Customer Rating: 
Summary: Make!
Comment: I have a handful of Make: copies, and plan on fleshing out the rest of the back catalog. I'm considering a subscription. Even if you don't have a workshop, these "magazines" (more like little books, actually) are great for stimulating your mind and reminding you that making things isn't just something that other people do.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Too much fun stuff for one book
Comment: I stumbled across Make: in a retail store and bought a copy. Nearly fifteen bucks for a "magazine" is pretty spendy for me, but minimal advertising and lots of interesting articles and reviews hooked me. I've since subscribed, but when I found out Amazon had back issues at discounted prices, I had to pick up the issues I had missed. In addition to gaining the confidence to try to repair some things I previously considered "disposable", I learned about a drain-cleaning tool that more than paid for all of the issues I've purchased in the money it saved me on a call to a drain-cleaning service.
From super low-tech incredibly hi-tech, there is something to interest most tinkerers here.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Exc eeds expectation
Comment: Ok, I was expecting good things from this magazine, but what I got exceeded my expectations. The first thing that I noticed was the production quality of the publication. The pages are thick and satin like and the art is consistent and first rate. Most importantly, the content is exceptional. Typically with these sorts of books, there are many interesting tidbits, but no practical applications. Make: differs in that every time I turn the page there is something wonderful that begs to be created.
I brought my first Make: to work and almost didn't get it back. I showed it to five people and every single one of them subsequently bought various editions from Amazon. I figured it would be a good idea to subscribe to the magazine, but when I went to retrieve the subscription cards there were none left. My buddies stole them all for themselves!
Make: has fired my imagination and has me in projects for years to come. Good job O'Reilly!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ads? What ads?
Comment: Not sure what magazine Brandnew was reading when he complained "70% of contents are sponsored, and ads appear everywhere", but it wasn't this one. Make has VERY few ads. I just quickly thumbed through this issue (Vol. 1), and was only able to find eleven pages that have ads on them, including inside the covers and the backcover. It's possible that I missed one or two others, but there's no way you'd ever say they were "everywhere". The ads that do appear are all relavent to the target audience. Like most magazines, they do have product reviews, but they're contained in about 10 pages, and again are all relevant to the reader.
Later issues do have more ads then the early ones, but even then, they are all clustered at the beginning and end of the magazine. In issue 4 (the latest) there are probably 15 pages of ads, and none appear in the main content area, between page 75 and 184.
Ok, now that I'm done debunking the nasty rumors spread by others, what do I think of the magazine itself? I love it. The projects are interesting, fun and informative. It's also one of the rare publications that isn't scared to publish ideas that could hurt someone. They publish all of the appropriate warnings, but they trust that you're smart enough to take responsibility for your own actions. Most of the projects are completely safe, but if you're buying this for your kids, I'd recommend that you check out each issue with them & decide on which projects they can do by themselves & which are better to do together.
Of course not every project will appeal to every reader, but they'll likely give you ideas that can be applied to other projects that do interest you. It might not appeal to everyone, but if it sounds interesting, you'll most likely love it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I've been looking for this!
Comment: I stay on the lookout for the "Boys" guides, you know, those old books dealing with science and technology (a hundred years old, perhaps, but still quite educational). I've looked into a few more modern magazines, such as Popular Mechanics (good for what it is), Wired (mostly a culture thing, I guess), and 2600 (fine, if my goal was to electronically knock over a Target store or something).
This is what I was after: a 'book' series dealing with hacking together hardware, making stuff work, and making stuff work better.
Now my 'to do' list has grown substantially, with a bunch of things I really hadn't thought of doing!
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