And you're right, it was required reading. I still have the Windows 3.0 review edition somewhere in the void. PCW was far and away the most important and best written magazine of the era.

Like every other mag, it went through the bloated phase: 1+ inches thick, 95% adverts for horrible generic PC clones with their CPU speed hard-wired on LED displays, and I went right off it. Where were the articles? Lurking forlornly somewhere around page 357, but too hard to find!

But I'm very sorry to read of its passing.

Would like to offer my condolences.

I think I can safely say that without the guidance of PCW in my formative years I would not be where I am today.

I may have to go and dig out the old floppies and shed a tear over them (as I can't actually read them anymore due to complete lack of a floppy drive!!)

RIP, Personal Computer World.

p.s. On the gillette front, surely at that stage 90% of the male readership did not care for such things as razors, proudly stroking their bushy beards as they wrestled over opcodes?

... without PCW. It was a formative part of my love affair with all things computer related.

I remember buying the IBM PC issue like it was yesterday. I remember all the excitement about transputers, the rise of hard disks and the inexplicable failure of 1Tb storage devices to become available ... until recently. I also remember that the BBC Micro smashed all the benchmark records for the day when it could do a "for 1 to 1000 ... next" loop in exactly 1 second. The last time I tried that on a modern computer, I had to make it a 1 to 1,000,000 loop just so I could measure it...

Thanks for the memories.

I've been reading this since as long as I can remember, my dad bought it first. Sad to see it go as this was one of the better pc magazines. I have noticed that the adverts have been getting thin on the ground....

Hope it comes back when the market is better!

The penguin because well I'm not sure....

I have every issue of PCW from issue 1 up until mid-1993. They make fantastic reading.

Thanks for the memories guys.

As a 14 year old I devoured every word of PCW every month. Great stuff.

Owned all the usual suspects - zx80, vic-20, electron, BBC, Archimedes. Still happily coding and sometimes in ARM assembler.

Ahh, where's my pipe and slippers

Ah! the bad old days of computing.......RIP PCW, fondly remembered.

PCW gone the way of Practical Computing? Say it ain't so, Guy!

As an avid subscriber since around 1990, I've enjoyed the magazine and reviews.

The last 6-10months thou has seen the magazine thin down somewhat to the point that I thought it would become a pamphlet :(

Very sad to see the mag go :(

Chris Bidmead's '32 Bit' and later 'Unix' column introduced me to Linux. Twelve years on I'm paid to swear at Redhat based web servers, and my home machines all run Debian.

Without PCW I'd still be fretting about whether I'm updating malware scanner's pattern files frequently enough.

I have to disagree with the author. I grew up on home computers in the 80s and PCW was universally known as being crap. If you had a Sinclair you bought Your Sinclair. If you had a BBC Micro you bought Micro User, if you wanted general microcomputer news you bought the real PCW (Personaly Computer Weekly).

What amazes me is that it lasted this long when far better publications called it a day decades ago.

Much as I hate to see something that harks back to the retro days finally folding, but I think the author is probably a tad too close to it to realise how little it really mattered :( Sorry.

Sad, but inevitable.

I remember, as a teenager, rushing to the newsagent for each new edition. I was ecstatic when a family friend/geek gave me an older stack including PCW#1-20 and some editions of Elektor.

Started with a Microtan 65 (remember that?), and moved to a BBC Micro, and PCW remained an essential purchase... until the market basically became this months PC clone which was 100HMz faster than last month's. The irony is that I think the computer market is about to get interesting again...

I've spent most of my career as a software developer in mobile telecomms, and PCW was definitely a large part of what got me started.

I remember fondly the 80s/90s issues. But saying that 'PCW did nothing for the British computing industry' is a bit like saying Financial Times has done nothing for the London Stock Exchange. Sure, PCW didn't directly influence, but it kept a whole generation of up-and-coming technophiles informed and on the cutting edge.

And the 'new-box-on-the-cover' thing is a no-brainer (retrospectively). I'm a sucker for motorcycle magazines - and what do you think sells those? You won't see a single one without the latest, shiniest bike on the front.

PCW has had it's day - no surprise that it's died - but thanks for the memories :)

Well all IT is done in India and there is little left for us in the UK to do now, apart from formulate debt repayment and exit strategies. I loved PCW and PC mags in general, would not buy them now as 'Programming' well thats not done here, nor is x,y or z.

May as well release 'Popular Aluminium Smelting' or 'Car manufacturer monthly' we have won the race to the bottom, now what?

Ah, I remember PCW well. Growing up with the fast paced change in the computer industry in the 80's, PCW was essential reading.

Like many, I think I stopped reading it when the PC compatible finally won out over the varied and interesting 'home' computers. Probably around the time Windows 3 came out...

I still have a few copies lying around somewhere. Probably underneath the BBC Model B, Archimedes (I loved that machine) and Cambridge Computer Z88 (that I used at school, much to the consternation of some teachers) in a cupboard at my parent's house!

Possibly the most significant one in terms of modern day computing is the June 1990 issue. Cover star was the first colour laptop (from NEC -- bloody expensive, and a pretty hopeless screen!), some new fangled 486 computers (from RM and Compaq -- I think they were about £16k each, with 4MB of RAM!), a group test of sound cards (the cheap but low quality one from some new start up called Creative came dead last), a report on some fancy 'multimedia' thing called DVI (which transmogrified into DVD, I think), and a report on CD-ROMs -- what could we possibly want to do with all that space! And Guy's NewsPrint column -- do you still wear those natty bow-ties?

Ahh, fond memories...

First BYTE, now PCW... <sigh>. Wish I had bought PCW more often in the 80s, when everything was new and exciting. It was probably about 10 years ago I stopped reading it, after the PC industry became commodified and homogenised, the people writing for PCW didn't really have much of a clue about what they were writing about any more, and the magazine grew to telephone directory proportions with all the advertising. By the way, "Newbear Computers"?! - I think you mean Newbury. And of course, Sophie Wilson was actually called Roger in those days.

The first issue had a picture of a Nascom 1 (my first computer) on the cover.

I think a lot of the other PC magazines out there would never have happened without PCW as a target to aim at. I do think -- sadly -- it forgot how to stay ahead of the crowd a while back, probably around the time I abandoned it for PC Pro, but it trod useful ground between the too-geeky and too-American Byte and the many, many "Computers for housewives" titles that have come and gone over the years.

You are, of course, far too modest to mention that many of us kept buying and reading it precisely because of your contributions.

(I think my ex-wife may still have my old Intertec Superbrain in her loft. I wonder if it still works?)

That was the ACT Sirius. 1.2M floppies in the early 80's using variable speed drives.

I've still got a stash of 80's era PCWs up in my Dad's house, next time I'm up there I must dig through a few, if only for the comedic value of the old adverts.

Admittedly I did stop reading it a long time ago after it had become just another PC of the month magazine.

Yes MrJOD, I do remember the Microtan 65, that was my first computer too.

"PCW was universally known as being crap"

Really? I think you are universally known as being a prat.

PCW was simply the best magazine in 80s. Well written and in depth articles. AC was probably some spotty kid who wanted to copy some broken code from one of the code magazines into your ZX81. You probably found the long words in PCW a challenge to you.

Guy Kewney is actually the only computer journalist I have ever remembered because I found his articles interesting and well written. (I was most amused when he appeared as a Nigerian IT guy on BBC2 a few years back). No disrespect to the other journos, its just Guy that I remember.

I believe I still have some early PCW magazines. Including the BBC Micro review. A well thumbed edition. I think I may also of the ZX Spectrum review.

It was certainly was a golden age of personal computing. I used to work on weekends in a computer shop (a rare thing at the time) and remember the odd ball machines that never really made it, uhm Lynx? Memorex? Jupiter Ace (a computer whose programming language was Forth and was manufactured out of Yogart cartons).

They were fantastic times and I think made all the better by publications like PCW.

