, works out of the box, system.
Special Reserve are aiming at gamers, and I remember ordering many an Amiga title from them back in the day. They are joined by ads from other games retailers such as Eagle PC, European Computer User, and Rubysoft.
Software Supreme has a notable ad for two reasons: their huge range, and the eye-strain inducing small text. What is does illustrate, in a more complete way than even Special Reserve's ad does, is that games were very much a thing now for PC owners, and looking at the selection here, there wouldn't have been enough hours in the day to get through even a tiny minority of these!
Unica Limited go all in for CD-ROM's over four pages, with both hardware and software galore. It certainly feels that if you could afford the kit, the PC had now become an entertainment giant.
Finally, Ensign Systems (PCH) have a boatload of shareware for your perusal, and more than a few of these programs would have been quite useful.
PC Home is something of an outlier in early 1993, but easily illustrates the evolution of the DOS/Win platform. PC Format was already heading towards its second birthday when this issue of PC Home hit the stands, and PC Gamer was only some six months away to help bang the drum for the PC being the ultimate in home computer leisure. And you know what, if you could afford one, it most definitely was.
Which has me thinking... why and when did this process occur? And what of the competition? For that, I need two issues of What Micro? from 1992 and another post, coming soon.
