From Our Forums: Writers With Potential?

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]dethsite[/nom]g, I love when they like to start opinion of user views news article topics, because when they start quoting they start taking what was said out of context of what the statement means out of the original thread, then makes the poster sound like a general idiot when the comment is taken out of a thread and quoted out of context..I've said this once before Rachel, if you're going to start writing valid opinions make sure you got the fact's to back up what you say, because you sound like your opinions are based from what the companies state in their general product brief, as from what you have said you retort the co's general BS not what your own user opinion is...Another point I'd like to make, if you're going to start quoting a user from any forum make the hell sure you're quoting what has been said is in context of the original discussion it was quoted from, dissecting a post in a 3rd person view can often make the post be taken out of context when used as a 3rd person review on the original subject in hand.. We all make this mistake from time to time, though in this case who ever wrote this article had made himself or herself a real legendary tool for what has been said on a forum, giving it a new meaning and and taken what was said out of extreme context of the original discussion..I've said this once and I'll say it again if you're going to report on an industry make sure your got the test bench results before you start forming your article otherwise you end up spewing boffin rhetoric that companies put in their product flyer's, whether you write for tom's guide or tom's hardware you need to be objective in what you write otherwise you end up spewing nonsense in what you say... Case in point this article...[/citation]
Hi Dethsite,
Thanks for your comment. The same could be asked of you: In what context are you speaking when you tell me," if you're going to start writing valid opinions make sure you got the fact's to back up what you say, because you sound like your opinions are based from what the companies state in their general product brief, as from what you have said you retort the co's general BS not what your own user opinion is."

It is difficult to engage in a serious discussion with you if you don't give examples either. I don't know what you're referring to.

Thanks,
Rachel Rosmarin
Editor, Tom's Guide

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]the last resort[/nom]no quotes from Thunderman?[/citation]
If you've found a gem, I'd love to see which one.

 

[techydude71]

this tirade (above, & what i'm about to write pretty much sums up why i don't read Tom's Anything much anymore, except for the occasional article/product of specific - as distinct from general - relevance TO ME.

i'd had the typical anti-Apple air about me as any "true geek" did. i'm self-employed in small-biz IT consulting in the Windows world. i swam happily in the turgid waters of mediocrity that was, and still is, Microsoft products.

i'd barely bought an iMate K-Jam Windows Mobile 5 smartphone in late 2006, when months later Apple demo'd the 1st-gen iPhone. wow - my jaw literally hit the floor & my enthusiasm for Windows Mobile plummeted. but there i was, locked in a contract for 2 years, & besides the iPhone wouldn't reach Australia for ages, and hey, Vista was just around the corner, and there's always the next version of Windows Mobile, right?

after a few years of friendship with a MacFanBoyZealot, i came to a point where i needed a new laptop (mid07), and i decided i deserved something high-end (previous laptop was a 2nd-hand Thinkpad T40), where bang-for-buck wasn't the be-all criteria. i weighed up the usual suspects, as well as a MacBook Pro, because it'd been a while after Apple had gone Intel & thus able to run Windows. i had no imminent plan to run OS X, in fact i was quite ambivalent toward it. i decided to take a gamble & go with a 15" MacBook Pro.

other than a bit of money (so everyone kept telling me), i had not much else to loose, unless it turned out to be a total dog, but that wasn't what i was reading elsewhere. as it turns out, in terms of performance as a Windows platform, the mid2007 MacBook Pro was damn fine in terms of bang-for-buck! when you really compared spec-for-spec, the price difference was ah heck-all. and it looked pretty!

in retrospect, that Mac i'm still typing on now wasn't the thin edge of the wedge; the 1st-gen iPod, followed by the 5th-gen iPod were. i hated iTunes on Windows, but the burgeoning world of Podcasts made up for it.

