Source: PC World – January 1991

PC World was one of the most popular PC magazines published in the U.S. It always felt a bis generic to me but it’s still great for nostalgia. This issue goes back to 1991, a year when the 486 was bleeding edge and IBM was still a big name in the PC World.

Previews

• IBM’s Visionary New XPs – A look at IBM’s latest 486 based PS/2 models with features including upgradeable 25 and 33 MHz CPUs, optional 256K cache, and up to 32MB of RAM. The Model 90 desktop features room for five drives and has three available 32-bit Micro Channel slots. The Model 95 tower has room for up to seven drives and six available Micro Channel slots. However, the prices range from $12,495 to $17,745 which seems pretty insane, even for then.

• Easy Persuasion – A look at Aldus Persuasion 2.0 for Windows. This was presentation software that would have competed with software like PowerPoint.

Reviews

• Easy Fonts for Great-Looking Documents – A look at seven scalable font generators, including Adobe Type Manager 1.0, FaceLift 1.0, Fontware, SoftType 1.01, SuperPrint 1.0, and Type Director 2.0.

• Buying Smart: Font Shopping Tips – What to look for when shopping for font software.

• Exercising Your Font Options – Resident fonts vs. font cartridges; price vs. performance.

• Tax Relief for the Rest of Us – A guide to the various software available to do your 1990 tax return, including AM Tax, Andrew Tobias’ TaxCut, J.K. Lasser’s Your Income Tax 1991, MacInTax for Windows, Personal Tax Filer, Personal Tax Preparer for 1990, Swiftax, and Sylvia Porter’s Rapid Tax.

• Own a Home Business? The IRS is Watching – Why you may want to continue using an accountant for your business taxes.

• In a Hurry for That Refund Check? – Use electronic filing to get your refund check faster. This option only became available the previous year.

• Do-It-Yorself Taxes – A guide to finding the right tax software for your needs.

• Rating the Returns – A comparision of the same return with TurboTax 8.0, TaxCut, and an accountant.

News

• Top of the News – Colorstar and Toshiba introduce new laptops with the novelty of 256 color active matrix screens. The Colorstar features a 20 MHz 386 while the Toshiba T3200SXC features a 20 MHz 386SX. New VGA chipsets announced. Lotus buys Samna. Borland releases Forms Processor, Turbo Pascal and SideKick II for Windows. Multimedia PCs on the way. The Multimedia standard includes a minimum of a Windows capable 286 with 2MB of RAM, VGA graphics, 30 MB hard drive, sound card and CD-ROM.

• Industry Outlook – IBM launches XGA as successor to VGA; growth of desktop publishing slows; mail order sales increase (I bought my first “PC” in 1993 via mail order direct from Gateway 2000); and more.

• Product Outlook – Next releases NextStation featuring a 25-MHz 68040 CPU, 8 MB RAM, MegaPixel (1120 x 820) display, 2.8MB floppy, and 105 MB hard drive for $5000 and the higher end NextCube for $13,990O. Other new products include new versions of TurboTax, TaxCut, and MacIntax, Wyse Decision 486/33E, Express Publisher 2.0, IBM PS/1 Printer, Co/Session 5.0, Turbo Pascal 6.0, PacificPage PE 4.9, SatisFAXtion, Quicken 4.0, CompuAdd 333 and 333T, AST Premium II 386SX/20, and more.

Features

How To

• OPerating System and Environments – Windows 3.0: Load applications automatically, quick program switching, replacing File Manager with Norton Commander, and more. Desqview: Easy word processor to E-Mail transfers.
• Word Processing – Wordperfect: deleting consecutive words, doing OR searches, hiding and searching for comments and more. Microsoft Word: parallel columns, extra wide docments and more. Wordstar: quick printing.

• Spreadsheets – Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro: quickly unhide columns, speed data entry, fast recalcs and more.

• Data Management – Tips for dBASE, Paradox, Q&A, DataEase and more.

• Communications – Tips from using CompuServe, Procomm Plus (my favorite telecommuniations software back in the day), Crosstalk XVI, Crosstalk MK.4, and more.

• Desktop Publishing – Tips for Ventura Publisher, PageMaker 3.x, and more.

• Presentations – Tips for Harvard Graphics.

• Draw and Paint Programs – Tips for Corel Draw, Micrografx Designer 3.0, and PC Paintbrush IV Plus.

• Utilities – Tips for Norton Utilities, PC Tools Deluxe 6.0 and Magellan.

Departments

• Richard Landry – IBM catches up with the competition with their new XP systems.

• The Help Screen – Automatically include the document name in the body of WordPerfect 5.1 documents; using shareware; partitioning your hard disk; Weitek vs. Intel math coprocessors; and more.

• Network Q&A – Questions answered about Windows 3.0 on a NetWare 286 network.

• Consumer Watch – Shopping experiences at Sears, Radio Shack, and via mail order among other places.

• Developer’s Toolbox – A look at Booter Toolkit, software designed to allow you you create boot disks for your software without needing DOS.

• Taking It Home – Protecting yourself from computer theft.

…and more!

Source: PC World – January 1996 

PC World was one of the most popular PC magazines published in the U.S. It always felt a bit generic to me but it’s still great for nostalgia. 2006 really wasn’t that long ago but computer ears are more like dog years…or even more accelerated. The February 2006 issue of PC World includes:

Cover Story

• Special Report: Find It on the Net – A guide to finding what you are looking for on the Internet.

• Just Browsing Directories – Various directories that can be found online including Galaxy, McKinley Group’s Magellan, NetCenter, Starting Point, Web Voyager, The Whole Internet Catalog, Yellow Page.com, Yahoo and more.

• Search Tips – Tips for being specific and accurate with your searches.

