[tinsmith]

> but I haven't opened a computer magazine and said...

I feel this. In my opinion, we have not had a computing magazine worth opening in two decades, at least in the US. I know we can find news and articles relevant to our interests with unparallelled ease on today's Internet, but a huge part of me misses going to a bookseller and picking up that month's selection of nerd rags.

I have always had trouble pinpointing exactly what it is I miss about the magazines of old. Sometimes I feel that it had more to do with how I fit into that world at the time, being a curious teen who loved tinkering with tech, and the future was wide open. Othertimes I think it had to do with the mags being my window to that world, since I had nobody to guide me.

[erwan577]

Before the web and global geek culture, magazines were the only way to get a feeling of "belonging" to some kind of tech community, sometimes the community of some computer brand owners, sharing the same interest for the compatible software & hardware products. Heavily priced online board systems then milked the same needs providing downloads which replaced free disks offered with magazines.