DISKMAGAZINES
~ORGANIC.FIL~
                              'The good may be far remote from me
                               but if I seriously try to reach it
                               I will reach it'  
 
                               Confucius
~TOP.BLK~

    
                   SOME DISKMAGAZINE'S REVIEWED BY SLIMER
~TOP.BLK~

--------------------
ST NEWS V.9.3 REVIEW
--------------------
 
'A near perfect diskzine', is the average conclusion of the majority of
reviewers who judge this excellent Dutch diskmagazine. I personally don't
believe a word of what they say without checking it first.... 
Maybe I'm a bit annoyed by the apparent superiority of it's editor who
seems to play his keyboard like some-kind a piano virtuoso. He constantly
reminds me about my (bend) English, forcing my ego to undertake some sort
of counterattack. He will without doubt grin a bit about all this as he
knows he will always be the number one in diskmag land.... 
 
ST News V.9.3. is already 38th release in a long row of quality diskmaga-
zine's. According to the statistics it contains 73 articles in 1,155,627
bytes making this issue smaller than the previous one. It contains besides
the usual computer-related stuff also some fiction, but less than we are
used to. 
 
There were a few topics who drew my direct attention, and those where the
interviews and the (p)reviews. Although the interviews were interesting to
read, I was irritated by the obscure layout and the use of the text
styles. It would have been much better to display the questions with use
of text styles and the answers in the normal manner, instead of the
opposite. Please leave one blank line between each of the questions and 
the answers !

The list of Falcon compatible ST games was also very good, although quite
an amount of program names were taken from the Atari Falcon Club list,
earlier published in the D.B.A. magazine, but that doesn't matter really !
The CD reviews are also a favourite column of mine but contains way to
much Heavy Metal for a general interest diskmag. This in comparison to the
video/movie reviews who covers a wide variety of different movies. I guess
it is difficult to write about music you don't dig ! 

There was one subject which seems to dominate this particular issue of ST
News and that's the editor's new relation with a girl called Karin. I
wonder what she would say if she read ST News and saw her name all over
it. ST News tends to have some Ophra Winfrey effects every now and then,
as the coming and going of relations are described in detail and thrown at
the hungry lions(read readers). Maybe it's a kind of healing process by
writing your emotions down, however there could be another reason for
this, but I'm not a bloody Shrink !
 
There are also a couple of new features in the shell of ST News, which are
worth mentioning. You can look now at the statistics, it will tell you the
amount of articles and the compression factor. While booting you will get
asked if you want to disable the internal speaker yes or no, which is 
also a good feature. This option will also operate from the menu of ST
News. This leaves me with only one remark about the shell, if you exit an
article you will get thrown out of the pulldown menu. This is sometimes
annoying, especially when you want to read the second part of an article. 
 
The final conclusion is that this issue contains less interesting articles
(personal taste) than the previous one. Overall quality is as always of a
high standard ... 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------
MAGGIE 15 REVIEW
----------------

I'm currently being insulted by my computer because some strange dude
invented a util called 'Wowbagger'. Every minute or so I get nuked by 5
'insults' who don't seem to be making much sense ! I use the XXX option
who according to the author must give the worst insults (only I don't
agree). How about uitgelebberde schapekut met herpes, Pik in de ventila-
tor, Etterzuigende kiwi of kadaver van een dode kameel ! Kijk dat noem ik
nou XXX insults !

Sorry about those Dutch outbursts, I will continue in English. I have
quite some trouble concentrating on what I'm writing at the moment. So
lets see were this all leads us to (don't expect a very interesting review
though !).

Well, those English lads have done it again, 'Maggie' 15 is on the lose !
It contains the usual wide variation of computer and non computer related
stuff. Several games and demo reviews are present but above all there is a
review column (like ST News)about diskzines. It contains also a review of 
our magazine 10 (the one with the buggy shell)and several others like
Stosser (the one who *had* a better displayer than our magazine) ! I was a
bit disappointed that both ST News and Maggie had already spilled their
negative guts about our mag 10 before we had any chance to correct it. We
didn't know for example that it wouldn't run properly on TOS 4.02 as we
don't have any machines with this version ! You find that out after the
release ! The comments on the English in the magazine is also a bit
unfair, as 'Maggie' is written by English dude's and ST News is done by a
student studying English !! I myself has had only a couple of lessons 
at school and managed to pick it up from watching others !

Enough of seeking excuses on with the show, Although this issue of 'Mag-
gie' contains some well written articles, the articles come in short
supplies. In other words there weren't enough to keep me busy for long. In
comparison with ST News it runs rather thin on interesting articles. Maybe
'Maggie' is suffering also a bit from a lack of (good)writers at the
moment. People want to read magazines but are to lazy to offer their
helping hand. I also noticed the lack of interviews, there is only just
one present in this sub-menu.

It getting harder now to concentrate now, so time for the final conclusi-
on. 'Maggie' 15 combines good writing skills with good topics resulting in
excellent articles. They are bit short in this issue on the articles. All
in all a good read ! Time to look at the telly now !

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------
FALCON UPDATE DIGITAL 7
-----------------------

This is a diskmagazine by the U.K. based Falcon Owners Group and is relea-
sed about every two/three months. I don't know that much about this
organization but I believe that this is their clubmagazine. The magazine
runs both on RGB and VGA monitors, however VGA is highly recommended. The
text is hard to read on RGB as overscan is required, really annoying. The
menu is divided in two parts, with 5 sub-menu's on the right side and
their contents on the other. Just click the mouse on the title and voila.
The only Falcon specific features I could find in the shell are the module
sound and the GIF displayer. There is only one module which can be toggled
on/off from the main-menu.

The Revenge Doc Displayer is used as textdisplayer from this issue on.
I've got nothing against this displayer, only the fact that the exit of an
article could be done faster. but I don't think that the people behind
F.O.G. could change much about that.

Well time to take a look at the most important part of a diskmagazine,
it's contents...         

1. Boot Sector
2. Falcon News Phile
3. Fiction & Net Stuff
4. PD Zone
5. Misc. Falcon Snippets

As I wrote before, each of these menu's contain several articles varying
from relative long till rather short ones. Topics are various ranging from,
news till (p)reviews. One of the most important articles in this issue
must be the 80 million dollar Atari/Sega deal. The deal that could well
save Atari from financial disaster. A lot can be found on the Kodak photo
CD, if not everything ! There are several articles ripped from Internet, a
bit to much for my taste ! On the other-side it's hard to release a
diskmagazine every two Monts containing self written articles.

It's time for a final conclusion,

The shell is sufficient but is quite simple for a Falcon specific program.
The R.G.B. support is begging to be rewritten or optimized. I seem to
recall however that a R.G.B. patch is in development. The articles come in
small quantities and a lot are taken from the Internet. Overall writing
quality of the articles is good. 
~MINT.PAL~