• Index to the Net: Search Engines – This was pre-Google. The top search engines included Excite NetSearch, InfoSeek, Lycos, Open Text Index, WebCrawler and others.

• Which Gives you the Most? Which Gives you the Best? – In 1996, it seems that Lycos was the best at giving both the best AND the most search results.

• One-Stop Shopping: Metasearch Engines – These are essentially search engines that combine results of multiple other search engines and indexes. These included All-in-One Search Page, CUSI, Fun City Web Search, MetaCrawler, The Internet Sleuth, W3 Search Engines and others.

Windows 95 Tips

• 95 Essential Tips for Windows 95 – Windows 95 was probably the single biggest change from one release to another that Windows has ever had. Here are some tips for using it.

CD-Recordable Drives

• Do-It-Yourself CD-ROMs – At this point in time, CD-R drives had dropped below $1000 and discs were going for $7 each. It would be almost three more years before I had a CD-R drive at which times prices had dropped much further. Drives reviewed in this article include the HP SureStore CD-Writer 4020i ($999), JVC BC-CR1000A-2X ($999), Olympus Deltis CD-R2/ISA ($1389), Optima DisKovery 650 CD-R ($1495), Pinnacle Micro RCD-1000 ($1050), Smart and Friendly CD-R 1002 ($1259), and Sony Spressa 920 ($1699). All are SCSI based.

Top 20 PCs

• It’s a Buyer’s Market – The top 20 PCs as ranked by PC World in different categories. The top Power Desktop is the Micron P133 Millennia ($3499 – 133MHz Pentium, 16MB EDO RAM, 1.6GB hard drive). The top Budget Desktop is the Dell Dimension P75t ($1679 – 75MHz Pentium, 8MB RAM, 540MB hard drive, 4x CD-ROM). The top Power Notebook is the Toshiba Protege 610CT ($4649 – 90MHz Pentium, 8MB EDO RAM, 720MB hard drive). The top Budget Notebook is the Dell Latitude LX 4100D ($2629 – 100MHz 486-DX4, 8MB RAM, 420MB hard drive).

Personal Information Managers

• Software for the Perpetually Overworked – Personal Information Manager software is one of those categories of software that has more or less gone away. Most functions have been moved into e-mail or office suite software. But in 1996 there were lots of such programs. Reviewed here are Act 2.0, Ascend 5.0, Ecco Pro 3.0, GoldMine 2.5a, Janna Contact 95, Organizer 2.1, Schedule+ and Sidekick 95.

Top 10 Hardware

• Top 10 Workgroup Printers – The top printer in this round u is the Lexmark Optra R for $1487. Or if you want color, there i the HP DeskJet 1600CM for $1999.

• Top 10 19 to 21-inch Monitors – CRT monitors were the only type of monitors reasonably available in 1996 and 19-21-inch monitors were the largest. The top monitor in this list is the MAG MX21F, a 21-inch CRT for $1800.

• Top 10 Graphics Boards – 3D graphics were still in their infancy in 1996. The top card this month was the Diamond Stealth64 which featured the S3 Vision968 chip and 2MB of VRAM for $269.

• Top 10 Modems – Broadband generally wasn’t available in 1996. A 28.8 modem was the best most of us could do. A the top of the list is one of my personal favorites, the U.S. Robotics Sportster V.34. The Courier V.Everything was probably the very best but it also cost twice as much.

Top of the News

• SmartSuite 96: Back in the Ring Again – Lotus SmartSuite ’96 was an alternative to Office ’95.

• RAM Doublers No Substitute for Real RAM – RAM doublers offered a way to use real-time compression to trick your system into thinking it has more RAM than it does. Products reviewed here include MagnaRAM 2, RAM Doubler, and SoftRAM 95.

• 150! 166! 200! Pentiums Soar – A comparison of Pentium 150, 166, 200 and Pentium Pro performance in Windows 95.

New Products

• HP OmniBook 5000, ZDS’s Z-Note GT – A look at two new Pentium based notebooks.

• Lexmark Optra Printers – New color and black & white laser printers from Lexmark.

• Proxima Desktop Projector 2400, Sharp XG-E650UB Mark II – Each of these projectors comes in at well over $6000.

• Son MDH-10 MiniDisc – I always though the MiniDisc was a neat format. Unfortunately, it was much more expensive than a Zip Drive and other alternatives so it was never successful as a data format.

• SoundExpression fax-modem, Voyager Movie Player graphics card – The SoundExpression is a combination modem/sound card. The Voyager Move Player is a graphics card with hardware MPEG-1 capability.

• Netscape’s Navigator 2.0 and SmartMarks 1.0 – At the time, Netscape was the best browser. But even bookmark management was achieved with a separate add-on.

• DacEasy Accounting & Payroll 95, QuickBooks – New versions of accounting software. Quickbooks is still around. Not sure about DacEasy.

• SPSS 7.0 for Windows statistics software – Statistics software for those that need more than spreadsheet software.

• Modem Mate MPA-100 – A device that allows a phone line to be used for both modem and voice calls.

• Network/modem dual-purpose cards – A look at new network/modem combo PCMCIA cards, including the Mariner, CreditCard Ethernet+Modem 28.8, and Megahertz XJEM3288.

PC World @Home

• Consumer Watch – Software bundles included with new computers often don’t provide much value or even include full retail versions of the software.

• HouseWare – A look at “digital crayons”, musical software, and more.

• House Calls – A look at recipe software including Mangia and MasterCook 3.0.

• Home Office – The only fast alternative to dial-up at the time was ISDN. However, we are still talking about speeds that are only 128kbps and that’s only if everything is working perfectly. Often it wasn’t. And the price was high.

…and lots more!