Customer Reviews

Make: The First Year (4 vol. set)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mark does a great job.

I love the magazine, great layout, great contents, and this a bargain price - but - one reason I bought this was seeing (Hardcover) in the description.

Sorry - putting four magazines in a slipcase, even a nice sturdy one, does NOT constitute a hardcover.

Great job otherwise, but the description needs to changed.

A long time ago (two decades ago) I tinkered with electronics and all sorts of mechanical contraptions (the robot I built and the hovercraft are but a few weird and wonderful things I made). Alas, even Radio Shack stopped selling the classic books on electronics by Forest Mims (ISBN: 0945053282 still available on Amazon.com).

However, to really do cool things with electronics you needed expensive micro-processors... so many of us went a played with computers... However, with the price of microcontrollers dropping to a few dollars... a new world was opening up. MAKE had entered this void with a brave, bold nicely desigened magazine.

Make is published quarterly, and is full of many projects, (not all of them electronics or even micro-processor based). The projects range from the silly (a timed tea bag remover... build out of a toaster mechanism!) to the cool (ramjet powered go-cart... Very Noisy and Very Fast!), to the artistic (cool devices to make Persistance of Vision designs while you dance).

Each project is carefully detailed, with clear instructions, copious pictures and links to further information, if necessary.

All projects are designed to allow the average hobbiest to quickly make their own version.

You are guarnteed to bookmark at least one project from each issues. I know I always go COOL!, I want to build that!.

No other magazine comes close to empowering the average person to become a "MAKER". Not since Wired magazines launch (over 10 years ago) has a magazine hit a un-met market with such brilliance. If you are interested in (or returning to) becoming a Maker, then MAKE is your guide.

I ordered Make: The First Year from Amazon and was happy with the price and my order.
Make is for geeks and tinkerers. If you like Popular Science, you'll probably like Make. It goes a step further giving instructions for various projects, like making your own guitar to doing diverse connections and tricks with your iPod or old computer. Some of the info is a little sparse, but all and all it's well presented. There are also various tips and resources which are of great use to those who like to do it themselves. There is also a definite tendency to recommend reuse of junk hardware and trash which appeals to my sense of conservation. It really galls me to see all the great stuff that goes to waste.
For the most part the magazine is well laid out and a pleasure to read. But there are some articles that have some very small type and side panels that are almost unreadable with dark letters on a dark background and vice versa. What were they thinking? That's not cool. Pop Sci tends to do that too, placing text over a photo or graphic that makes it difficult to read. That's why I gave it a 4 rather than a 5. Other than that it's a great magazine and I hope it is successful.

I chanced upon an issue of Make magazine at the local "super chain" bookstore. I bought issue 11 and I was hooked. So I went looking for previous issues and I found a great deal on Amazon.com for the 1st year set.
Each issue is well organized and full of hacks of all kinds. I am working on my first beam bot and I look forward to trying my hand at programming an Arduino micro controller by the end of this year. There are so many things from these issues that I want to try out. So little time.

Great book for beginning, intermediate, advanced DIYers. For ideas, inspirations and detailed instructions.

I have since purchased the "Make: The Next year"

Lots of amazing ideias for hacking and making extraordinary things from everyday house objects. It shows how to make soda rockets, a potato canon using spray cans, robots. The interviews with creative people are also very cool. Each magazine has around 200 pages of content!

Make Magazine, in conjunction with the website, is a staple read for any electronics enthusiast, modder, or creative genius. Filled with succinct outlines of various projects, in depth reviews, and community involvement, every page will bring a return on the small investment made to secure volumes 1-9.