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 Lines: 168 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <40fkd2$52t@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: wouter@mars.let.uva.nl (Wouter van Oortmerssen) NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu Keywords: magazine, Italy, commercial Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Amiga Magazine (ITALY) AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Technical Editor: Dr. Romano Tenca Publisher: Gruppo Editoriale Jackson Address: Via M. Gorki 69 I-20092 Cinisello Balsamo (MI) ITALY Phone: +39-2-66034 260 Fax: +39-2-66034 238 Email: ruocco@dsi.unimi.it (only temporarily) LIST PRICE A single issue is 14.000 lire (approximately 8 US$/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 Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews