As a past subscriber of a Future magazine, I was 'lucky' enough to receive a free copy of PC Review. My first reaction was to stick it in the bin, or maybe burn it in some ritual sacrifice... but I thought I might as well read it so see what is up in PC land these days.
At first, you might think a dive into a PC mag would leave me all depressed, wondering why I have my Amiga, and all that... but actually, no it didn't.
One thing I would like to say firstly, is that there is not a single anti-Amiga comment in here at all, and that's just as I expected. For some reason, a lot of Amiga users seem to think that other mags are constantly taking the piss out of Amigas, when they are not. In a recent Amiga Format, someone said that the problem with the Amiga is that all the PC and console mags say it is crap, yet in the very same issue, someone writes into the letters page, complaining it is Amiga mags that take the piss out of PCs all the time. And it is the latter which is the true situation; ignoring that sad waste of broadcasting-bandwidth known as Digitiser, PC mags aren't out to denounce any particular format (incidentally, if you want to see a magazine putting down the PC, just look at a Mac magazine; there tends to be far more of this than in an Amiga magazine). There is no mention of the Amiga or Mac whatsoever in this issue of PC Review (but there is an anti-Playstation comment, it should be noted). But I am getting carried away here...
Looking through the mag, the only section which seems 'ahead' of the Amiga is games. Lots of lovely 3D graphics, but thankfully, the Amiga is catching up with the likes of Trapped 2 and ports of Myst and maybe Quake. Interesting to note how a typical PC game these days requires fast Pentium, 16MBs RAM, CD, with 3D graphics cards being recommended, yet we still get Amiga owners complaining that a game requiring '030 and 4MBs is over the top... An Amiga with 160MHz 603e and BlizzardVision would be a monster of a machine for games (not to mention 200MHz 604e and CyberVision PPC), but only if there are games to take advantage of it. Perhaps I should write a letter into a PC mag complaining that the latest games won't run on a 2MB 386...
As far as serious applications are concerned, there are no more than you'd find in any Amiga magazine. It's nice to see that even though the games section in miggy mags has shrunk to virtually nothing these days, the serious software section is the same as ever.
Strange really, given that it was alway the Amiga that was the games machine when the Amiga was popular. Now it's the PCs time to be popular, and receive the associated games machine tag. Imagine a time when I use my 600MHz G3 Amiga with 256MB RAM, and scoff at those 'crappy old Pentiums' which are good for some old games, and nothing else...
What better way to end with some light hearted amusement in the form of the Question and Answers? From IRQ conflicts, to getting DOS to run, it's all here...
Aaaaargh... give me back my Amiga Format any day!
Mark