5 ms·

Cover tapes, then cover floppies, then cover discs were how I acquired the vast majority of my software as a kid, in the pre-internet and then the achingly slow

Cover tapes, then cover floppies, then cover discs were how I acquired the vast majority of my software as a kid, in the pre-internet and then the achingly slow internet days. I was also, as mentioned, a kid, and therefore penniless until I started making money doing software at 12 — C64 magazines I got via school from the science teacher, but later on at another school I’d toddle down to WH Smith, scoop up Amiga Shopper/Format/Power, PC Gamer/World/Pro/Mag, take them home, copy the discs over the older cover floppies that I’d drilled to be able to write, reseal them, and return them for store credit. I’d repeat the shenanigan once a month, occasionally keeping a particularly cool issue if I was feeling flush. I figured I was stealing marketing, and only pirating it at that - and as an adult with a clear understanding of how the magazine industry worked, as I ended up providing technical services to a large publisher in the early noughts, I honestly don’t feel bad. Until the death knell of broadband, they were raking it in on both sides from advertisers and consumers. That and I learned so much from the various software I nicked over the years.

lproven 4y ago
This is why, at PC Pro magazine, we did a cover CD feature we called the Essential Collection, with a nod to Pete Tong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Selection It was a collation of the various PD, freeware, shareware and FOSS apps that we normally added to a new PC. Nowadays you can just use Ninite, of course. https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/ What American software houses didn't understand was that in the days of dialup, Europeans paid for ALL phone calls. Including local calls. We paid by the minute for dial-up internet. Downloading a new web browser could cost £20 or something, and gods help you if someone picked up an extension phone and disconnected you -- 1990s browsers could not resume, so you had to start again. So we put all that stuff on the CD: Paint Shop Pro, IrfanView, WinAmp, all sorts. Some readers bought the mag just for the CD, to save hours of downloaded updates. Field engineers carried the latest CD with them to update customers' machines. We always had the latest Internet Explorer on it. All Windows >=98 users needed that, as it updated bits of your OS too. We wanted Netscape too, for balance. They wouldn't let us. In the end, the editor invited me onto a transatlantic phone call to explain why. The Netscape execs wanted the tracking info on who downloaded it, from where. They couldn't understand why so few Europeans downloaded Netscape. I told them: it's because it costs us money. "No, no, you don't understand. It's on the innernet." (That is how the American English pronunciation of "internet" sounds to a Brit. The inner-net.) "Yes, but we pay to connect." "No, you don't get it," Netscape patronisingly told me. "Once you're online, you're not paying any more. It doesn't matter if it takes hours. It's a free download." "No," I told them, "YOU don't understand. We pay for internet access." "Sure, but it's unmetered." "No, it isn't. That's just in the USA. Here, we pay by the minute." "What? No it isn't! You don't have to dial us! You don't dial America! It's not a bulletin board! It's the innernet! It's a local call!" "No, YOU do not understand. We pay for local calls. Local calls in the rest of the world are metered. We pay by the minute for internet access." "OMG, what? That can't be right! Local calls are free!" "Only in America. Here they are metered. We pay by the minute for internet access. Everyone does. So downloading your browser costs a lot of money. That's why we put IE on our cover disks. It saves readers a big paid download." They were stunned. They had no idea. This was why MS owned web access in Europe. It had never occurred to them that US toll charges were not a universal.

lproven 4y ago

This is why, at PC Pro magazine, we did a cover CD feature we called the Essential Collection, with a nod to Pete Tong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Selection It was a collation of the various PD, freeware, shareware and FOSS apps that we normally added to a new PC. Nowadays you can just use Ninite, of course. https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/ What American software houses didn't understand was that in the days of dialup, Europeans paid for ALL phone calls. Including local calls. We paid by the minute for dial-up internet. Downloading a new web browser could cost £20 or something, and gods help you if someone picked up an extension phone and disconnected you -- 1990s browsers could not resume, so you had to start again. So we put all that stuff on the CD: Paint Shop Pro, IrfanView, WinAmp, all sorts. Some readers bought the mag just for the CD, to save hours of downloaded updates. Field engineers carried the latest CD with them to update customers' machines. We always had the latest Internet Explorer on it. All Windows >=98 users needed that, as it updated bits of your OS too. We wanted Netscape too, for balance. They wouldn't let us. In the end, the editor invited me onto a transatlantic phone call to explain why. The Netscape execs wanted the tracking info on who downloaded it, from where. They couldn't understand why so few Europeans downloaded Netscape. I told them: it's because it costs us money. "No, no, you don't understand. It's on the innernet." (That is how the American English pronunciation of "internet" sounds to a Brit. The inner-net.) "Yes, but we pay to connect." "No, you don't get it," Netscape patronisingly told me. "Once you're online, you're not paying any more. It doesn't matter if it takes hours. It's a free download." "No," I told them, "YOU don't understand. We pay for internet access." "Sure, but it's unmetered." "No, it isn't. That's just in the USA. Here, we pay by the minute." "What? No it isn't! You don't have to dial us! You don't dial America! It's not a bulletin board! It's the innernet! It's a local call!" "No, YOU do not understand. We pay for local calls. Local calls in the rest of the world are metered. We pay by the minute for internet access." "OMG, what? That can't be right! Local calls are free!" "Only in America. Here they are metered. We pay by the minute for internet access. Everyone does. So downloading your browser costs a lot of money. That's why we put IE on our cover disks. It saves readers a big paid download." They were stunned. They had no idea. This was why MS owned web access in Europe. It had never occurred to them that US toll charges were not a universal.