08/1997
Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: wouter@mars.let.uva.nl (Wouter van Oortmerssen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Amiga Magazine (Italy)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 11 Aug 1995 13:02:26 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Reply-To: wouter@mars.let.uva.nl (Wouter van Oortmerssen)
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Keywords: magazine, Italy, commercial
Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu
PRODUCT NAME
Amiga Magazine (ITALY)
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Technical Editor: Dr. Romano Tenca
Publisher: Gruppo Editoriale Jackson
Address: Via M. Gorki 69
I-20092 Cinisello Balsamo (MI)
ITALY
Phone: +39-2-66034 260
Fax: +39-2-66034 238
Email: ruocco@dsi.unimi.it (only temporarily)
LIST PRICE
A single issue is 14.000 lire (approximately 8 US$/12dm). A
subscription is 92.400 lire (54$/77dm), 184.800 outside of Italy
(108$/154dm).
INTRODUCTION
This is a review of the Italian "Amiga Magazine", published by
"Gruppo Editoriale Jackson" in Italy. I have been reading this magazine for
the last 10 issues or so, and as a non-Italian I hope to be able to give you
an objective review.
REVIEW
The magazine comprises on average just over 80 pages, of which a
relatively low percentage (about 15% in the may issue) is ads. The focus is
on serious / professional hard and software. In the last issues, only 1 page
was spent on games.
A large part of the magazine contains reviews of new hardware and
software. To give an impression: the March '95 issue reviews the Epson
GT-9000 scanner, the Eureka Communicator III, the Nemesis Simula and the
Hardital Satelit (both are external, 3.5-inch hard disk cases for the
A1200), a PCMCIA memory card, the VLab-Motion 2.1, PC-Task 3.0, Studio II,
Aminet Set 1, FreshFish and GoldFish CD-ROMs. The April issue had reviews
for the Power Computing, the Nakamichi MBR-7 and the Sony CDU-55S CD-ROM
players, MacroSystems' Toccata, World Construction Set 1.0, Photogenics 1.0,
the Euroscene, Space & Astronomy and Multimedia Toolkit CD-ROMs. The
articles I read (for example the one on Photogenics) were well readable, and
give a good overview on what to expect from the product. All reviews have a
product overview box which shows price, distribution, required hardware,
likes and dislikes. There is an occasional review of books as well.
There are quite a few regulars in this magazine (next to the
obligatory editorial, letters, news, for sale, etc.): for example, various
"dossiers" or "specials" that often comprise a few articles. Recent
subjects were: printers, 3D graphics, and networks. This last one for
example had detailed reviews and comparisons of various networking hardware
and software (Amiga Link, Liana, Communicator III, Envoy, Ethernet,
ParNet/SerNet, Twin Express, Internet). Often encountered here are
extensive show reports (Bit.Movie, IPISA, SMAU, World of Amiga).
For the more technically inclined, there is a part where hardware
related problems and issues are discussed and explained ("Il Tecnico
Risponde", a very popular part of the magazine). The mid-section of the
magazine consist of "Transaction," which is especially interesting for the
programmer. They often stretch articles over several issues of the
magazine, and recent subjects were: how to use the clipboard.device,
AmigaDOS pattern matching functions, Workbench & icon libraries, datatypes,
utility.library, how to use C to send ARexx messages, what's new in the 3.1
developer upgrade, Tips and Tricks related to games programming, how to
create music for games, parametric surfaces (e.g., B-Splines) and curves, the
technical side of modems, video cards, how to program the Installer, and
some hardware DIY interfacing articles ("Interfacciamo Amiga!") which I
wouldn't be able to understand even if they were in my native language. ;-)
They often contain detailed programming information which is not easily to
be found elsewhere. Example sources and function / structure / constant
overviews are present as expected.
Next to those there are courses (on using ARexx, or Amiga for
beginners ("Amiga Primi Passi"), and even,... um,... a course on Amiga E,
which I can authoritatively confirm is very well done.
The magazine comes with a cover disk filled with selected PD
software. All included programs are described inside the magazine as well,
in a special "ON DISK" section.
A bonus to recent issues of the magazine has been a booklet (a couple
of pages in every issue) which explain AmigaDOS commands and their options,
devices and various other operating system components. This is particularly
useful as it contains information that has been missing from the
documentation supplied with recent Amiga models.
COMPARISON TO OTHERS
I can best compare it to the German Amiga Magazin, since I've been
reading this for a couple of years. It is to some extent similar in content;
however, it doesn't have the coverage its German sister has (see below). On
the positive side, articles are sometimes better and more profound, and they
lack the arrogant tone often present in the German Amiga Magazine.
Another magazine it can be compared with is the English Amiga
Shopper, as it too consist almost solely of "serious" articles. Amiga
Shopper, however, is more targeted towards beginners than the Italian Amiga
Magazine is.
I've seen at least 2 other Italian Amiga-related magazines, but I
don't know enough about them to make a fair comparison.
LIKES AND DISLIKES
In general I'm very satisfied with this magazine. I regard the
quality of the articles (especially the more technical ones) as it's main
strength. But a review isn't complete without some critical notes:
I find the cover disk to be a weaker point of the magazine. Some
people have access to the Internet, a BBS, CD-ROMs or other PD resources,
and for them a disk with PD software they might already have newer versions
of is not extremely useful. On my end, cover disks usually end up as, um...
"recycleware." I understand there are some people out there with limited
connections, but even then a scheme as employed by the German Amiga Magazine
(making "cover" disks available as PD) seems more sensible to me. [I was
informed that an attempt to introduce a diskless-version fell short of
interest, and that the PD `connectivity' in Italy is indeed very low.]
The magazine would profit from having (more) separate technical
glossary boxes as found in some English Amiga magazines. Articles are
generally very thorough, but they're "one-level" readable only. For example,
in an article on printing software, you'll find an explanation of what "DPI"
means in the running text, which is excellent for beginners, but makes it
slightly more tiresome to read for others.
The coverage of the magazine is not as good as it could be. Articles
can be long and profound (which is good), but this limits the number of
articles. I sometimes get the impression that the selection of
soft/hardware products that get reviewed is not an entirely logical sample of
all important releases. Some product may be missing, or another may be given
coverage, just because a copy was available for review (reviews might be too
heavily based on which products have dealers in Italy). But many magazines
suffer from this.
CONCLUSION
I like this magazine a lot. Among the articles I've read in the
past, were some very well written ones, showing great insight on the matter
(especially the more technical ones). I rate this magazine among the best
Amiga magazines available on this planet (yes, I've seen quite a lot of
them); if your Italian is up to scratch, I can fully recommend it. It
scores at least 4 stars out of 5.
(tadaaa, the end...)
[This article was written by Wouter van Oortmerssen (wouter@mars.let.uva.nl).
Do with it whatever you like (within reasonable boundaries).]
---
Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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