Computer Shopper Issue 4 - A blast from the past.

Ah, Computer Shopper, you are still a miss now. It's been two years since you departed the shelves of newsagents after 32 years of service to your readership. Like most UK computer magazines, the pinnacle of your existence was the 1990's, as the consumer PC market took off and manufacturers seemed to be sprouting up almost daily. But it wasn't always like that, so when I picked up a copy of issue 4 from 1988, I had to remember that this was before the period where the magazine became known as that telephone directory-sized behemoth that strained even the strongest of Postie's backs. Let us travel back to the summer of 1988, where the most recent issue of the latest computer mag to hit the UK market would set you back 78p...

Who, in June 1988, could fail to be enticed by such a publication?

Whoa, whoa whoa! 78 pence? Yep, that was pocket money even for me back then, and I vaguely remember having this issue when it first came out. As you can see, it's very much of its time, stapled with all but the most basic of colour restricted to the covers and the first/last couple of pages. Everything else feels like newspaper or a comic of the time. Remember people, we're not in full colour, perfect binding territory just yet... but those days will come...

There's not much colour, but look! PREMIER DISKETTES!!!

At 128 pages excluding the covers and colour sections, it's a decent enough size and feels quite familiar to what Micro Mart (remember that?) remained as until its demise in 2016. As always with magazines, it is what's on the cover that grabs your attention and, if the promise of a preview of the "fastest 286 PC on Earth" doesn't get you going, nothing will... (sarcasm alert, just in case you didn't get the tone...)

I'd buy a PC from him, just so he wouldn't kill me Patrick Bateman-style... 

Having said that, a picture of peak 1980's Michael Dell is a close second, if just for those glasses, but news of Star's latest colour printer, the LC10 (who, as a computer user at the time, did not want one of their colour dot matrix printers???) as well as Dixons' Amstrad basher (for only £399 - we'll get to that in a bit) made this issue an almost mandatory purchase! Apologies, it's easy to take the pittle out of a 34 year old magazine cover, so let's have a look inside, shall we?

And what a contents page it is too!

As you can see from the contents page, there is a lot in here and it's pretty varied. Following on from the news section we have reports on the Atari Show (teasing their PC compatibles that, let's be honest, merely distracted them from the core ST business, and even then, they continued to shoot themselves in the foot for years afterwards), a report from the Einstein Show (now that is a relatively obscure 80's format), before the mag dishes the dirt on the Olivetti PC1 that Dixons thought would be a good competitor to the low-end Amstrads of the time. Not sure about that, what with a lack of built in expandability and frankly silly add-on costs (plus that £399 just gave you single 3.5" drive mono set up and that's before 15% VAT is added for the consumer), but hey, this was a time of interesting machines, rather than generic beige (then black, now LED festooned) boxes.

An introduction to Michael Dell and his company (whatever happened to them?) comes next, with what can only be described as his "serious" expression although I like to call it "constipated." Others might think psychotic, in which case I must axe(!) them to put on "Hip to be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News and chill... To be honest, the idea of fast 286's was a dream back in '88, although the prices were more of a nightmare. The 20MHz 286 of the mono Dell 220 would set you back £2,099 ex VAT, whilst the 310 could give you a 20MHz 386 with colour for £5,099 ex VAT!!! Farking 'ell! This was (and is) serious moolah, and it should be noted that your average DOS user would not benefit much from such power. Those aiming for the new OS/2 would be much better suited to these machines. Of course, what was also new was his sales process - direct to the customer. Another new fangled thing that would never... oh!

There's a handy guide to budget music production, and when I say budget, I mean the software - a decent MIDI keyboard would still set you back £300! There is a piece on "Practical Spreadsheeting" (seriously, there is...), whilst a fan of Locoscript gets to wax lyrical about, well, Locoscript. There are several pages dedicated to Zortech's C++ compiler (for the love of all that is Holy, why???) combined with pages of listings and an explanation of what Object Orientation is.

It's a light read, really...

We then have a question little asked since, ohhh, 1988. Why is there a barrier between business and games software? It's very much a pro-gaming piece and rather quaint, knowing what we know now. What I didn't expect was an online section, with extracts of Bulletin Board conversations. Moving on, there is MacBiter. Ah, MacBiter, possibly the funniest column ever to grace Computer Shopper throughout it's life (until the author passed away, that is). Here, MB tackles the question as to why people like Macs, given issues with over-heating, pricing and the new threat of viruses. Looking at the 2022 M2 MacBook Air line up, two out of three ain't bad - the more things change, the more they stay the same...

The Amiga gets some love with a column that also lasted a good few years until well after Commodore bit the dust, then a single page detailing the membership of the British Association of Computer Clubs in the north, from Lancashire to the Borders. This is followed by a comprehensive list of bulletin boards in the UK - I have no idea how much this must have cost users, I just remember phone calls being expensive and having to ask permission even to make a ten second call to arrange meeting friends. 

There's pages of these listings.

The Star LC10 gets its glory pages (£259 ex VAT thank you kindly) along with the Sidekick Plus review. Public Domain and Leisure Suit Larry get a look in, as does a decent letters section and some classifieds, before it all ends with, as you'd expect if you've ever read any issue of Computer Shopper, Zygote and Croucher & Evans' Great Moments in Computing.

One of the many adverts - I hope you like Amstrads...

I'll be covering a lot of the advertising and pricing in a later post, after I have shown you the jewels of Personal Computer World circa 1990, but I do want to say that there is a fair amount of advertising in here. The resellers pretty much only offer Amstrad PC1512/1640's as a starter, and if you want portables, Amstrad has only slight competition, with much more expensive brands like Epson, Sharp and Toshiba occupying the £1k plus price bracket. And as for software... look at those prices! Lotus 1-2-3 could be had from a reseller for about £235, so the big name packages are bloody expensive. It was also interesting to see an advertiser here that is (in name only) still around today: Morgan Computers. Selling remainder and ex-stock, that company was a go to in the 1990's as their prices were always decent and their variety of stock was second to none. 

Now this ad really does take me back!

Anyway, there we have issue four of Computer Shopper. I have had great fun (yes, I know, I am sad) reading this and I shall be trying to pick up further issues of the magazine as I find them and when they are not stupidly priced. This particular issue is a lovely little time capsule to a time long gone, pre-Windows, pre-Internet, pre-VAT inclusive prices (it helped develop my maths skills, until the buggers raised it to 17.5% in 1991). And yes, there is just a hint of rose in those spectacles. 

Coming up in a couple of weeks, a look at another of the titans of the British computing magazine world: Personal Computer World, this time from 1990.