KiwiArcader

So will I. However, there are some merits in a subscription based model if it's low yearly cost and comes bundled with added features over and above what a standalone version might have. They could for instance bundle Office 365 as a freebie as part of the subscription cost. If you can acquire both the latest OS and Office 365 for less than the yearly cost of just the Office component for example it makes a compelling argument for people wanting Office to go down that path. Factor in Microsoft providing software support directly rather than you having to run the gauntlet with OEMs, most of which don't provide great support anyway, and things could look interesting indeed. It's all speculation at this point and given MS have shot themselves in the foot as much as the next guy over the years until they front up with product and pricing it's all pie in the sky stuff at the current time. What isn't pie in the sky is Windows 10 which is looking like it could be the spiritual successor to Windows 7 we have all been waiting for.

Nothing I have read indicates Windows 10 will be subscription based at all. I know I read somewhere that they were looking at a scenario where there were people unable to afford the upfront cost of an OS and that they might be able to bring them a subscription version like they do for Office 365 but that would be a later version than Windows 10. I actually don't have a big problem with that model as long as they also offer a straight out purchase as well.

The website is in my Retromags profile :-) Anyways, it's www.oldgamemags.com If I can acquire some early issues at some stage count on them getting the scanning treatment as they are a favorite of mine too. Much more so than the UK version of which I have dozens of issues.

Plus it's still being produced so this site has a fairly nasty cut-off date too. :-) I've scanned a few issues which are available over at my website but I don't have many issues or they'd be high on my priority list for sure. I used to have a complete run of these from 1 - 85 or thereabouts but threw them out due to some shenanigans here a long time ago. Sigh!!! And yeah .... some issues were huge!!!!!

The thing is people like Phillyman, me and anyone else using the technical previews are pretty much bug testing for them for free so by the time it arrives it will likely be a whole heap better than any OS released before it in terms of bugs squashed etc. It's the first Microsoft OS that has me keen to go on for the upgrade on day one. Can't wait for the next release to see how far they have progressed the UI and new features.

Pardon the French, but shitloads of scans on the net are totally crap in that they are either low DPI, resized to low resolutions, are raw scans or a combo of any or all of those. That's the very reason I have been scanning my collection, to enable good quality scans to be available instead of those others. My view of it is "Do I want to read crap versions on my iPad or spend the effort to read good quality PDFs?" If I don't have the magazine in question I will settle for anything but if a better version comes along here or somewhere else I will grab those. IF I have the issue myself I would rather scan it myself unless the quality is right up there. But that's just me. I understand where Zarxrax was coming from though. Sometimes we scan mags because we don't know they already exist so being made aware of it allows you to investigate and see if those are at a quality level you are happy with. If not at least you know and can then make an informed decision on where to go with it.

It's those hot vivid in your face pink, green, orange or yellow colors that you often see on gym leotards. They put them on magazine covers, usually text but sometimes as background colors and scanners have a hard time dealing with them. Generally they can't handle the color at all and end up outputting them as a pink color. Go and look over at my site where you will see some Amiga Format issues with them.

Bleed through is a real problem on magazines that used the thin glossy paper stocks quite common on mags like GamePro, Computer Gaming World etc. Getting black hard paper stock and taping it to the white scanning back plate is a good idea on flatbed scanners. On my Fujitsu document scanner I just tell it in the scanner settings to use a black background and all's good although on really thin paper stock you usually cannot remove all of it. I put books on the lid of the flatbed when scanning covers etc. to try and eliminate warping Goodness knows why scanner manufacturers only use white back plates. You'd think they'd put white and black in the box together and let the user choose which was best but that would require them to find a way of easily detaching and attaching them and would likely cost a little more. I guess every dollar saved counts ...

No color correction that I can recall. In fact if anything the left side might be the one that was played around with on the original scan when I was trying to sort out the fluro issue. Pain in the ass that was .... why do you ask?

Haha ...yes indeed .... Seriously though, I think Fujitsu have never targeted the consumer space in regard to document scanners, especially A3 scanners where the prices go insanely crazy. And when they charge like crazy for the hardware the software makers decide to do the same, especially for ISIS driver compatible software. I have scanned a few Amiga Format issues with fluro covers recently and it's a cool feeling when your scans look like the original compared to everyone else's :-)

If you click on the image at look at it you can see the wording on the left side of the cover is pink where as on the right it is orange. The cover text is fluro orange but normal flatbeds just cannot handle pretty much any fluro color.

