Compute! (February 1989)

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(Edited)


Cover of the February 1989 issue of Compute!

Compute! was a multiformat computer magazine that covered a wide variety of platforms. In 1989 that included at least the PC (DOS), Commodore 64, Apple II, Amiga, Macintosh and Atari ST. The February 1989 issue includes:

Features

  • Money, Money, Money - An overview of six personal financial management packages including Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money (Apple II, IBM PC, Macintosh), Dollars and Sense (Apple II, IBM PC, Macintosh), MoneyCounts 5.0 (IBM PC), On Balance (Apple II), Smart Money (Apple II, Apple IIgs, IBM PC), and Sylvia Porter's Your Personal Financial Planner (Apple II, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, IBM PC).

  • Order From Chaos: Money and Your Spreadsheet - A guide to building a spreadsheet template to keep track of your money.


Table of Contents from the February 1989 issue of Compute!

Reviews

  • Fast Looks - Brief overviews of new software including DeskPaint 2.0 (Macintosh), Map Skills (Apple II), and Grand Prix Circuit

  • Pool of Radiance - The first of the Gold Box AD&D games and one of my favorite games at the time.

  • Fantavision - An animation package for the Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIgs, and IBM PC.

  • Tutor-Tech - Kind of like HyperCard but for the Apple II instead of the Macintosh.


Table of Contents from the February 1989 issue of Compute! (continued)

Columns

  • Editorial License - An editorial on how computers cost too much. Some examples given include an Apple IIgs system for over $3000, A PC compatible for $1500, and an Amiga or Atari ST for $800-$1000.

  • News & Notes - The latest computer news, including plans to bring videotex service to the U.S. (not sure this ever actually happened or went very far if it did), a new Leisure Suit Larry game, Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf, the latest World of Commodore show, magneto-optical disk drives, and more.

  • Gameplay - A look at improvements on old game concepts including Blockbuster (a newer version of Breakout), Better Dead than Alien (a newer version of Space Invaders), and more.

  • Impact - Using your computer to do your taxes.

  • Discoveries - Using CompuServe and other online services, including BBSes in education including to help teach English to Japanese students, improve reading and writing skills in high school students, and more.

Compute! Specific

  • MS-DOS - Command line vs. GUI; a look at The Norton Commander. Plus, The Invisible Link, a program that lets you download in the background and more.

  • 64 & 128 - GEOS 2.0, Dungeon Master's Assistant Volume I: Encounters from SSI, Final Assault from Epyx, Times of Lore from Origin, and Fast Break, a 3-on-3 basketball game from Accolade.

  • Apple II - Del Yocam leaving Apple; Apple raises prices of Apple II and IIgs systems; rumors of an enhanced Apple IIgs, and more.

  • Amiga - The Amiga is featured at several recent computer shows including World of Commodore, COMDEX and CES; Zoetrope special effects software; SysFont font software; and more.


Back cover of the February 1989 issue of Compute!

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A look back a few years, and the most important brands that were on the market are not the ones that are present today.
In a while, perhaps all the companies and technologies that we see right now may be simple memories, something distant.
Technological advancement is becoming more and more impressive.

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A few are still around from back then but not many. For instance, Dell got its start in the early to mid 1980s and Apple is still around. However, most of the tech companies of the time were either acquired by others or went out of business completely as other competitors came along.

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I love these looks back through classic publications. It is like a time capsule of sorts, we get to see how far things have evolved and changed over the years. So cool.

Have you checked out outofprintarchive.com yet? Tons of great magazines from back in the day, a console slant to the available mags, but they are completely legal and free (the publishers/rights owners released these magazines for distribution via that site).

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I used to visit outofprintarchive fairly regularly but it's probably been a few years since I've checked out what's new there. These days it seems like everything winds up on archive.org eventually. Whether legal or not I don't know. They even had some of the telephone book size Computer Shopper's show up recently. I wondered if any of those would ever get scanned. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to do it...

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I helped start Out of Print Archive but life got in the way, and I had nothing that could legally be distributed so it was hard to keep the passion for the project when I was working 40+ hours a week at my day job. I know Meppi, the main guy doing edits there, is absolutely amazing at his craft.

I know one magazine, scanned fairly decently can take a few minutes per page to prepare so a 400+ page Computer Shopper? Yeah, no. Lol.

I think most owners of these publications view preservation as just that, preservation. There is no real market for capitalizing on the old issues. I worked the deal with Gamefan Magazine, and Electronic Gaming Monthly (which included the second iteration of Electronic Games) but both owners of those publications were only interested in offering their stuff via custom apps they had created (rather than more mainstream options, or just going free with them). That sucked but we tried to make the partnership work with both before it fell through (Gamefan, I believe was due to typical Gamefan B.S. - most of the horror stories you hear from former workers are about what we went through in that process as well).

Sometimes it is true, it is best to not meet your heroes and ruin your view of them.

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Those computer shoppers got up to 800+ pages. The March 1993 issue I just glanced at was 873 pages. You have to be pretty motivated to scan those.

I started scanning magazines I had (mostly VG&CE and Commodore magazines) back near the turn of the century. It was a pretty slow process because I was doing it non-destructively using a flatbed scanner. But I also didn't do any post processing. If I got the whole page, it was readable and mostly straight, I was happy. I was never involved in any organized effort and once others started doing it better and faster I was happy to let that personal project go.

Doing these posts gives me an excuse to look through these old magazines, many of which I never had. Doing a post on an 800+ page issue of Computer Shopper should be fun...

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Early on, I just scanned the content pages and not the ads because I was only interested in the content (and ads usually carried over from month to month or mag to mag). I would scan the ad once and just slip it in when I saw it used in another issue. Some got mad because that is not the ad from that issue so I lost a lot of interest at that pettiness.

I was using a flat bed scanner too. I was dropping over 30+ hours a month on this type of thing and spending around $100 a month buying issues I didn't have and no one had preserved yet.

That was before I got into it hardcore and shortly after that, life got in the way of putting that much effort into a hobby so I stopped and moved over to promotion and working on deals with publishers. I was able to broker a couple video games like this over the years as well (and probably turned a few game owners into penny pinchers wanting money for a 30+ year old NES game they didn't even know they owned).

I cannot wait to see what you put together to showcase a Computer Shopper issue. That should be interesting as there is so much in each issue.

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