I got a lifetime subscription for 2600 from my parents when I was in high school, and I subscribed to Eighty only a few years ago. My biggest gripe with larger magazines is all the ads, and uninteresting content throughout them; typically I only end up reading one or two articles and then the whole magazine feels like a bit of a waste. both 2600 and Eighty have very little/no ads, and feel more niche and content focused. Eighty is actually printed like a very nice paperback book.
>My biggest gripe with larger magazines is all the ads
The ads essentially pay for everything and your subscription is just profit. This was super obvious 20ish years ago, when you could subscribe to a bunch of them for free despite the cover price being ~$4-5+. I haven't looked in years, but there used to be websites that would list ones that you could get for free. I had Maxim for years because it could it get it for free. A bunch of gamer type ones always had it where you could get a year or more for free. I think we used to always get PC Gamer or something similar for free when I was a kid.
I subscribe to both Linux Magazine and Admin Magazine, both at [1]. I found they are more technical than Linux Format, and I’ve often come across things in them that have been useful and wouldn’t have shown up in my normal stream of news.
I would highly recommend them to anyone interested, they’re also surprisingly re-readable.
CODE is still going. Very focussed on .Net and the whole Microsoft ecosystem, but you can still get hold of it (although I think it's subscription only, won't find it on any newsstands)
