_{Cover of the November 1999 issue of PC World}

I haven't researched the numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if PC World was the most successful PC magazine in history. Of course, these days I don't think there are any successful PC magazines. Certainly not on the scale they used to be. The November 1999 issue of PC World includes:

Cover Story

The Lowdown on Upgrades - For this article, PC World upgrades a Hewlett-Packard Vectra VL5 Series 5 in the following way: Pentium 166 -> K6-III-400 (via a PowerLeap adapter) ($199), 16MB RAM -> 64MB RAM ($100), add 17.2GB Seagate Medalist hard drive ($210), add 3dfx Voodoo3 with 16MB ($130), plus upgraded sound card, modem, USB ports, and monitor.

Features

Spam!: How it Happens and How to Beat It - Spam, the eternal problem. This article offers tips to avoid and filter spam.

Notebooks for Cheapskates - A survey of "bargain" (i.e. sub $1700) notebooks. Ranked highest on their list of 10 notebooks is the Compaq Presario Notebook 150 featuring an AMD K6-2 380, 64MB RAM, and a 4GB hard drive for $1499.

Eyes on the Price: 17-inch Monitors For Under $400 - A look at 10 different 17-inch CRT monitors. The "best buy" in this bunch is the Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 71 for $349.

Special Report

You Say You Want A Revolution: Music on the Web - A look at new ways of getting music and other audio on the web. While there were already some streaming sites, most were still downloads of static content.

_{Table of Contents from the November 1999 issue of PC World}

Top of the News

What's a Buyer to Do? - A look at new chipsets for the Pentium III and the new Pentium III-600. Chipsets for the PIII and Celeron at the time included the Intel 440BX, Intel 810, Intel 810e, and Via Apollo Pro133 4x. RDRAM was available on the 820 but didn't make much difference and the Athlon 600 was faster no matter what.

Speechware Needs Less Coaching - Speech software continues to improve but hasn't quite reached Star Trek levels. Today, we practically have the Universal Translator.

High-Style Portables - A look at new Notebooks including the Thinkpad I Series 1480, Sony's PCG-XG9, NEC's Versa FX, and the Apple iBook.

Instant Messaging Brouhaha - Microsoft and AOL bicker over compatibility between Instant Messenger and Microsoft Messenger. I mostly used ICQ myself.

Microsoft Does Its Home Works - Microsoft releases Works Suite 2000. Works was sort of a lite version of Office that was cheaper and meant for home users.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered...Online - The legality of electronic signatures.

Whose Cable Is It Anyway? - AOL and other ISPs fight with AT&T over who should connect AT&T's customers to the Internet.

_{Table of Contents from the November 1999 issue of PC World (continued)}

New Products

Micron Millennia Max PIII-600 - Back when I was buying Gateways, Micron was another computer maker I considered. This one includes a Pentium III 600.

Polywell Poly 800K7-65 Desktop PCs - AMD's Athlon was the main competitor for the Pentium III and at this time it tended to be faster. This Polywell includes an Athlon 750.

HP Pavilion FX70 Flat Panel Display - Flat panel displays were around in 1999 but they were very expensive and not very good. This 15-inch LCD would set you back nearly $1200, had a native resolution of 1024x768 and one analog plus one DVI input.

Toshiba Portege 3110CT Ultraportable - This 3.1 notebook includes a 300 MHz Pentium II, a 6.4GB hard drive and 64MB of SDRAM for $2300.

Handspring Visor PDA - A PDA that runs PalmOS apps better than the Palm Pilot. The Palm Pilot and its derivatives made the best PDAs but it couldn't compete with iOS and Android when they arrived.

Top 100

Power PCs - At the top of the list this month is the Dell Dimension XPS T600 featuring a Pentium III-600, 128MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. However, it is the Sys Performance 600A with its Athlon-600 processor that wins out in terms of raw speed.

Midrange PCs - Dell tops this category too with the Dell Dimension XPS T450 featuring a Pentium III-450, Diamond Viper NVidia TNT graphics board with 16MB, 64MB of RAM, and a 13GB hard drive.

Budget PCs - The top budget system this month is the Micro Express MicroFlec-50C featuring a Pentium III-450, 64MB RAM, ATI RageGL graphics board, for just under $1200.

Notebook PCs - The top power notebook this month is the Dell Inspiron A400LT featuring a Pentium II-400, 64MB of RAM and a 14GB hard drive for well over $3000. The top budget notebook is the Micron TransPort Trek2 featuring a Celeron-400, 64MB of RAM and 4GB hard drive for about $2300.

Home PCs - Still not sure how "home PC" varies from the other categories but the top power home system this month is the Dell Dimension XPS T550 featuring a Pentium III-550, 128MB SDRAM, Diamond Viper V770 video card with 32MB for a little over $2300. The top budget system is the Quantex M466c featuring a Celeron-466, 64MB SDRAM, 6GB hard drive for under $1000.

Graphics Boards - The top AGP board this month is the Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Riva TNT for $100 while the best PCI card is the 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 for $130.

_{Table of Contents from the November 1999 issue of PC World (continued)}

Here's How

Windows Tips - Tips for disabling startup apps, cascading menus, using CDDB, and more.

Windows NT - Using Windows NT to share your internet connection.

Answer Line - Questions answered about hard drive crashes, Tweak UI, default file associations, creating a shortcut to standby, and more.

Internet Tips - Finding radio stations on the web, troubleshooting audio problems, trimming AOL files, and more.

Word Processing - Using watermarks, quick pasting in Word, keyboard shortcuts, protecting styles in Word, an e-mail formatting macro, and more.

Spreadsheets - Filling empty cells in Excel in line charts, summing the highest values in a range, and reducing the size of 1-2-3 imports into Excel.

Hardware Tips - Adding RAM vs. adding L2 cache, printing on different paper sizes, troubleshooting IRQ conflicts, and automating modem logoffs.

Departments

Up Front - Hotmail suffers one of the biggest security breaches on the web up until that point.

Letters - Readers write in about Price Watch, the use of PCs (an the internet) in schools, Y2K utilities, online auctions, using FTP from Windows, and more.

Home Office - A look at DSL vs. Cable.

Full Disclosure - A look at seven improvements over the past year including aggressive price cuts, faster internet connections, improvements in ink jet printers, better and more affordable CD-R drives, MiniDV and Digtial8 camcorders with IEEE 1394 (firewire) connections, personal video recorders, and "profitless" e-business.