| Product: |
PC Pro |
| Date: |
13/02/01 (50 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great reading for PC Pro's
Disadvantages: Annoying subscription department
As many people have mentioned here already, PC Pro is aimed at what its title suggests - IT professionals who spend all or part of their working day implementing or supporting PC technology.
It's split into several sections, with a reviews area, new technology, and a 'real world computing' area.
The reviews section is very solid and dependable - I will often purchase equipment on the recommendation of this magazine - but like everything personal taste and opinion comes into play. One mans super-cool DVD recorder may be the next mans cup-holder!
The new technology area, or 'Horizons' as I think its now called is always interesting, but like all printed magazines, it has very long lead time between the articles being written and then published. This is even longer of you do not subscribe but wait to buy it in the shops. Issues are often discussed as if they happened only yesterday (which they probably did for the harassed journalist) but we get to read about them 6-8 weeks later - a real drawback of magazines and this one in particular.
As I mentioned above, there is a 'real world computing' section, with contributors from many diverse aspects of computer journalism. These people are not full-time hacks, they are professional IT consultants / lawyers / company directors who write as a sideline, but their subject knowledge and writing style is superb. I have had cause to e-mail one or two of them in the past, and always received a reply (much to my surprise!). Perhaps I'm too cynical...
The one aspect I do not like would be the intrusiveness of the publishers subscription department, who never seem to stop writing to you if your subscription stops. Every week I seem to receive yet another 'Final Offer' to renew my subscription to its sister magazine, 'Computer Buyer', with ever more tacky free-gifts added as an incentive. To say I find this irritating would be an understatement - but it would not stop
me from recommending this magazine to anybody who works in IT, or is interested in doing so.
Summary:
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