PC Magazine was one of the most popular PC magazines in the 1980s and 1990s. The January 8, 1985 issue includes:

Cover Stories

Computing – Predictions for the future of personal computing including a computer on every desk by the early 1990s, as many computers as TVs in the home by the end of the century, and lots more.

Other Voices, Other Futures – The opinions of various people on the future of computing. Those surveyed include Ray Bradbury, a theologian, Bob Hope’s personal comedy writer, and many others.

The Best of 1984, and Some of the Worst – Some of the best items include the IBM PC AT, the Lattice C Compiler, the HP Laser Jet printer, MCI Mail, and more.

Features

Graphics That Dress for Success – A look at various busines graphics software, mostly for data visualization. Products looked at include VCN ExecuVison, HyperGraphics, and ExecGraphics.

Charting Your Course on the PC – A look at software specifically for creating charts and graphs including Lotus 1-2-3, SuperCalc, Chart-Master, DR Graph, GrafTalk, and Graphwriter.

PC Systems for Pie Chart Picassos – A look at three buisness presentation graphics software packages, including PictureIt/VideoShow, Presentation Master, and Genigraphics.

Samurai Image Processor – A system that uses software, a graphics card, and a film recorder to produce slies of computer graphics. This was before projectors and PowerPoint.

PC Graphics Challenge the Mighty Cray – Comparing the graphics capabilities of the PC with those of the Cray super computer.

Shuttle Radar and PCs Map the Earth – Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory use radar data collected from the space shuttle Challenger and several PC-XTs to map the Earth.

Zooming in for a Closer Look – A look at Index Technology’s $9,500 Excelerator, a software package designed to create various types of detailed graphics such as complicated flow charts.

Screenbusters – A look at a couple of different touch screen systems including Touch Information Display and Touchpen.

Eek! A Mouse for the PC – An article on adding a mouse to the PC and using it. In the DOS days, using a mouse was not especially common on the PC.

Freehand Graphics – Two art programs for the PC, PC Paintbrush and Dr. Halo, are evaluated and compared to MacPaint.

For Doctors: Windows in the Office – A look at Doctor’s Office Manager, medical software from IBM.

A PC Helps Fight Class-Action Suits – How PCs, along with an Epson FX-100 printer, Hayes 1200B internal modem, R:base Series 4000 database software, PMate text editing software, Multiplan spreadsheet software, WordStar word processor and FYI 3000 text management software, helped to win class-action lawsuits against Burlington Northern, Western Electric, Motorola, and the Chicago City Council.

Up in Smoke – Using Halon 1211 instead of water and other traditional to fight fire in order to protect electronic equipment and magnetic media.

Let a Broker Do the Searching – Using an information broker to search online databases for you.

PC News – Data loss becomes an increasing problem as those new to mass storage systems don’t backup their data. Tape backups were the best choice at the time. Infocom releases a database package called Cornerstone. Compaq updates Deskpro line of computers with 10-30 MB hard drives…and more.

The Market Grows Up – How both PCs and users have matured over recent years.

More Than Pretty Pictures – The limitations of current PC business graphics packages.

Letters to PC – Letters from readers about software being sold before it is ready, The Technical Investor, Garland Pathfinder, and mail-order price wars.

Hard Disk Housekeeping – A look at various programs to help organize and keep your hard drive clean.
Checkerboard Challenge – Reviews of Gramps: The Checker Champion and Sargon III.

PC Graphics and Sound: Unlimited Designs – Reviews of two books that teach you how to create graphics on your PC: Graphics Primer for the IBM PC and Games, Graphics, and Sound for the IBM PC.

New on the Market – A brief look at new hardware and software including the NIU-130 (local area network interface), 280 MB Internal Expansion Kit (hard drive for the IBM PC AT), SKY320-PC Digital Signal Processor, MultiModem PC (300/1200 bps modem), Multigraph (high-res monochrome and color graphics adapter for the IBM AT), Bullet-286 (80286-based replacement motheroboard fo the PC-XT), TW-3000 TECwriter (electric typewriter/printer), PortaAPL (APL interpreter written in C), DepoBank (information retrieval service), EasyLink Instant Mail Messenger (EasyLink service software), PC/Survival Kit (utilities for DOS), Excalibur Plus (multi-user accounting system), IMiGIT (color graphics and text editor for the PC-EYE video image grabber board), WYLBUR/pc (development system compatible with mainframes), Rx30 Pharmacy Software System (pharmacy and prescription management system), SoftShell (user interface for UNIX on the PC), and much more.

Club News – A partial directory of PC user groups across the country.
User to User – Questions and answers about finding the size of subdirectories, using commas with integers, getting 50 lines displayed on an RGB monitor, Word Perfect, and more.

PC Tutor – How to define the boot drive with DOS 2.1, change sector size, create simple graphics in CP/M-86 with Pascal on a monochrome monitor, and more.

…and more!