This is the difference between my flatbed scanner on the left and the Fujitsu ..... As you can see the Fujitsu handles the fluro orange rather well :-) Anyway, this is a hobby. No-one is paying you to do this so they have no right to expect any more than you are prepared to give. If that means you use you Epson ADF in the interests of making it easier for you then just go for it and more fool them if they complain. Anything is better than nothing when it comes to preserving magazines, especially those that have until now never been scanned previously.

Hmmm .... re your questions: 1) Why not make it public domain - You'd have to ask the publisher that question but likely it relates to their IP. If you put it in the public domain you cannot remove it again if suddenly you decide you do want to make money of it at a later date as the horse has effectively bolted. Then there is the fact you likely no longer can sell that IP as part of your assets if you sell out. 2) Not all companies sell a base package on a yearly basis for older content. I know of only one title where digital back issues are available right back to issue 1 and that's Retro Gamer. That's it. You would think if they were making plenty of money out of it Imagine would have done the same for their other titles. They haven't which indicates it is not as simple as thinking do it and subscribers will flock to it. Future PLC don't do it for ANY magazine at all. You'd think that Edge, their premium title at least, would be a goer but no dice..... 3) Ask Fujitsu why they charge so much for a scanner. I do know it does 112 pages per minute scanning and it is far better with color fidelity than most every other scanner I have used so some things are worth it.

That's interesting. I think it depends on the scanner more than anything. I only use the flatbed now if a page won't feed reliably in the document scanner as the speed is so much faster that the benefits way outweigh any perceived disadvantages. On the Fujitsu bleed through is eliminated by setting the background color to 'black' rather than 'white' and the speed is so quick I can set the jpg quality setting to maximum and it doesn't impact speed at all. The other benefit with i8t is the fact that fluorescent colors on covers are way, way more accurate than those scanned on EVERY SINGLE flatbed scanner I have ever owned. I guess it boils down to cost. My scanner or its later variant costs around $4500US brand new, quite a bit more than the common versions floating around, most of which are A4 only.

Hi Chris, Welcome to the site. Although I run another scanning site I think I can answer some of your questions Scanning Resolution - 300DPI is preferred for most sites nowadays as with the advent of high pixel tablets like the iPad/Galaxy lower resolutions result in poor viewing of small type when images are expanded. Additionally when it comes to Page resizing - best you leave the page size at the same size that it was scanned at for the same issues above. Color correction - This is a tricky one. Older mags with yellowing can benefit from a small amount of brightness/contrast correction to eliminate the yellowing but there's always a trade-off and that is usually darkening of the images on pages. Then there's the fact that monitors display images differently so brightening a page could make it quite garish on an iPad. Try it on an individual basis but if in doubt don't do any adjustments as someone like E-Day will likely play around with it to suit the sites requirements. Uploading content - Not sure where that is to be honest as I run my own site now and I can't see an upload facility when viewing an issue other than putting a 3rd party link in. E-Day can comment on that ..... Pages vs. full issues - submitting magazines ensures they are preserved for future generations but check that they comply with date restrictions. Each site have their own views on what is less 'risky' Staples - That's a tricky one. Depending on the thickness of the issue some use bloody tough staples and trying to find a stapler with an A4 or larger width action to allow you to re-staple them up again is tricky. Personally, I de-staple mine, scan them and then throw the originals out in recycling as I don't really have collector bones in me any more and I found trying to sell mags again wasn't worth the aggravation of having to post them for the pittance I got for most of them so I just couldn't be bothered any more. If you are careful you could re-use the original staples but I tried that and found the issue wasn't "tight" anymore

