End of an era

15 February 2008 - 13:43

For over twelve years and nearly 150 issues I have been PC Advisor magazine's computer agony uncle. I wrote the popular Helpline (later renamed Helproom) column in which I answered readers' questions about the trouble they were having with their computers. But I have just written my final column. Issue 154 (May 2008) will be the last one written by me. It feels like the end of an era. Time for a little reflection, perhaps.

My career in computing has taken several different directions. I started off in the 1970s as a programmer on mainframes working for a government department. In the 1980s microcomputers came on the scene, which I found personally more interesting. I managed to move over to that side of the business, putting small networks of CP/M based systems into Legal Aid offices, using early office software (WordStar). Back then Microsoft was a small company best known for its BASIC programming software.

My first home computer was a Nascom 1, with 1KB (yes, one kilobyte!) of memory, assembled from a kit by the light of a 40W bulb in a bed-sit in Penge, SE London. There were 1,400 soldered joints! Compared to some of the micros I'd used at university it was quite sophisticated - it had a keyboard for input and displayed output on a TV monitor - but it had no operating system and had to be programmed in hand-assembled Z80 opcodes. Later, I moved on to a Sinclair ZX81 with a massive (but wobbly!) 32KB RAM pack and the convenience of a Basic interpreter, and then later to the luxury of a ZX Spectrum in glorious color.

When Amstrad released the first affordable IBM compatible PC I was among the first to order one. I became a very keen PC user and an avid reader of the PC magazines. Software was expensive then and I started offering my services to magazines as a reviewer. This became a nice little sideline - I got free software and then was paid to play with it! When, a few years later, I found myself utterly bored and frustrated by my day job, I quit on impulse and decided to become a full time freelance computing writer. Knowing what I discovered later about how hard it was to get regular freelance work, that could have been an extremely bad decision, but I managed to land a full time job as Reviews Editor of the new PC Direct magazine published by the Ziff Davis publishing company (both now sadly defunct in the UK.) Here I was able to prove my mettle as a writer and reviewer, so when I left to go freelance fifteen months later I was assured of plenty of work.

When I was offered the opportunity to write a regular monthly PC troubleshooting column for PC Advisor it was a feather in my cap. But it turned out to be more than that. New editors replaced old at PC Direct and other publications, with their own favored freelancers. There was a recession in the PC business at the start of the new millennium, followed by 9/11. Many PC companies folded, and with them went their advertising budgets. Many magazines stopped publication, and too many freelance writers were chasing too few jobs. From 2002 PC Advisor Helpline was my only regular work. I started looking for other ways to make a living, and Tech-Pro.co.uk, my personal "vanity" website, began its transition to Tech-Pro.net.

I don't have copies of those first Helpline columns - our house is too small to keep more than a few months' back issues of magazines - but it would be interesting to see how things have changed over the years. At the beginning, all the queries were sent in by letter - now they are emailed. Back in 1995 everyone used DOS, or Windows running on top of DOS, and memory management and resource issues were among the most common problems. When I started, most of the questions I had to answer from my own knowledge - search engines had barely been invented and internet access was by slow dial-up. Nowadays the range of issues that readers encounter is vast, but Google has been my very best friend for many years, enabling me to maintain the illusion of being a PC guru with encyclopedic knowledge of everything that could go wrong with a computer. Now the secret is out!

Today we have reached the point at which Tech-Pro.net makes us enough money to live on, and I decided that it was time for a change.Time to be free of the monthly cycle that forced me to stop whatever I was doing for a couple of weeks and focus on the bulging Helpline inbox. Time to devote myself fully to being a web entrepreneur, and close the curtains on my time as a computer journalist.

It has all been fun, and it has been very gratifying and rewarding when readers have taken the time to send me a note of thanks when my advice actually helped. But the great thing about this business is the opportunities it offers for changing track and trying something else.

Today, the nice people at the PCA editorial office sent me a bottle of champagne as a thank-you for my work over the years. Olga said to me when she saw it: "Aren't you a little sad? Won't you miss it?" No. I'm glad to have had this opportunity, and grateful that it has sustained me through a difficult period and given me a chance to develop a new line of work. But twelve years is a long time. Perhaps I'll feel a pang of sadness when I pick up the June issue of PC Advisor and see that my name and picture are no longer at the back.