Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami
This... is fugging amazing.No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound Blaster card, etc. for that sweet new PC you were planning to build. And the BBS listings... A new BBS appearing in there, IN YOUR LOCAL CALLING AREA was a huge deal.I know the younger folks probably don't get the idea of "long distance" or probably even the idea of phone usage being metered and billed per unit, but back in the day calling a BBS that was long-distance was a good way to rack up a huge phone bill, and righteously piss off your parents (if you lived at home). Of course some people would pack a laptop (yes, they existed in the 1990's) in a car, drive out to a convenience store in the middle of nowhere at 2:00 in the morning, and "beige box" off a COCOT (customer owned coin operated telephone) to make those calls. I might have been guilty of doing something like that...Anyway, Computer Shopper was a big deal to a lot of people for a long time, and I'm personally thrilled to see these issues being preserved so some of that legacy can live on. Browsing the old issues online will never give one quite the same experience, but it's good that they'll be around.