By the late 1990s, PC World and PC Magazine were the dominant PC magazines in the U.S. Of those two, I think I generally preferred PC World. This issue is from about 5 months after I got my second Gateway 2000 PC which was a 333 MHz Pentium II. The May 1998 issue of PC World includes:
Features
How Much PC Do You Need - A detailed guide to choosing the best PC for your needs when your budget isn't unlimited.
Streetwise - A comparison of travel planning and street atlas software. These are categories of software wiped out by MapQuest and later Google Maps and others. Titles here include Expedia Streets 98 Deluxe Edition, Street Atlas USA 5.0, StreetFinder Deluxe 1998 Edition, Road Trips Door-to-Door Pro, AAA Map'n'Go 1.0, Expedia Trip Planner 98, and TripMaker Deluxe 1998 Edition.
The Complete Guide to Investing With Your PC - A look at various investment resources including research websites, trading info, portfolio tracking, investment clubs, and more.
No-Hassle Hookups - A test of various USB peripherals to determine how plug-and-play they really were. Various keyboards, joysticks, scanners, video cameras, speakers, and other devices were tested.
No Easy Fixes - In order to fight buggy software, a new category of software was available...software update utilities. However, for the most part, these didn't work all that well.
The Best of the Web: The 1998 Webby Award Winners - The best web sites of the year in various categories. Some winners include Entropys (art), The Well (community), Starchild (education), Bezerk (games), Babycenter (home), The Internet Movie Database (film), Mayo Clinic Health O@sis, and many others. A few are still around. Many are long gone.
Top of the News
Intel's Celeron 266: Cheap, But Will It Fly in Sub-$1000 PCs? - This was one of the original "Covington" Celerons and performance was terrible mainly because they had no L2 cache. In these tests, the Celeron 266 was even slower than the Pentium 200 MMX. The next generation "Mendocino" versions had 128k of on chip cache which made them much faster and more popular.
AOL Rate Hike Ignites Internet Service Price War - AOL raises monthly subscription fee from $19.95 to $21.95.
Lotus Smartsuite Millennium: Practical, Not Pioneering - A Microsoft Office competitor back when such things used to exist.
HP Laserjet 3100, Canon MultiPass L600 - A look at Canon and HP's latet all-in-one laser printers.
Compaq Presario 2240 PC - This machine had a somewhat unique design and wasn't a bad value for the time. However, it was quickly made obsolete. It wasn't very expandable and its biggest problem was that the RAM maxed out at 48MB. That's not even enough for Windows XP to install when it came out. The Pentium II based Gateway I got five months earlier could be expanded to 384MB.
3Com Palm III - Before smartphones, PDAs were a common accessory. For a long time, Palm Pilots were the best and the Palm III was their latest flagship model.
Cross Pen Computing Cross Pad, Jasc Paint Shop Pro 5 - The CrossPad is a device designed to send handwritten notes on paper to your PC. Paint Shop Pro was my favorite image software around this time.
Brooklyn North Email Postal Software, The Paperless Office Network Edition 2.0 - An expensive e-mail list manager and a document management system designed to eliminate paper from the office.
Mustek Plug-n-Scan 1200 III EP, Microtek ScanMaker X6 Scanner - A look at these two low cost 36-bit flatbed scanners.
Power Desktops - If I remember correctly, the Gateway G6-300 in this list was very close to the machine I had at the time. It features a 300 MHz Pentium II (mine had a 333 MHZ PII), 64 MB of RAM and an STB Velocity 128 AGP video card.
Budget Desktops - CPUs in the budget list include the Pentium II-266, AMD K6-266, Pentium MMX-200, Pentium MMX-233, AMD K6-200, AMD K6-233, and Cyrix Cx6x86MX-PR200. At the top of the list is the Gateway G6-266b. It's not much different than the machines in the power list except for a lower end version of the PII, less RAM (32 MB) and smaller hard drive.
Notebooks - The top power notebook is the Micron Transport XKE 266 featuring a Pentium MMX-266 and the top budget notebook is the Micron Meridian featuring a Pentium MMX-166.
Home PCs - The top power home system (not really sure what the distinction is here) is the Micron Millennia XKU 266 while the top budget home system is the Dell Dimension XPS D233c.
Here's How
Answer Line - Questions answered about buying a PC at a local store, defragging, tracking income in Quicken, making .wav files, and more.
Windows Tips - Tips to keep Windows running like new, emptying trash from any window, centralizing font storage, and solving printer problems.
Internet Tips - Putting your spreadsheet on a web page, finding jobs online, plug-ins for your browser, and more.
@Home
@Home Products - A look at new products including the Ricoh RDC-300Z and Epson PhotoPC 550 digital cameras, Canon BJC-7000 printer, and more.
Home Office - Testing satellite internet speeds. Here the author downloads a zip file at 57kb/sec.
Departments
Up Front - The new era of $1000 (and less) PCs.
Letters - Letters from readers about leasing PCs, Windows 98 vs. Windows 95. HAM Radio, warranty cards, and more.
Consumer Watch - The dangers of online auctions. This was before eBay dominated.
Got A Problem? - Resolving issues that cause your PC to run more slowly.
