This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. It needs additional references or sources for verification. Tagged since March 2010. It may need a complete rewrite to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since March 2010. PC Magazine February 2009 cover Editor Lance Ulanoff Categories Computer magazine Frequency Monthlyclarification needed Bi-monthly (Philippines) First issue January 1982 Company Ziff Davis Country Main edition: United States Other editions: Belgium Brazil Bulgaria China Greece Israel Mexico Middle East the Netherlands Philippines Russia Serbia Singapore Thailand and Turkey Language Main edition: English Other editions: Arabic Chinese Dutch Greek Portuguese Serbian Spanish Thai and Turkish Website pcmag.com ISSN 0888-8507

PC Magazine (sometimes referred to as PC Mag) is an online computer magazine that was published monthlyclarification needed in the United States both in print and online until January 2009 and has since only been published online.

In November 2008 it was announced that the print edition of the magazine would be discontinued1 but there would still be an online version. The magazine is published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. Contents 1 History 2 Editor 3 Overview 4 Development and evolution 5 Alternative methods of publication 6 Controversy 7 Forums 8 See also 9 References 10 External links History

The first edition was released in January 1982 as a monthly called PC (the word Magazine was not added to the logo until the first major redesign in January 1986). PC Magazine was created by David Bunnell Eddie Currie and Tony Gold a co-founder of Lifeboat Associates who financed the magazine. The magazine grew beyond the capital required to publish it and to solve this problem Gold sold the magazine to Ziff-Davis who moved itclarification needed to New York City New York. Bunnell and his staff left to form PC World magazine.2

PC Magazine moved to biweekly publication in 1983 after a single monthly issue swelled to more than 800 pages. As of early 2009 the magazine will exist only as an online publication.3 As of 2010 many complaints online linger about subscribers who did not get the refund they requested when they switched to an online-only company. Editor

The magazine's editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff ascended to his current post in July 2007. Jim Louderback had held this position since 2005 but accepted the position of chief executive officer of Revision3 an online media company. Overview

PC Magazine provides reviews and previews of the latest hardware and software for the information technology professional. Articles are written by leading expertscitation needed including John C. Dvorak whose regular column and Inside Track feature are among the magazine's most popular attractions. Other regular departments include columns by long-time editor-in-chief Michael J. Miller (Forward Thinking) Bill Machrone and Jim Louderback as well as: First Looks (a collection of reviews of newly released products) Pipeline (a collection of short articles and snippets on computer-industry developments) Solutions (which includes various how-to articles) User-to-User (a section in which the magazine's experts answer user-submitted questions) After Hours (a section about various computer entertainment products; the designation "After Hours" is a legacy of the magazine's traditional orientation towards business computing) Abort Retry Fail (a beginning-of-the-magazine humor page which for a few years was known as Backspace and was subsequently the last page). Development and evolution This section is outdated. Please update this section to reflect recent events or newly available information. Please see the talk page for more information. (November 2010)

The magazine has evolved significantly over the years. The most drastic change has been the shrinkage of the publication due to contractions in the computer-industry ad market and the easy availability of the Internet which has tended to make computer magazines less "necessary" than they once were. This is also the primary reason for the November 2008 decision to discontinue the print version. Where once mail-order vendors had huge listing of products in advertisements covering several pages there is now a single page with a reference to a website. At one time (the 1980s through the mid-1990s) the magazine averaged about 400 pages an issue with some issues breaking the 500- and even 600-page marks. In the late 1990s as the computer-magazine field underwent a drastic pruning the magazine shrank to 300-something and then 200-something pages.

Todaywhen the magazine runs about 150 pages an issue.clarification needed It has adapted to the new realities of the 21st century by reducing its once-standard emphasis on massive comparative reviews of computer systems hardware peripherals and software packages to focus more on the broader consumer-electronics market (including cell phones PDAs MP3 players digital cameras and so on). Since the late 1990s the magazine has taken to more frequently reviewing Macintosh software and hardware.

PC Magazine has consistently positioned itself as the leading sourcecitation needed of information about personal computers (PC) and PC-related products and its development and evolution have mirrored those of computer journalism in general. The magazine practically invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews in 1984 with a groundbreaking "Project Printers" issue. For many years thereafter the blockbuster annual printer issue featuring more than 100 reviews was a PC Magazine tradition. The publication also took on a series of editorial causes over the years including copy protection (the magazine refused to grant its coveted Editors' Choice award to any product that used copy protection) and the "brain-dead" Intel 80286 (then-editor-in-chief Bill Machrone said the magazine would still review 286s but would not recommend them). PC Magazine was a booster of early versions of the OS/2 operating system in the late 1980s but then switched to a strong endorsement of the Microsoft Windows operating environment after the release of Windows 3.0 in May 1990. Some OS/2 users accused of the magazine of ignoring OS/2 2.x versions and later. During the dot-com bubble the magazine began focusing heavily on many of the new Internet businesses prompting complaints from some readers that the magazine was abandoning its original emphasis on computer technology. After the collapse of the technology bubble in the early 2000s the magazine returned to a more-traditional approach. Alternative methods of publication The online edition began in late 1994 and started producing a digital edition of the magazine through Zinio in 2004. For some years in the late 1990s a CD-ROM version containing interactive reviews and the full text of back issues was available. In the 1980s there was a PC Disk Magazine edition which was published on floppy disk. There was also a special "Network Edition" of the print magazine from 1993 to 1997. This evolved into "Net Tools" which was part of the general press run and the current "Internet User" and "Internet Business" sections. Numerous books have been published under the "PC Magazine" designation as well. Dvorak's name has also appeared on many books. Controversy The Russian edition (in Russian language) of the magazine has been in conflict with Russian Wikipedia since mid-2009. Russian Wikipedia administrators have accused PC Magazine (Russian edition) of plagiarism while several articles about bureaucratization sysop tyranny and low quality of articles in Russian Wikipedia were published at the blog on magazine's site.45 The conflict ended with PC Magazine's block of linking to its articles from Russian Wikipedia pages.6clarification needed Forums For many years forums at discuss.pcmag.com have existed. However for the last few years the traffic has significantly declined and there are no obvious links to it from the site's homepage. Many previous members are no longer there. See also PC World Macworld References Lance Ulanoff (November 19 2008). "PC Magazine Goes 100% Digital". PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/02817233500900.asp. Retrieved 2011-03-19.  Wise Deborah (December 20 1982). "Staff Walks Out on PC Magazine Starts New Journal". InfoWorld (Popular Computing Inc.) 4 (50): 1 8. ISSN 0199-6649. http://books.google.com/booksidFTAEAAAAMBAJ&pgPA1.  (registration required)Clifford Stephanie (November 19 2008). "PC Magazine a Flagship for Ziff Davis Will Cease Printing a Paper Version". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/media/20mag.html.  http://pcmag.ru/club/user/3902/blog/255/. Blog (in Russian language). http://www.pcmag.ru/club/user/119/blog/271/. Blog (in Russian language). http://pcmag.ru/club/user/1/blog/502/. Blog (in Russian language). 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