EPE Quality going down ?

[Wizpic]

Why is it that EPE has seemed to gone down big time in the quality of there projects ? 

For years I found it quite good and built plenty of good projects but since they just seem now to  reproduce stuff that silicon chip published some time ago, I have not built anything for almost 2 years now out of it. another good part of it they cut out of it is the shop talk page, to me this was very good, I don't know about most of you, but since they do the siliconchip stuff I find it hard to get some parts for the stuff.

I still get the copies of EPE jsut in case there is something good to build but has of yet therer is nothing. 

well this my views what do the rest of you think.

wizpic

[Bart]

It may be related to a lot of stuff being surface mount which is hard to work with
especially, those with aging eyes like me, I've also noticed that new dip parts are decreasing....
just a thought....

[bbarney]

I have to agree with you Wizpic.The only half-ass good stuff is the articles they use that are from SC but like you say some of the part's for SC are hard to get.I suppose that's why it's the cheapist one to buy a subscription to and if you look at Elektor all the good project's usally require buying something from them to get it working which they charge an over-inflated price for,plus you get whacked with high shipping and custom's charge's so a $4.00 pic chip ends up costing you $40.00.anyway's I'am really disappointed the way all of them are working anymore and it seem's to be getting worse.

[awarapunshee]

A good project or article not publish in the electronics magazine like EPE etc, is, I think, due to their cost. Some years back they pay the good price for any article or projects. But now they don't, so one can't do things for cheap. Secondly a magazine now also available in PDF or in electronic form too. Thats is why the magazine sold lesser, because it is spread all over internet soon it is published.

Regards

[visn]

Money is made out of advertising, and they supplies pcb's as well.
Too many things in epe nowadays are not worth making - or more importantly not worth shelving into your mind for dreaming thru , and I believe (former) technical editor is too much a stick in the mud these days, he resisted using C for pics, and they are still prefering PICS over the cheaper AVR's/ ATMegas.

[pl4tonas]

I used to be a subscriber for some years to EPE.  When they start publishing articles from Silicon Chip (SC), I didn't renew my subscription any further.
I am a subscriber of SC also and don't want to pay twice for the same articles.  EPE publishes older SC articles that I already have, hence there is no need to buy EPE anymore.  I download the pdf version when it is published either in this forum or anywhere else but find nothing interesting to spend my time on, only old news.  I am mostly interested on projects which are all old, SC projects republished.

If they continue the same way, there will be one day that they will, unfortunately, close the business. 

It seems in general that the hobby of electronics decays.  With the pass of time less and less people are dealing with this fascinating hobby and this makes me feel sad.  It will end to close all magazine publlications. 

[nikhilele]

i think EPE is promoting some limited chips and parts containing project..
what do you say

[Ante]

I also have to agree, not only silicon chip articles are published but also they are a couple of years old too! However I believe the SC articles are of descent quality and might be interesting for those whom haven’t read the SC a few years back. The promotion of limited chips is also the result of the articles being old as mentioned before. 

[margo]

1. so we all download this mag for free, how do you expect them to be able to afford to invest in interesting projects?

2.'hobby' electronics is almost dead, everything is made in china for nothing, nothing is repaired, I trained for 8 years to be a TV and video engineer, its all worthless

3. get a fault with say a car ECU or a boiler PCB and the 'enginer' will say 'you need a new one' that will be ££££££$$$$$$$$,, the new audi A4 has a 600 page workshop manual, 400 pages are devoted to the electronics, but I dont see any great recruitment drive to re-train anyone in how to fix it,

very few are training in this field anymore, and who can blame them?, shit wages, shit jobs, shit working conditions, no respect from managers/customers etc (mainly because they have no idea of the skill level involved),
just think of it as a hobby, like fishing, try to make your living and I feel you will regret it.
" thoses who work with technology are likley to be replaced by it"
sorry to be so negative but Id hate to fool some yougster into thinking they might have a career

just a thought, give the mag away for free in pdf, BUT make the projects interesting, include surface mount when needed and other interesting stuff like Nokia lcd's, but sell the parts as a kit, part assembled if required, better than the same old stuff re hashed every year,

[Wizpic]

I was a subcriber for many years in the paper back vesrion, then I was a subrcriber in the PDF vesrion for 2 years but when they do not put anything interesting to build then it becomes wurth less to buy or download.

I would not think twice to renew my subcribtion if they started to publish good projects or interesting stuff again, they do ASM tus but why not Baisc tut I know they might not be many people who use basic, there might be some people who diagree with me but these are my thoughts.

wizpic

[cjeffries1]

I have to agree with you Wizpic.The only half-ass good stuff is the articles they use that are from SC but like you say some of the part's for SC are hard to get.I suppose that's why it's the cheapist one to buy a subscription to and if you look at Elektor all the good project's usally require buying something from them to get it working which they charge an over-inflated price for,plus you get whacked with high shipping and custom's charge's so a $4.00 pic chip ends up costing you $40.00.anyway's I'am really disappointed the way all of them are working anymore and it seem's to be getting worse.

Absolutely agree. Both Elektor and EPE are now rubbish compared with 10 years ago. It's all kit based and more and more of the projects are less open source. Good projects always come with you locked into needing to get something from the publisher at a really exorbitant price. I used to buy every copy of Ellektor from the first issue up to 1992. It was a great magazine and everything was open source. I wouldn't buy it now. I look at the free PDFs here. Read it in less than 5 minutes then delete it. Same with EPE. There is nothing interesting. Also some of the reprinted articles are only half finished or not even tested properly, It's crap. One article recently had two different versions of the firmware. The version from the author's web site was different to the download from the Elektor site. A total mess. It's all gone down hill. No pride, no quality in the production of the articles. I was interested in the Elektor Router until I saw the price of the kit. Over $1000? They had to be joking. I really don't understand what market they think they're serving and the number of advertisements has sky rocketed. Yuk!

[aleid]

I do share all your opinions with you. However, we say this about them because we grew with them. We have been reading the those magazines for long time. We reach a point where our thirst can not be filled by justing reading the same articles we read 10 years back!!! I think this is an indication for something that we may be blind not to see it. We need to convert from just Hobbyists to professionals. If we realized this point then we will not be reading EPE or Elektor for example. Circuit Cellar (CC) may be a right choice for now. Tomorrow, CC is not enough also. We need to move to Circuit Design, IDA or IEEE articles.

In my opinion, EPE, Elektor, Volts and Nuts, ...etc are written for electronics-field new comers. Every year, every generation has new comers to the field of Electronics. I think those new comers every year see what they are looking for in those magazines.

Cheers,

[looser]

It is obvious that hoby circuits in the old days was quite interesting since people was able to manage something around by using electronics. Especially living vacuum the tube age and not not have chance to do complicated designs. As they go for silicon and integrated circuits playground extended. And more people joined this fun.
Unfortunately (may be fortunately) programmable devices appeared and many circuits reviewed with ease.
Now for another good attraction to electronics we have to wait a bit becouse it is now the programming age and it is the investment time now to.
If we are to be patient I believe we will see good ideas and programmed circuits fly around.

Eh.. for the loosers like me things to do is get familiar with programming. I will do that if I read the book in my hand but.....
I .. can't find .. my glasses....
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Any body saw my reading glasses?...