"John Cartmell, MD of Finnybank and editor of Acorn Publisher magazine, confirmed that it was Finnybank's intention to continue to produce Acorn User as a monthly magazine available from newsagents or by subscription. There would be changes to the magazine but the best of the current contents would be retained and Steve Turnbull has been invited to continue to write for the new magazine. Readers can also expect to see new contributors and articles, with favourites returning from some years ago.

"Subscribers to Acorn Publisher may be pleased to hear that there will be little change to the content of that magazine as a consequence of our new purchase. As a result of our new acquisition we will be able to offer a unique magazine format. Readers of both magazines should know that Acorn Publisher is produced for printing entirely on a RISC OS computer and the new Acorn User will be prepared in the same way."

Finnybank Limited will be announcing details of the new Acorn User format in the very near future and copies of this and subsequent press releases will be available at finnybank.com

All enquiries about Acorn User should now be directed to Finnybank Ltd."

"We've looked at the list of current AP subscribers and compared that with the current AU subscribers and the small percentage of readers who currently get both magazines will simply have their subscriptions extended. We can do that automatically although it may not show on subscribers' label for a couple of months"

"We wanted a name with link to Acorns that RISC OS users might recognise but without putting people off. It also needed to be a unique name and one that would be easy to find during an internet search. We considered many possibilities but settled on Qercus. Quercus (with a u) is of course the botanical name for the oak. The deliberate misspelling is so that when doing an internet search hundreds of hits involving trees aren't returned!"

"We can't go back to the days when printed magazines were the only source of information for RISC OS users but there is still much that users miss today and we intend to bring back those missing areas, but brought up to date. Whilst there isn't the same need that brought the yellow pages into being [the yellow pages in Acorn User contained listings of programs for readers to type in] that doesn't mean that there is no need at all. We will have yellow pages - so that readers can see and make sense of programs and program structure - and we will also have the programs available on the Qercus website for downloading. In the same way the disks and CDs from Acorn User played an important role in yesterday's magazine; today we will use our web-site and, together with the printed magazine, favourites like *Info can resurface."

"That's one reason why we will have two teams working on the two elements of Qercus. Even though we will be able to pay a small amount to major contributors we can't expect them to produce top-quality work every month. Each team of writers, programmers, artists or whatever will produce a magazine every two months but together we will have a monthly magazine for the readers."

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