Digital diversions: Taking a break from productivity Available to Purchase

Can you become more comfortable with your PC (and thus more productive) by playing with it? Probably—and, in any case, we all need a break now and then. Fun and games for the PC come in all varieties; the most widely reviewed programs require dozens of hours and your full concentration. Those programs aren't the topic of this column. The author writes about momentary pleasures or digital diversions: programs that can be fun on a fifteen‐minute break—although some of them, to be sure, can easily take up full days. If you have a VGA monitor and wonder where all those colors are, you'll find some answers here. If you want to sharpen your skills for a trip to Nevada—that's another kind of play, covered here as well. And if you've ever heard of the Game of Life (not the board game) or cellular automata and wonder what they're all about, read on: the answer is intriguing and can be incredibly time‐wasting. The usual notes from the literature follow, including this year's printer roundup and reviews of a remarkable number of top‐of‐the‐line 80386 computers.