Personal Computer World

Personal Computer World (PCW) was one of the first British microcomputer magazines, most likely the first non-machine specific one and had a print run from February 1978 to June 2009. It was originally published by Angelo Zgorelec, from late 1979 it was published in co-operation by Zgorelec and Dennis Publishing and in 1982 was sold to Dutch newspaper and magazine publisher Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen (VNU), who in the 1990s offloaded it to the Finnish Sanoma publishing company who sold it to British magazine publisher Incisive Media a few years later.

During the 1980s that magazine was frequently the largest computer periodical in the world by page count and had to be printed on extra thin paper, only bettered in that respect by USA based Computer Shopper in the 1990s that got so big that it was mostly printed on newspaper stock. This is despite the fact that actual monthly sales of PCW were rather low in comparison with other British or European publications, or only about 80 thousand a month on average. But the high number of advertisements meant that the magazine could (and had) to supply a large number of content pages and unlike many of their peers Personal Computer World had editorial material that covered a wide diversity of subjects and computer systems.

The high number of adverts and especially the unlikely number of foreign adverts for the almost pitiful circulation figures of only 80k copies is probably best explained by virtue of the fact that the magazine was bought by computer business professionals in export markets such as Australia, New Zealand, the European lowlands and Nordic countries, South Africa, middle and far east, but all were places that had their own local computer publications but were small enough as markets that a magazine with the breadth of coverage that PCW offered had no hope of being financially viable. Unlike the American magazines PCW accepted and in fact during its first years encouraged foreign trade adverts which made the magazine oddly enough an enthusiasts magazine at home, but seen almost as a trade publication in the rest of the world. This helped the UK to become something of a computer distribution hub for smaller markets in the 80s and explains why sales of software and home computer hardware for the UK market at the time are frequently overstated.

The magazine also had a much better OS/2 coverage than the other British publisher and did not stop OS/2 related columns altogether until after the turn of the century.

Trade shows & Chess championships

The magazine organised the Personal Computer World Show, a trade fair held in London every September from 1978 to the late 80s, it was for a few years the biggest computer fair in the UK. The magazine also held the PCW Microcomputer Chess Championship and the European Microcomputer Chess Championship as attractions for the PCW Show and sponsored and co-organised smaller/local computer chess championships throughout the UK.

Links

• The Internet Archive has a few issues available.
• Guy Kewney: RIP Personal Computer World: What did happen to the likely lads? - from The Register 2009
• Gordon Laing: Personal Computer World magazine: 1978-2009; An Obituary (from a former Editor's personal perspective) - 2009
• Personal Computer World Preservation Project
• Michael Hewitt: Founding Father - 2006 - An interview with Angelo Zgorelec.