At some point PCW lost its interest for me. But I generally stopped reading computing mags. When I did pick them up again I did find PCW a bit stale and found PC Pro more interesting. Cant remember why but anyhow it is sad to hear that PCW is gone. It was certainly an institution.

I got "Program Of The Month" in the June or July 1984 edition of PCW for a BBC Micro game. It was a delicate balance between adding enough REM statements in the Basic to boost your earnings (£100 a page if I remember rightly) while still allowing the program to fit in the Beeb's memory once the graphics had eaten most of the RAM. Sorry to see PCW go though.

.....Wishing it was a different Personal Computer World (PC World)?

Gates....well because he's got them eating out of his pocket

loved it, PCW was too full of boring adverts about motherboards and fans.....and my Dragon 32 was a dream machine in 1982...ahhhh whirlybirds.....

... especially as I renewed my subscription only one month ago. Do I get my money back?

I don't remember judging whether PCW was good or not, it was 'the guv'nor' - the authoritative voice of the writhing chaos that was the fledgling home computer industry. They made or broke systems by what they said about them. And benchmarking was great, type in the PCW routines and you too could run a computer lab. Love dancing down memory lane. Remember the first hard drive I had, 10 megabytes for a hundred quid! And more storage than I could ever use! My first computer, a trash-80. Upgraded to 32k at vast cost. Why was it such fun playing text only adventure games? A dvd of the best of PCW would be a great thing.

But that went down the bog even longer ago, sadly. I remember fixing a printer by poking some timeout variables as per their recommendations.

Happy days.

..for those who had substituted a fascination with computer technology over stuff like girlfriends :-)...actually speaking for myself, being enrolled in a single-sex school didn't help

Anyhow, yeah ..what an era! I was indeed a collector of what became an increasingly chunky publication into the mid-90s, eventually i had to chuck em all away (something like 75 issues), PCW did indeed chart the progress and innovation in the industry, those front-covers are embedded in my memory, Steve Jobs' NeXT machine, the Windows95 launch issue, the first Pentium machine, it almost seems like we're in a resting lull from the march of progress now, i say "almost", it may be an illusion which afflicts nostalgic people of my age, progress just ain't what it used to be these days though.

Still hunt around from time-to-time for the benchtest of the Agilis Modular System...a very cool and unique piece of hardware, be nice if VNU put the whole of the archives up on the net for free...

Take a trip down memory lane here:

http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp and click on the Museum Tab.

I used to work for Dixons late '70s to late '80s and I had a great time selling and playing with every new computer as it arrived in stock.

Some favourites for reasons unrelated to their virtues:

Tatung Einstein, one of the first "serious" looking home computers. Very competent, ran CPM, had a good monitor, no-one cared.

Oric 1, quirky, powerful and easy to program - had anyone bothered to.

Apricot F1 (which I still have!), about a year ahead of IBM on every front. 3.5" disks, double default RAM, colour support, 8086 chip, etc. Oh, it even included a voucher to upgrade to Windows 1.0 in the box.

Sanyo MBC Series, first budget PC compatibles that really weren't. WordStar & CalcStar were good enough bundled apps. Very reliable.

Sinclair QL, awesome performance, superb software bundle courtesy of PSION, 80% initial failure rate but the microdrive proved remarkably resilient.

Apple Macintosh, my first sight of WYSIWIG combined with NLQ dot matrix printing. I was privileged to see the future before most.

Amstrad PCW8256, because I earned sh*tloads of money selling them. C'mon, a complete system that worked straight out of the box, just add paper? They were pretty reliable and the third party software explosion added to the sales. Thank you if your parents bought one.

Many others, but I still have fond memories and nightmares about the above - work out which...

Paris because one day she'll get old but remain thoroughly usable...

Sad to see PCW go, I used to buy it a lot during the 80,90's when there was a lot happing in the PC world. Still it lasted longer than Byte which was my favourite magazine with all its Technical articles and themes. In those days you felt that the magazines educated you. Today they don't as one PC is much the same as another and nobody bothers with in-depth technicalities like Byte and Dr Jobbs did.