I was very surprised to see that Computer Shopper magazine is still around.
You see, back in the early 90s, Computer Shopper stood out on the magazine shelf because of its sheer size. The thing was gigantic, at least 18″ tall, a foot wide, and at least 1000 pages. Even more interesting, the magazine was 90+% ads (it was like the Real Simple of the early 1990s). But that was their gimmick and they didn’t shy away from it. People who bought the magazine knew what they were getting.
I’m pretty sure that I had a subscription at some point. Of course, at that size, the magazine started taking up a lot of space in my bedroom pretty quickly. But I specifically remember trying to hunt down great deals for hardware that I never ended up buying. 486SX, I never even knew ye.
I wonder how large the magazine is today. I suspect it’s a more reasonable size. But I kind of miss the old beasts. After all, they were heavy enough to put on the other side of a see-saw and balance me out. No friends needed!
Posted in Technology
Merle December 11, 2006, 2:45 pm
I loooved the Computer Shopper of yesteryear. After lugging one home, I could (well, had to) spend hours leafing through the ads, flagging certain pages, in search of the Ultimate Computer Deal.
And there were some awesome deals. It was interesting seeing how some companies would charge twice what others did. You always ignored the glossy ads in the front and near the articles, as well as the scummy looking ones near the back. (I did eventually rake out big bucks for a cutting edge Pentium when they first came out, but it was fewer bucks than it would have been without the magazine)
I had the same experience you did: I saw one of the “modern” Computer Shopper magazines. It just doesn’t seem as cool.