Stunning! I've started averaging 85 dollars/hourly since i started working online half a year ago... What i do is to sit at home several hours each day and do simple jobs i get from this company that i found over the internet... I am very happy to share this with you... It's an awesome side job to have www.orkan201.tk
Edit: I will add that Anandtech has much better content than Toms Hardware, along with being much less ad-infested as well. The main page of tomshardware shows up with *TWENTY SIX* ads. Some of it might be the background or something, but that's just ridiculous. Meanwhile, Anandtech blocks like two ads. Please don't go that way.
On the other hand, maybe the influx of cash will bring an actual edit button :)
+1. Also, Tom's used to be comparable some years ago (before the "Best of Media") era. Another +1 to @Senti's post below ref. perceived variable quality of published articles in the post-Anand era.
Sad reality is that it's all about the $$$/profits in the end.
Yes most businesses are. But it's also about sustainability going forward. There's only so long you can work at minimum wage before you realize you would like something better in life.
When was Tom's bought? It's still one of the hardware sites I go to, but maybe a decade ago I kind of switched to Anandtech as my main one.
This is kind of sad, but I hope doesn't spell disaster. It's nuts that they had to do that to get ad revenue! I don't even KNOW of what big hardware sites these would be. Cnet maybe? IMO they're not worthless, but are more complementary than a competitor IMO since they can review a lot more stuff but obviously aren't very in depth and don't really cover technology.
For the longest time, Tom's was mostly posting Apple related news. I remember I was one of those guys who hit them on that in the comments, which got me banned for a week... I brought up the question why did Apple WDC get 20 articles and Google IO only got 1? Later Tom's defended itself by saying Apple news drives up hit counts, despite the fact most comments on those articles were overwhelming negative. It's like 10 of the 15 most recent articles were on Apple and expect us not to click on at least one of them to complain about why there are SO MANY Apple articles. So I quit Tom's.
But, since Purch got Tom's, Tom's is now a more balanced hardware news site. I would say that Purch has done a pretty good job.
I too no longer have a Tom's account. I still surf it a bit, but I'm not nearly as actively involved. They turned Nazi and you can't disagree with anything there now.
lol, thanks for that tip. Not a plugin I'd heard of before. Makes viewing Tomshardware much smoother without irritating full screen adverts I have to get rid of.
so not only are you reading Anandtech's journalism for free, you are blocking their ability to pay themselves for no reason and gleefully boasting about it. congratulations.
I have whitelisted both Anandtech and Ars technica because the ads are so modest I don't mind and it helps them. If you adblock the ads, the site makes no money (it's not about whether you never click ads), which is bad for them. So whitelisting adblock for sites you like is a mean to support their business.
I hope what AT takes away from Tom's is what not to do. I can't even really put my finger on why, but I despise Tom's Hardware.
Thus far, after the departure of the man himself, I haven't seen much difference in the quality of AT (and that's a good thing), so I'm willing to keep an open mind as to what will happen now. I understand the reasoning behind it, but just the same, it's a little sad to lose such a kickass voice existing independently.
I did too, but they did have some really good articles still. Tom's on the other hand started selling sex appeal at Xmas, among other things. While I like sex, I have porn for that. Tech articles should be about tech. Most of their "news" revolves around trying to lure readers with boisterous headlines that are exaggerated.
Ads pay for the content. Unless you'd rather pay some upfront fee that would need to be rather large.
Arstechnica has a $75 a year fee for those of us willing to pay that for no Ads, and the ability to get more focussed content, as well as downloadable pdf's of articles. I do that, and it wouldn't hurt here either. People don't have to pay. It's a choice.
It's unlikely his departure was an abrupt thing even if Apple's veil of secrecy precluded announcing it in advance. If he decided to try selling the site because Apple offered him a job, or if Apple made an offer because they heard he was trying to sell the site is a separate question; but doubt they're unrelated.
People like you that block the Ads are part of the reason AnandTech was not profitable enough to stay independent. If you truly cared about this site and enjoyed it, you would turn off the stupid add block software.
