Why the #^$@ are computer mags so expensive?

I never really thought of it until now, but why are they? Now the CD editions are $9 US ($10 CDN, which is an excellent exchange BTW). Sure, they come with a CD but those cost next to nothing. There is so friggin much advertising in them you would think THEY should be paying people just to look at them. Seriously! I am paying $10 to look at 107 full pages of ads in a 193 page magazine. What in the hell is the deal with that? Many of those other pages still have ads on them to, but I didn’t count them. My best guess is that if I counted the 1/2-1/4 page ads, there would probably be 1/4 of the entire magazine as actual “content”. This is the Dec issue of CGW, but they all seem to be the same. And the prices just went up a month or two ago too!!! Aarrgh! Do they actually cost THAT much to make?

Because that’s the market-clearing price.

Hope this helps.

Thats how they make allot of $$$.

Pressing a CD may be cheap, but getting rights to a lot of those demos, especially the exclusives, probably costs a ton of money.

And sometimes they include full versions of programs (that are now outdated, but still cool).

If its a general public magazine then they’re just charging what the market can bear. As a programmer, though, I get about a dozen mags a month and only pay for two. For these more specialized mags you fill out a questionaire (tell 'em you’re the CFO or CTO) and they send it to you for free thinking that you’ll buy products advertised within. Then there are the “scholarly” papers that are for the real geeks and sent out by computing societies and such (IEEE, ACM). Those don’t have ads and are stupid expensive (think $300 per year). Don’t get any those.