| Product: |
Computeractive |
| Date: |
27/05/01 (84 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Cheap, Easy to read, Good tutorials
Disadvantages: Bit simplistic in places, Quite a few adverts, NOt as big as monthly magazines
Computer active is a fortnightly publication from VNU publications. It’s aimed at the novice-to-intermediate home user, and is one of those pick and mix magazines featuring a mix of reviews, features, news and guides. It weighs in at 98 pages, but in the current issue I counted that 30 of those pages where adverts. That’s forgivable when you consider that the cover price is only £1.20. I have to say that it feels a little less professional than some of it’s monthly counterparts – it feels a lot more flimsy, the paper is less glossy than some of it’s competitors, but then again, it’s what’s actually printed on the paper that counts, isn’t it?
It also doesn’t have a cover CD. I don’t mind this – personally, I very rarely use cover disks these days. I don’t use games demos, because aside from the odd blast at Championship Manager, I rarely play game son my computer, and if I want to install utilities, more often than not, I’ve already downloaded them off the Internet before I get them on a cover disc. Another good thing is that you’re not inundated with free CDs persuading you to sign up to various ISPs when you open the magazine. I get .NET every month, and without fail, I get at least two CDs, usually from AOL and BT that require me to use the bin. Not so Computeractive, so extra marks for them.
Well, opening up the magazine, what’s in there? It’s like most computer magazines in that the first few pages are devoted to news. The first seven pages of Computer Active are used to provide us with the latest news, and it does hold an advantage over monthly efforts by being fortnightly in that the news does tend to be more up to date – it’s still a week or two after the events, and with the net you can find the news out as it happens, but Computer Active does keep up pretty well. The news is a varied lot – news on new hardware and software on t
he horizon, net use surveys, ISP news, and on the whole it’s all a pretty enjoyable and informative read. Like any good publication, it gives an URL at the end of each piece so you can visit the relevant website if you need to find out more information. There’s also a small jargon buster in the news section, giving the definitions of some computer terms used in the news in layman’s terms – any term that is in the jargon buster is highlighted in red in the articles.
With the magazine being smaller than the monthly offerings, it only has room for one feature, which might be a bit annoying if you’re not interested in what they are writing about in that issue, but I have found the articles to be well researched and written. They usually take one part of computers or the Internet, and focus on that and contrast and compare various aspects of that. In the current issue, the feature is online banking, and they walk you right through the whole process of what benefits and drawbacks it has, and pits the various online banks against each other, as well as contrasting online banking with High Street and Phone banking. In all, six pages are devoted to the feature, which I think is about the perfect amount – it gently breaks you in, telling you the background and basics, which is highly useful for those people who perhaps haven’t heard much about it before. It also sums everything nicely up at the end with a table clearly showing the results for easy comparison.
It follows that up with seven pages of hardware reviews. The reviews are either a half-page or a full page in size, and they test a wide range of products from computers and web cams, to mp3 players. Again, they look after the novice by providing a guide to the jargon they use, and the reviews are as in-depth and professional as any other magazine I’ve seen, rating the products on ease of use, performance, features and value for money, before giving an ove
rall rating out of five. They also provide a handy list of the good and bad points of each product. They follow the reviews up with a larger article, a more comparison based review where they take a set of products that relate to each other – like CD drives, or in the case of this issue, PDA accessories. Doing a standard set of tests provides a great benchmark so that you can see which gives the best performance and value for money. Again, a jargon buster is provided to explain any terms that you don’t understand.
There’s a substantial Internet feature following the hardware review – in this issue they focus on web logs, but they have featured search engines and online shopping in previous issues. Again, they go right to the start, and assume no knowledge, so that newer users or readers can understand exactly what’s going on. They highlight some of the best examples as well as giving you a step-by-step guide on how to set up your own should you want to go further. The features are always easy to read, but at the same time they’re very informative and provide all the information you need in a simple format.
The centre twelve pages are devoted to the Workshop, a series of guides on how to use the software on your computer more effectively. This is probably the section aimed at the novice the most – the guides are rated from 1-3 depending on the complexity of the guide, but anyone who has used computers for a year or two will find a level 3 is still something they could approach with confidence. Having said that, it has taught me a few little hints and tricks I otherwise wouldn’t have known about. The guides are well laid out and very easy to follow – firstly they provide simple step-by-step instructions, and they also provide good screen shots for each step so that you can see exactly what you should be doing. It gives advice on things like setting up folder, filters and signatures in your email c
lient, adding graphics to word, and password protecting Windows.
Following the Workshop, there are nine pages of software review, ranging from the latest educational CD-ROMs, to Internet utilities to the newest Game releases. Reviews range from a full page to a sixth of a page, and they aren’t reviewed with just the same depth as the hardware seems to be – a simple rating out of five is all that’s given, and I think they should think about adding a minimum and recommended specification into their reviews at some point. After the software reviews, they give a page devoted to some of the highlights of the web, both professional and amateur sites, along with their site of the fortnight.
They follow this up with two pages devoted to gadgets and toys, the sort of things that look cool and are expensive, but the things you’d rarely use. There’s a wide range of them featured, along with the contact phone numbers and URLs should they really tickle your fancy.
The next section is devoted to reader’s letters – two relating to their problems (computer related, not their love life!) and two pages devoted to reader feedback. The advice again reflects the novice base of the magazine, with some problems that a more experienced user would find no problem to fix themselves – but everyone has to learn somewhere. As with most readers letter in any magazine, you’ll find people recommending various things, relating their experiences and arguing over who is right. Kind of like a newsgroup, except on a smaller, fortnightly basis.
After the letters, there are a few pages of classified ads, then the page that details what’s in the next issue and when it will be available. It isn’t the type of magazine I would buy every issue, it would only provide about two nights reading at best, but it is a good magazine if you’re stuck for something to get to liven up a train journey. The features
are worth a read, and you can sometimes pick up something useful in the workshop. Above all, while it may have plenty of ads, it also has quite a lot of good content, and above all it’s cheap. It certainly isn’t the best magazine out there, and it’s a bit light for my preferences, but for the newer user, I couldn’t imagine a better magazine, especially for the price.
Summary:
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