Popular Computing Weekly

"Popular Computing Weekly" was a computer magazine in the UK published from the early 1980s until the early 1990s. It was sometimes referred to as "PCW" (although that abbreviation is more commonly associated with Personal Computer World magazine).

Its subject range was general-purpose, covering gaming, business, and productivity software. During 1989 it incorporated Computer Gamesweek.

It was noteworthy for being the only national weekly computer magazine of the time, and for its backpage being dominated by an advertisement in the form of a comic strip (Piman) by the firm Automata between the years 1983 and 1986.

A further noteworthy feature of the early editions was the high-quality artwork on the magazine covers. These had disappeared by 1983.

----I worked on PCW from June 1986 to May 1988 as Technical Editor, then Features Editor. We did use to call it PCW even though that often caused confusion with Personal Computer World. In 86 and 87 PCW was published by Sunshine Publications before being bought out by Focus Publishing, who, amongst other things, produced magazines for the Amstrad CPC market and the Clothes Show - based on the TV program. In 86-87 covers were much more serious than the issue shown on this page, and the magazine was more serious in general. However, it did, notably have program listings for popular computers, which the readers could type in and run. I used to get sackloads of these and have to test them and sort out the best ones for publication. Our office was in a smokey little room above a Chinese herbalist on Little Newport Street in London. In those days, when you made a call to America, you had to shout to be heard over the crackly line. One of the most exciting things was having an early ATARI ST to play with - before the OS was put onto ROM. The team at this point was...

Peter Warlock - Publisher,Christina Erskine - Editor,John Cook - Features Editor,Duncan Evans (that's me) - Technical Editor, and John Lettuce as News Editor. John had a fiendish sense of wry humour which i'd try to keep up with.

When the magazine got sold to Focus, it become much more light-hearted and really, went downhill. I moved magazines to start Computer Gamesweek for Focus - the UK's first colour, weekly games magazine. Sadly, it proved much too expensive (this was the days before DTP) and was incorporated back into PCW in Feb 1989.