When I was just a kid, I loved computers.  Everything was 8 bit back then, and everything was comprehensible by a 14 year old.  65xx assembler wasn't very difficult, and you could apply your knowledge to Commodore, Apple and Atari products; which was the lions share of what you and your friends probably had access too.  Of course, before we even knew there was such a thing as an 'Internet' and before we got our first 300 baud modems, information was somewhat tricky to come by.  Finding good code examples usually meant scrounging around the school library for terribly written and hopelessly out of date books.  Sometimes my friends and I would go to the mall just to slum at Waldenbooks where we would endlessly drool over the 10 books in the 'computer section'.  I remember we did a lot of disassembling and arguing and experimenting, and consequently a lot of frustrated swearing. But for a Commodore 64 Junkie like myself, there was a shining beacon of digital enlightenment, guaranteed to arrive monthly.  Compute!'s Gazette was like Manna from Heaven.  I don't exactly remember the first time I ever saw this magazine, but I think it was when my parents blindly bought me a subscription.  My Dad was an electronics and amateur radio enthusiast, but I think my passion for computers had both my parents mystified.  Whatever the circumstances, at some point I started reading the Gazette...  Every single page....  Over and over and over...  I would type in the programs... I would read the articles... I would pour over the letters to the editor...  I would drool over hardware advertisements for things I knew I would never afford...  It's safe to say, I obsessed over that magazine and the precious bits of data it contained. I often wish I still had my hard copies of Compute!'s Gazette.  Like an idiot, I junked my entire stash one year in a rash decision to try and save a relationship with an Ex.  (She said I keep too much junk, but I don't see it?). - So now, gentle reader, we reach the point of this post, which is that now anyone can read the Gazette in all it's original glory. Thanks to the Internet Archive, and God-Knows-Who taking the time to scan every single page of every issue, everyone can sample this wonderful magazine and experience, just for a moment, the simple beauty of retro computing. If you are interested in old computers (and even if you aren't) I invite you to visit the Internet Archive collection of Compute!'s Gazette magazines and sample a few. Issues are available in a variety of formats, including PDF.  Try to imagine the thrill of typing in a FREE word processor, or getting your computer to display 80 columns, or lusting after that new 9 pin dot matrix printer...  I hope you can, maybe for a little while, find as much joy in those pages as a certain young programmer did all those years ago.

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