Magazines of Yesteryear - Computer Shopper Issue 80 - October 1994

It's another magazine of yesteryear and this time we're travelling to October 1994 (by issue date, the publication date was early September) and issue 80 Computer Shopper.

The magazine has grown, now coming in at 670 pages, and you have to feel for the posties of the 90's and how their poor backs faired when lugging multiple copies of this around. As for contents, we have a Pentium 90 group test (for a bargain price, but we'll see about that), graphics cards, a decent rage of software being rated, as well as the good old machine reference guide, still in place even if the pickings were increasingly slim for the non-DOS formats. That was to be expected considering Atari had abandoned the computer scene for one last crack of the whip at consoles, and Commodore had imploded earlier in the year. Acorn was still kicking out (the Risc PC (swoon) had arrived in April), and Apple was still Apple - although resellers such as Crown Computer Products Direct were offloading older stock at frankly silly prices - an original Mac LC 2/40 for £199 ex VAT!

Contents - some interesting stuff here.

The format specific list - and check out that circulation figure bottom right - 134k plus! 

In the news was Apple's announcement of licensing its System 7 OS to other hardware manufacturers. This they certainly did, and in my best (imaginary) Morgan Freeman voice, it did not end up being a good idea. Microsoft settled a four year anti-trust investigation (the what if's abound if Gates hadn't folded), Compaq pushes into retail (Dixons, Currys, John Lewis and PC World), and London's underground would soon be getting fifty multimedia information kiosks to supply up to date travel information to travellers. This truly was the future, or so it seemed at the time. 

From the group test, and interestingly, a section at the bottom about the actual company.

Now that's a group test specification table!

The big group test is for Pentium 90-powered machines at a budget price. This, gentle reader, depends on your definition of "budget" - and when it came to the then hot new processor, you started at £1,895 ex VAT and went upwards. These were high spec machines for the time, most coming with 16MB of RAM and a 15 or 17" monitor. Except for Lowland (£2,897 ex) and Dotlink (£2,085 ex), who cheaped out with a 14" screen. Tight basta...

These machines were also supplied with PCI or VLB (VESA Local Bus) graphics cards, and a round up of some of the latest models reveals a) they were varied in pricing - £110 to £599 ex, b) these were serious productivity tools - the 3D graphics cards race was still a while off, and c) they were pretty much maxed out at a resolution of 1,280x1,024, although a couple could handle virtual desktops of up to 2,048x1,536 at 256 colours. The key thing here was that getting a monitor to ably handle such resolutions was probably going to cost you as much, if not more, as the card. Taxan Ergovision monitors were being handled by dealers for around £339 and £669 ex for 15 and 17" varieties respectively. 

Don't be tempted. Not for one minute!

For the format specific stuff, Amiga Shopper is still going, as is Atari Shopper. Jim Nagel hosts the Archimedes Shopper column, while the legendary MacBiter keeps an eye on Macintosh Shopper. His column was one of the main reasons to buy Shopper, and his look at System 7.5 will have you chuckling away even after nearly thirty years. 

Elonex were another decent manufacturer lost to the mists of time.

To the adverts now and this was a time when the PC market was in rude health prior to the consolidation and mass market changes that were to come as the decade progressed. Manufacturers offered machines directly and via dealers, so let's have a look at what you could have bought back in 1994.

Discounted Apples - and no, not worth it either.

First thing you realise is that anything less than a 25MHz 486 SX is dead in the water. Aside from a couple of really cheap laptops (and laptops were coming to the fore even then), there isn't a 386 to be found outside of a Morgan Computers or (in this issue) Crown Direct ad - the latter had a monitor-less Amstrad PC4386 for £299 ex. If you were in the market for a current spec PC, the 486 was your starting point.

The Gateway 2000 opener...

MJN's in return

Gateway 2000's price list compared to...

... MJN's - totally different, obviously.

Naturally, competition was fierce, and this led to some unfortunate coincidences. Take Gateway 2000, once seen as a true competitor to Dell, it leads with a fold out insert featuring Sherlock Holmes. Their ads were often high quality narrative productions, having the machines front and centre of course. Prices aren't too bad either, and a 486 DX2-66 Family PC could be had for £1,299 ex. Pentiums were much more pricey. But what is this? MJN have also gone for a Holmes run (not apologising for that at all), and theirs is laid out in a very "similar" way, albeit with cheaper pricing. Hmmm. Other then-famous names in the market included Elonex, Viglen, Watford Electronics and Byte Direct, the latter of which was eventually purchased by PC World. 

A cracking little laptop, that Contra Aero.

As for laptops, Toshiba and Compaq were the dealer's favourites, although the pair of Olivetti machines looked pretty tasty, and I still love the colour of that Echos model (see below). What is really noticeable is that technology has advanced, and while these machines still have a weight issue (and that's mostly a battery thing), their prices are now, certainly at the lower end of the market, commensurate with their desktop cousins. Check out the Toshiba TC1900S - 486 SX at 25MHz, 4MB RAM, 120MB hard drive, 9.5" screen, internal floppy, DOS 6.22 and weighing under 6.5lbs - all for £829 ex. Now the Viglen Contender desktop - 486 SX at 25MHz, 4MB RAM, 240MB hard drive, DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11, plus a 14" monitor - £799 ex. Admittedly, there were cheaper manufacturers - Time could do the same spec with a Mitac branded machine for £699 - but that's not my point. What had changed was that laptops could now get very close to desktop pricing within the limits of the form factor. Colour screens and faster chips added much more, but on one level, the laptop was getting there. 

Laptop progression - that T1900S is pretty tasty for the price. 

The Viglen Contender range - could have been's...

This was the high point of the Win/DOS combination before the might of Windows 95 changed the perception of the PC for the general consumer. That and putting the Pentium processor front and centre when it came to sales. It also wouldn't be long before 3D graphics cards started to show up. This is about the time in the PC's history that I feel most nostalgic about - and yes, I am aware that nostalgia can tint those glasses in a spectacular way, but PC's at this point were both cool, moderately accessible but also still requiring some technical knowledge to get things to work. Old man shouting at clouds here, but I sometimes do miss playing about with interrupts and HIMEM.SYS.

Anyway, that's two for Shopper, so next time, I'll have a look at a more "scholarly" title. Well, Personal Computer World, but since it described itself as a journal, it's the posh one compared to Shopper. I will leave you with the advert of the Olivetti Echos. Still a looker after all these years...