Message-ID: <13381@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Sep-84 01:07:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13381
Posted: Mon Sep 17 01:07:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 07:40:52 EDT
Lines: 34

From:  "Donald E. Hopkins" 

I am sorry to see Softalk go, but I AM glad that a lot of these trashy
computer magazines that are flooding the market will not be with us
for very long. They came in riding the wave of the home computer fad.
("Gee, I've got no idea what to do with the thing, but I just HAD to
get it! After all, all the other neighbors have one.") When the Vic-20
goes into the corner with the Pong game, never to be turned on again,
nobody is going to bother to renew the subscription to "Nanosecond,"
"Keyboard," "Floppy," or "BASIC Illustrated." Have you noticed that
almost all of these new magazines are aimed right at the neophyte home
computer user? What these publishers failed to take into account was
that most of their readers would never go any further than sticking in
a cartridge and playing a few games, and they wouldn't even do that
for very long. Granted, quite a few of them will pursue their
interests in the field of computers, but most never had that interest
to begin with, and still don't. Many of those who might have become
interested in computers, had they been exposed to descent hardware,
software, and documentation, were totally frustrated by the toy
computers that they were given for Christmas, and now are not the
least bit interested in them. Unfortunitly for the advertisers, most
of these people are never going to spend very much money on a computer
that costs much less than its disk drive. I have been disappointed with
many computer magazines recently, as they have been going down hill,
trying to appeal to readers like this. These are not people who are
going to keep resubscribing and patronizing their advertisers. The
people who resubscribe regularly are the ones who have a real interest
in computers, and don't just have one because it's the "in thing." If
the publishers of a magazine are interested in keeping it alive they
should cater to the interests of the computer enthusiasts, not the fad
followers. They won't be reading the magazine in ten years, they will
be off following another fad.

	-Don