Charles McLellan's Profile at ZDNet.co.uk Community

Charles McLellan

Professional Biography

I'm the Reviews Editor at ZDNet UK, so if you see anything amiss in that section, or you disagree with any of our product evaluations, please let me know. Let me know if you like the Reviews content too!

My experience with computers started at London's Imperial College, where I studied Zoology and then Environmental Technology. This was sufficiently long ago (mid-1970s) that Fortran, IBM punched-card machines and mainframes were involved, followed by green-screen terminals and eventually the first stirrings of the personal computer revolution.

My initial journalistic forays included helping to produce a desktop-published weekly news magazine based in Amsterdam in the mid-1980s. Interesting times, which included setting up data communications links with technologically-challenged 'stringers' in a number of European cities via a 300-baud modem and an acoustic coupler.

I've been in computer publishing since the late 1980s, starting with Reed Business Publishing's Practical Computing, then joining Ziff Davis in 1991 to help launch PC Magazine UK as Production Editor. After a couple of years I switched to commissioning, editing and writing, becoming a Technical Editor and then First Looks Editor.

When ZDNet came looking for a Reviews Editor in 2000, I was ready to make the move from print to online — just in time for the dot-com crash! It's been a long road from punched cards to 'Web 2.0', but it'll still be fun seeing where we go from here.

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