"Personal Computer World" magazine -1980's - pdfs?

[iainjh]

has anyone seen pdf's online of the classic UK "Personal Computer World" magazine?

I've seen various sites with scans of covers only... Just look at those covers.. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/573/Personal-Computer-World/

I wish I had kept some from the day..

Surely if there was ever classic mag that needed a reprint of reviews etc this is it!

?

 

[stevendt]

An old thread I know, but . . . .

It does appear that PCW has been lost forever and there are very few editions of the magazine available anywhere on the web, or at least, that I can find.

The Internet Archive has around 20 issues from 2005-2009, but nothing earlier.

The only source for the magazines seems to be from the bookshelves, or more likely, the loft spaces of vintage computer users. So, how about anyone with copies of these gems scanning them to make them available for posterity?

This idea might not fly - but what do you think about a joint scanning effort?
Any takers?

http://www.primrosebank.net/pcw/pcw_ov.htm

 

[iainjh]

nice effort there!

I have 5 or 6 mags, presumably they'd need some careful handling to scan in decent quality. the scans I made were HUGE so i can retry and share you a few if you have a dpi /filesize spec you think could work?

for my own priority it;d just be covers and reviews, maybe a few 'classic' ads.

cover scans are out there if you look hard enough!

 

[stevendt]

Hi Iain,

thanks for the reply - to your own thread

As you say, it needs a bit of thought on file sizes/DPI etc. The copies on archive.org seem to be about 30MB and seem to be reasonable quality, I will check out the scanning resolution they use and probable use the same. The other thought was on whether to OCR them, but the extra work and loss of image quality in an OCR'ed version put me off that idea.

I did consider scanning on a "value" basis, but what to include? Reviews? Letters? Technical Articles? Which adverts?

Obviously, there is value in just doing a minimal set, but with the effort involved, I think that it's as well to just have everything. Some of the adverts in the newer editions with multiple pages from the likes of Dell do seem pointless, but for the same of completeness, it may be just as well to include them.

I agree about the handling part, in my case though, as sad as it is, I think that when I do scan them, I will have to unbind them to run them through the sheet feeder. Single page scanning of multiple magazines would just not be feasible and the quality of the scan would suffer when trying to scan pages in a bound magazine.


regards
Dave

 

[stevendt]

Hi Iain,

well, it's been a while, but the idea is not dead!

I have been wrestling with the file size/DPI question and done a few experimental scans.

Obviously, I don't have access to anything like the professional kit that the Internet Archive at their disposal - they have produced some really impressive PDFs with very good file sizes - 30-40MB and their quality is brilliant - no ghosting or bleeding of content through from the other side of the page, they are awesome, I won't get close, but still . . . to my own plans . . . . . .

Using my, or indeed any scanner, there seems to be a trade off between what's best for text and what's best for colour images. The PCW pages are a mixture of both, so I've tried to use a reasonable scanning density that doesn't do too bad a job of the images but also gives reasonable results when I OCR them.

I suppose another important consideration is what the scans will be used for. If they were meant for reprinting then they would need to be of a much higher quality than for web display. I don't imagine that the pages will ever be reprinted, but still, good quality is nice. The problem is deciding what is a good balance between quality and file size.

I have done a few scans, OCr'ed them and saved them as reduced size PDFs. (The 600 DPI uncompressed file is there as an example, it is not practical to have files at that size on my website!)
They are available here :

http://www.primrosebank.net/pcw/pcw_test.htm

As with many things, I guess that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". It would be useful if a few folks could have a look and the scans on this page and let me have their opinion, people might have different views on the quality of the images and the relative importance of the accuracy of the text recognition, so all comments are welcome

regards
Dave


regards
Dave

 

[iainjh]

[edit: removed; bound to be copyright]

well done mate! ive found a few odds and sods myself since, just snippets. i think you really only need 72dpi or a much level than 600.. and I think a machine feeder is needed.

I need recall where i found this attachment, it was only the other day - I think it was on a bbc site. Its obviously been ocr'ed and reconstructed tho.

so acorn electron snippet attached -if you have a pdf inspector too, can you see if this is good enough for your needs?

 

[TheCorfiot]

Attachment removed as requested

 

[stevendt]

Hi Iain,

thanks for that, I don't have a PDF inspector as such, I will have a surf to see if I can find one.

Thanks for the scan, it looks good, I'm not sure what the resolution is, but at 865k, that would be about 30MB for 200 pages, it looks good though and probably pretty much what I'm aiming for.

regards
Dave

 

[iainjh]

dave, I gave up. the pdfs I got were junk / incomplete/duplicated and skewed horribly. so i quit and last month i got these --- I got lucky and bought some copies off t'other bay.. see my recent sales post! very chuffed indeed.

ps it has a memotech review.