The Micro User

The Micro User was a BBC Micro monthly launched in March 1983 by Database Publications Ltd of Europa House, Macclesfield, under managing editor Derek Meakin.

Why it matters beyond the BBC

Database Publications is the company that became part of Europress — the publisher of Amiga Computing from 1988, and the buyer of CRASH and ZZAP!64 when Newsfield collapsed in 1991.

That matters because it dates the group far earlier than its games titles suggest. Reading only Amiga Computing, Europress looks like a 1988 arrival. The Micro User shows Database publishing computer magazines from March 1983 — before CRASH existed — and naming Europress in its pages from 1985.

So when the Ludlow magazines changed hands in 1991, they went to a house that had been in British computer publishing for eight years, and had started on Acorn machines.

⚠ This library holds The Micro User thinly — fifteen issues across a run that reached at least 1991 — so the dates here bracket the run rather than define it.

Against Acorn User

Acorn User was Acorn’s official magazine, published for the manufacturer. The Micro User was not: it was an independent title covering the same machine from a rival house, launched seven months later. Readers of the BBC Micro had both, and only one of them could afford to be rude about Acorn.

See also

• BBC Micro
• Acorn User — the official one
• Europress — what Database became part of
• Atari ST User — the same house, three years later
• Amiga Computing — the same house, five years later