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                             ST OFFLINE - ISSUE ONE
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system... ST, STe, Falcon with 1 MB RAM and RGB monitor

size..... 86o KB on harddisk

menu..... coded in STOS by Lee Round

text..... by Lee Round, Chris Swinson and taken from the internet

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In a time of more or less steady recession in the ST diskmag scene a new diskmag
appeared, called "ST OFFLINE". It  is mainly done by a freak  from the UK, named
Lee Round.

Right at first  I have to point out that "ST OFFLINE" isn't a scene related mag,
it's, like  the most other magazines  that were done in the UK in  the nineties,
more or less filled with alot of topics, unfortunately not all Atari related.
But before checking that up at all, a few other words.

"ST OFFLINE" is called to be released on two disx and how strange this is by the
size mentioned above, you surely will imagine after the things coming up. At 1st
I wondered about the fact  that the magazine program, that fills up disk one, is
more than 6oo KB in size after decrunch and  guess what? The  file wasn't packed
at all. So I kicked on the good old Ice Packer and shrinked the size down to 17o
KB something. The second  disk contains  the articles  and even  there I checked
that not all were packed. So I think with the massive use of  a packer the whole
magazine could find place on a 81/1o formatted DD disk.

Anyway, the  magazine runs ok on ST and Falcon, but  bombs away  while using any
harddrive. That's a big  drawback since all still existing  magazines changed to
the use of harddrives.

Ok. At  next some  words  about the  shell. After  running the magazine a screen
appears, that seems to be created by a guy who is heavy  infected by the Windows
virus. The  whole shell looks  a bit  like the  windows shell, there are several
icons spread over the  screen, on the lower  border there is a  grey status bar,
containing options and help buttons (like  the start button  on Win) and to make
the  illusion (or nightmare) perfect, you get a  taskbar while  clicking  on the
options button, saying "WINDOST Atari 2000"... buerk...

Let's check  the articles  side. The magazine  features  different  topics, like
computers, music, internet, paranormal, ezine, wibble & faq  (what  the  hell?!)
and last but  not least a collection of several other articles. Those topics can
be reached over clicking on one of those icons  presented on the  desk and after
clicking on them a menu with the list of articles appears.

Over all  the magazine  features more than 6o articles and that  is a quiet good
ammound nowadays, but after taking a closer look on  them I  wondered a lot. The
most (nearly  all) were taken out  from the internet! The  editors itself  wrote
just a few ones, the most were  ripped out  from bulletin  boards. Furthermore a
big bunch of  FAQ articles about  several topics  appeared as  well. The biggest
hype  is the part  where  several  ascii  magazines are  included, just as Atari
Expl. Online, just  because AEO isn't  about Atari  at all anymore, but features
several topics at all as well.

Btw... as we have the topic Atari, what articles about Atari are included at all
in "ST OFFLINE"? There is a FTP list included, an article about a  general Atari
FAQ... gosh! Featuring  answers on  questions like "What  kind of  monitor can I
use?"... uuuuh... At next there is the readme file from the STOS Fixer included,
as well as the ripped text from a homepage about  Jamma to ST (linking the ST to
an arcade cabinet... what the hell?). It goes  on with  an article  about how to
leech softwares from FTP servers, the faq of the Gravity emulation site and also
an article about the setup of STING and CAB on a 1mb ST, taken from a user group
information file. Wow... what an ammount of articles! How interesting!

Bored to  death I stepped to  the other topics as well, such as a  general Amiga
FAQ, articles  about the  dying of PKZIP on PC, about software  piracy, file and
drive encryption under Windows, basics about burning CD's and making games on PC
(we all  have waited  for that...), faqs about tv satellites, dreams  and so on,
articles  about mp3 files, napster, filesharing, minidiscs, a bunch  of internet
articles featuring  stuff  about "safe surfing", encryptions, newsgroups, female
surfers... latest on  this point was so damn  bored that I  stopped to check out
the other articles...

Yes, I stopped to check it out much  more, because I is  senseless. "ST OFFLINE"
is no real  diskmag, just because the whole "magazine" just features  text files
ripped from somewhere and leached from the internet, taken  from bulletin boards
and newsgroups, readme files and homepages... I don't see the sense in doing so,
so anyone could do the same. A shame in my eyes is to name  it "ST OFFLINE" just
because of the fact that just 1o % of the articles are about Atari  and the rest
is a brainless collection of stuff about everything and nothing.

As the "main editor" (or better collector?) Lee Round  mentioned  in this issue,
the forthcoming issue will feature the same style, but other topics as well, but
my question is, who really needs that?! If the magazine would real Atari related
featuring articles about softwares, personal views and so  on, written by people
especially for that  magazine, I would look forward to get my  hands on it, just
because of the fact that it can be that it features topics I for  myself haven't
heard about so far.

What can I say more? Uuh.. I forget to mention the  viewer, it is  a very simple
text viewer, appearing on the screen after  the "loading and formatting" screen,
after chosing one article. It is obviously taken from the  Mega Diskzine, called
Mega Displayer v2.8. It just displays the text in grey on black background, down
there is a bar, giving you info about the displayed lines and the  length of the
article at all. It does the job, even if the scrolling isn't the best.

So what is left to say? The final words...

Hum... "ST OFFLINE", that was announced as Atari diskmagazine (WinSTon friendly,
yurk), reveales  itself as senseless collection of articles about everything and
nothing. Atari is staying in the background  competely, therefore  there is some
collection of articles offered that reminds me to some yellow press publication.
For people who just want to read  something, without real  interest in  Atari at
all, who don't care about the fact, that it isn't some creative state of the art
in doing a magazine  like this, may be pleased to find  so many dull  and boring
articles in here. For people who  want to read an  Atari diskmagazine because of
the fact that it features articles about  Atari mainly, should avoid it to leech
the magazine, it's just wasted time...

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contents........  1o % - more than 6o articles but mostly crap...
shell...........  65 % - mouse controlled, viewer not state of the art
shell grafix....  6o % - quiet ok, but why the hell that Windows topic?!
shell musix.....  1o % - just some sample sound while selecting the topics...
loader pic......  ------
intro...........  ------
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overall.........  36 % - errr... an Atari diskmag without big Atari part...
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Just some hint... for better ratings try to write something by yourself! Just to
collect articles and textfiles from the internet  isn't the aim of  doing a disk
magazine at all... please try to be more Atari related, because I think there is
still enough to write about...

.tSCc. 2oo1                                                              moondog
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