no, this was the moment that the log split - admittedly in slow motion:

i persevered with Vista (& XP) (on my MacBook Pro, as well as on several client's PCs & laptops (Dell etc) for 6 months in the 2nd-half of 2007, and finally threw my hands up in the air and said "frakk it, I waited over 5 years for this?!?" OS X Leopard is out, i'll have a closer look. until then, OS X had just been this "other computer" hidden inside.

i'll spare you that journey of "switching" cuz i know most of your eyes are probably already bleeding, but i haven't looked back, not for one moment (although i do still miss Outlook . the suite of iLife applications that come with every Mac ARE actually highly useful & quality & regularly updated, unlike the rubbish traditionally bundled into Windows. even iTunes runs much better under OS X, & has also matured & stabilised nicely more recently.

coupled with my Apple TV (think: iPod for your livingroom HDTV+hifi), it all simply just works.

unlike Windows users (and i still include myself in that - it's my livelihood) who've had their expectations of how an operating system should behave lowered & skewed so far, i have no endless tide of critical & security updates to install always necessitating a reboot, no dicking around "under the hood" to get things working the way they should, no weirdosity fixed by yet another reboot - "it just works".

& when i added an iPhone3G to the mix last year, it just got better. i don't think i need to restate what a revolutionary game-changing device it is - everyone else is still playing catch-up/follow-the-leader, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7, touted to fully address the iPhone challenge, probably won't hit actual devices for another 18 months - as far as i'm concerned that's game over, cuz i've already got it NOW.

and in this past month i've added a Mac Mini to my living room, cuz it makes a fantastic tiny media centre: DVR with Elgato EyeTV + IceTV EPG (i'm finally free of the banality of commercial broadcast TV), DVD player (i've retired my expensive decent DVD player taking up a huge slab of space for no good reason), and the whole world of web/IPTV/media-apps (Boxee, Hulu, Jaman, iTunes, Joost & dozens of media websites). oh, & being a Mac it can run any/all Mac apps, and Windows apps simultaneously side-by-side with Mac apps (on the rare occasion i need to).

and just to remind myself that i'm still a geek (at home), i upgraded the RAM & HDD in the Mini myself and saved a packet - and discovered what a work of art laid inside.

& if you're a *nix geek, there's no better platform that blends the best of both worlds (*nix & Mac).

and just for the record, you can run any Mac flat-out on video transcoding or 3D-gaming endlessly without any hardware overheating or flakyness problems (software bugs aside, be they Mac or Windows apps) - cuz they're always designed to be able to do that, which is part of what you're paying for. how many of you have bought your best-bang-for-buck Windows box/laptop & had trouble with over-heating? As for overclocking, meh, that was fun when i was a poor teenager with nothing better to do...

conclusion:

a huge part of the Tom's demographic are people who do this stuff because they/we love it, and/or because it's educational/instructive to those of us also working in the industry & need to face those challenges every day.

that's fine, & i'm still one of those people. but when i get home from that Windows onslaught, it's nice to be able to interact with tech that "just works right" without having to become Crocodile Dundee & wrestle it into submission.

and here's the rub for WindowsFanBois: i'm not alone in my Brand-Ambidexterity, and those ranks are growing fast. Tom's caters to a broad demographic of tech enthusiasts, and they recognise there's a growing number of Mac users in that demographic. GET OVER IT!

 

[Catmoves]

I think I'd like to volunteer to write an article about the obnoxiousness of some advertising. There is a prime example of an ad which has rapidly convinced me to never, ever try Microsoft Visual Studio, free or not. Not even if they paid me. The ad runs on the left side of this page. And runs and runs and runs and runs....
I can't shrink it, can't get rid of it and I am at the point where I might tell that guy in the red heavyweight jacket where he can stick that cell phone. Or electric razor. Or microphone. Whatever.
I wonder why anyone would think a piece of inanity like that is going to sell anything?
Do you suppose an appeal to Mr. Gates would get him to come back long enough to fire the boufhead who approved of this tactic? We can only pray.

 

[Guest]

One C-64 to rule them all !!!