That's correct. Prior to the mid 80's and the introduction of the Macintosh/ Quark Express/Pagemaker suite pretty much all content was created manually. There was no desktop publishing at the time so content like the early CVG, Computer Gamer etc were all typeset layout creations. In this situation unless they kept physical copies or the prepress plates/templates etc there would be no other means of recreating these older magazines. Given they sold out of back issues on a consistent basis I'm pretty sure they didn't retain these after printing. Companies like Argus Press disappeared and there's no mention on the web of where their IP ended up but I guarantee nothing exists of their magazines other than whatever you or I own in our collections today. That's why it really is important that people contribute their magazines or time to scan and preserve content, especially the older content. Regarding companies scanning their older magazines and making money off them: Many publishing companies who made older content no longer exist Companies who purchased their IP probably aren't even in the game of making money off their titles. Many likely purchased companies for physical assets more so than an old Amstrad magazine or did so to shut down competition The cost of someone sitting down and scanning 100+ page magazine is still a cost to the company. If they don't have an A3 document scanner and don't want to pay the costs (brand new my scanner is $4400US) and only have a flatbed scanner someone in the office is going to spend 2 - 4 hours scanning depending on scanning speed before editing the content. Let's say it takes a day to scan, cleanup and produce a PDF. In New Zealand the minimum hourly rate is $14.50 so assuming you used a casual it will cost $114 per issue (likely more if you use a trained staff member). Amiga Format ran 136 issues so the all up cost just to scan and edit them in labour costs alone is $15500 give or take. Then there's the cost of packaging it into the digital platform etc. At a realistic price to sell them given their age how long will it take to recoup the costs of providing them? That's the problem facing publishers today in regards to their older content and I think that's the very reason companies like Future PLC are so hesitant to provide back issues other than as one-off specials like they did with Edge #1

I don't disagree with you but in realistic terms even five years is a long time in this industry with realistically not much chance of a publisher generating income on titles that old, let alone older. I believe that is the reason Future PLC only have digital issues of Edge on iTunes back to Dec 2009. Same for Games Master and most all of their other gaming titles. My guess is that these older issues generate very little income or they would have gone even further back. I am basing my sites limits on the lines that as long as we don't intrude into those dates where they do have digital content then they hopefully will turn a blind eye. Of course if someone in their organization does give us a C&D we will comply immediately. Additionally, if we monitor what becomes available, e.g., if they do release older content as they did with Edge issue 01 we will take those issues down as well as I did on OGM. It's in everyone's interest that they can make a living or we'll end up with no new mags.

You are on the right track I believe. Issue 119 of EGM has an advert for a company called Gamecave (www.gamecave.com) with Import Saturn & PSX games listed and Dragonball Z Legends is one of the games listed in the ad. I am guessing if you have access to EGM issues around May - Oct you might find the EB ad you are looking for. *** UPDATE *** Maybe this is what you are looking for?

I think you will that hiding behind an arbitrary cut-off date or adopting a "we only host content so many years behind the current date" limitation actually has no actual legal dispensation weight whatsoever. There is some dispensation around content that is 75 years past it's publication but even then only if the rights have not been taken up again during that time but I have only really seen that with novels ala Gutenberg and not our type of content which obviously is nowhere near old enough at this point in time. This site adopting a 15 or 10 year rule is no different in the eyes of the law than my site using a 7 year cut-off date. Or any for that matter. Even if the content is not available legitimately we have no right to actually scan content that we have not explicitly been given permission to do so. End of story. Oh yeah. Archive.org. They don't do their homework that well as last year you could get issues of Retro Gamer, a title that is sold via iTunes/Zinio etc, off their site. I think they must have had a C&D as it has since been pulled. Good job too. Publishers should be able to make a living off their IP if they are providing the means to obtain it legitimately.

I wouldn't advocate anyone subscribing to this title. Better to see what turns up on shop shelves than put money down on a subscription where you might never receive anything.

Nothing scanned at this nor any other retro-magazine website is legal unless the publishers have given permission to do so. There are some instances where this has happened. Some off hand are: Antic - Atari magazine where permission obtained by another site a long time ago. Analog - permission received Newsfield computing magazines - Roger Kean gave permission however this has been thrown into confusion by someone selling Imagine the rights to Crash and Zzap!64 of which he wasn't aware or privy to so not sure what gives with those titles at present. Computer Gaming World - permission received and a lot scanned by original staff members I believe Almost everything else has not had permission. That may be because the publishing companies don't know what we are doing, or don't care because most titles are old and the systems are now ancient, or because we are not materially affecting their profits scanning such old magazines anyway so turn a blind eye. In some cases it may even help sell current titles when people read the older issues scanned on sites like this, decide they like the title and end up subscribing in which case it is a win-win for everyone. Then there are publishers who folded years ago and who may have sold their IP to another company or may not as well. So we scan magazines but put measures in place so that if a publisher requests us to stop making their content available we do so without hesitation. Such products not scanned as a result of this include Diehard Gamefan and Game Informer

Even though I run my own site I believe that helping preservation sites like this one benefits the preservation scene as a whole so I have donated.