I haven't researched the numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if PC World was the most successful PC magazine in history. Of course, these days I don't think there are any successful PC magazines. Certainly not on the scale they used to be. The November 1999 issue of PC World includes:
Cover Story
The Lowdown on Upgrades - For this article, PC World upgrades a Hewlett-Packard Vectra VL5 Series 5 in the following way: Pentium 166 -> K6-III-400 (via a PowerLeap adapter) ($199), 16MB RAM -> 64MB RAM ($100), add 17.2GB Seagate Medalist hard drive ($210), add 3dfx Voodoo3 with 16MB ($130), plus upgraded sound card, modem, USB ports, and monitor.
Features
Spam!: How it Happens and How to Beat It - Spam, the eternal problem. This article offers tips to avoid and filter spam.
Notebooks for Cheapskates - A survey of "bargain" (i.e. sub $1700) notebooks. Ranked highest on their list of 10 notebooks is the Compaq Presario Notebook 150 featuring an AMD K6-2 380, 64MB RAM, and a 4GB hard drive for $1499.
Special Report
You Say You Want A Revolution: Music on the Web - A look at new ways of getting music and other audio on the web. While there were already some streaming sites, most were still downloads of static content.
What's a Buyer to Do? - A look at new chipsets for the Pentium III and the new Pentium III-600. Chipsets for the PIII and Celeron at the time included the Intel 440BX, Intel 810, Intel 810e, and Via Apollo Pro133 4x. RDRAM was available on the 820 but didn't make much difference and the Athlon 600 was faster no matter what.
Speechware Needs Less Coaching - Speech software continues to improve but hasn't quite reached Star Trek levels. Today, we practically have the Universal Translator.
High-Style Portables - A look at new Notebooks including the Thinkpad I Series 1480, Sony's PCG-XG9, NEC's Versa FX, and the Apple iBook.
Instant Messaging Brouhaha - Microsoft and AOL bicker over compatibility between Instant Messenger and Microsoft Messenger. I mostly used ICQ myself.
Micron Millennia Max PIII-600 - Back when I was buying Gateways, Micron was another computer maker I considered. This one includes a Pentium III 600.
Polywell Poly 800K7-65 Desktop PCs - AMD's Athlon was the main competitor for the Pentium III and at this time it tended to be faster. This Polywell includes an Athlon 750.
HP Pavilion FX70 Flat Panel Display - Flat panel displays were around in 1999 but they were very expensive and not very good. This 15-inch LCD would set you back nearly $1200, had a native resolution of 1024x768 and one analog plus one DVI input.
Top 100
Power PCs - At the top of the list this month is the Dell Dimension XPS T600 featuring a Pentium III-600, 128MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. However, it is the Sys Performance 600A with its Athlon-600 processor that wins out in terms of raw speed.
Midrange PCs - Dell tops this category too with the Dell Dimension XPS T450 featuring a Pentium III-450, Diamond Viper NVidia TNT graphics board with 16MB, 64MB of RAM, and a 13GB hard drive.
Budget PCs - The top budget system this month is the Micro Express MicroFlec-50C featuring a Pentium III-450, 64MB RAM, ATI RageGL graphics board, for just under $1200.
Notebook PCs - The top power notebook this month is the Dell Inspiron A400LT featuring a Pentium II-400, 64MB of RAM and a 14GB hard drive for well over $3000. The top budget notebook is the Micron TransPort Trek2 featuring a Celeron-400, 64MB of RAM and 4GB hard drive for about $2300.
Windows Tips - Tips for disabling startup apps, cascading menus, using CDDB, and more.
Windows NT - Using Windows NT to share your internet connection.
Answer Line - Questions answered about hard drive crashes, Tweak UI, default file associations, creating a shortcut to standby, and more.
Internet Tips - Finding radio stations on the web, troubleshooting audio problems, trimming AOL files, and more.
Departments
Up Front - Hotmail suffers one of the biggest security breaches on the web up until that point.
Letters - Readers write in about Price Watch, the use of PCs (an the internet) in schools, Y2K utilities, online auctions, using FTP from Windows, and more.
