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Comment by shiftpgdn | Hacker News Reader

I think what a lot of younger people also don’t realize is how gigantic a single issue of computer shopper was. They were as thick as phone books with thin weight pages. I remember multiple issues being well into the thousands of pages.

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I don’t think younger people understand your description of how thick Computer Shopper was. Because most likely they don’t know how thick is a phone book ;D

For those that don't know, a phone book was often about twice as thick as a Thomas Guide.

That should help.

And a Thomas Guide was about as thick as 8 or 9 J.C. Whitney catalogs.

That couldn't even fit on a floppy disk. You know, that icon thing kids click on to save things.

Another set of imperial units unknown to us Europeans? :-) How tick was that, a couple of inches / 5 cm?

1/2000 of a football field, give or take

American Football, or soccer?

It would be about 6 American Football compact disk jewel cases.

American of course, the other sort isn't a unit of measurement!

15-20 Farmer’s Almanacs.

So around 6 iphones?

Once Computer Shopper became huge phone-book-sized things I quit buying them because I just didn't have the room or the time - fortunately our college library subscribed and I could peruse it there, but generally I'd read Byte, Creative Computing or Dr. Dobb's Journal instead. I recall when CS was kind of a newspaper prior to being a bound magazine format.

Computer Shopper, Dr. Dobb's, and Byte were all incredible and indispensable. I miss them all sorely and often wish that there was anything comparable in existence (online or not).

I used to use old ones as rifle target backstops. .22LR would not penetrate a single issue.

It's very brave to mention such heinous crimes in this discussion.

I should brag on my 1988 - 1996 complete run of "PC Magazine" too

I imagine that at the time they were just as ubiquitous as the phone books.

Fair. I guess historians would also object against destroying phone books, if not right now, in a hundred years.

We recently told our daughter what a phone book was. She was flabbergasted.

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