You imply that Anandtech has the right to advertising revenue from it's audience. News flash: It's not.
There have been multiple instances when Anandtech and Dailytech's advert delivery systems had been infected by malicious maleware/greyware/spyware/virus/other nasties, which was in-turn passed onto users who did not block adverts.
It is simply safer to block adverts.
Internet is faster if you block adverts.
You save money with internet caps you block adverts.
You save even more money if with power consumption if you block adverts.
Personally, I only visited Anandtech for Dailytech. And I only visited Dailytech for Anandtech. Thus I will now visit neither.
You can't have your cake and eat it. If everyone shared your view on this, there would be no free content on the Internet (or all free content would be sponsored content i.e. native advertisements). AnandTech isn't a special business that runs on fairy powder, and neither do us editors. Just like in any other business money is needed to pay salaries and other expenses to keep the firm operating.
We have never run malicious or disturbing ads on purpose and as soon as we have gotten the heads up the ad has been taken down.
Here's the problem: some of us have never, and never will, click an advert site. Too many nasties be there. Unless, of course, you've got an advert pusher who gets paid just for the fact of display. And that isn't any different from the newspaper model; and we know what's happened there. Those who choose to block ads do so because they've no intention of going down that rabbit hole. Both you and the advert pusher have, in fact, lost nothing.
Even the view helps us financially. From the about page:
"Success in our advertising campaigns is measured by both the number of times an ad is loaded/viewed and the number of clicks an ad receives. Even if you have no intentions of clicking on an ad, the view itself helps support AnandTech."
So yes, even if you have zero intention of clicking an ad, you can support us by whitelisting AnandTech in your adblocker.
That is fine that you take the ad down, but you also have to (or should have to) pay damages to anyone infected.
Does the ad income provide enough of a cushion to do that? If not, then you shouldn't be running the adds.
You are responsible for everything on your site, including the ads. Until web sites start compensating victims for malware from ads, I'll continue to block them.
I could understand your perspective if you paid to Anandtech to view their website directly and then malicious code struck your computer within their 'paid' walled garden. On the free internet, I'd consider a better analogy to be if a roadside political poster or a sign spinner struck your car with their sign by accident. In those cases, the sign installer or sign spinner might be liable for striking your car, but not the object of the advertisement.
In the same way, ad-serving companies are at fault for malicious ads. Not the website or metaphorical roadway where you're struck by them.
Who says I want my content free? Anandtech has never given me a choice on the matter.
You may not have intentionally ran the questionable advertising, you may not have intended for your viewers to loose their time and money. But the fact is... It did happen, multiple times. Do not expect for users to reciprocate and leave themselves vulnerable.
This is where capitalism, which I am a big proponent of, comes into play. If you run a business model that relies on advertising revenue... And that revenue enters into decline, then you need to adapt and change and look towards other business models for growth... Or fall into obscurity. This is where innovation and out-side-of-the-box thinking can change the landscape dramatically. Again, you are not entitled to our advertising revenue, in-fact you lost my trust years ago in that regard.
And I ask everyone to block adverts, the internet is a faster, safer and better place without them.
A good product sells itself. Marketing is not necessary for economy. The business college I attended defined marketing as convincing a consumer that a want is a need. You might call it tricking, brainwashing, etc. I don't need to be marketed to and I prefer not to be. If I have a need, I will research a solution. If I have not heard of a "must-have, state-of-the-art product" then odds are I can do without it. The profits of my hard labor are not free for the taking any more than a writer's are. Your view places a writer's time above my own and because you are a writer your opinion is biased.
I'd be fine paying for newspapers online. However, it would be nice to not have garbage printed online and a bit more accountability for so called "journalists" who never studied writing at all or know what integrity is.
However, when it comes to estimating the effect on a business of a corporate take-over, the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" can only be used metaphorically, and in that sense I would say the reverse is true - "guilty until proven innocent".
So many businesses are destroyed by new management. Who do you think would care more about the quality of content on Anandtech, the renowned and eponymous founder, Anand Lal Shimpi, or a corporate employee whose job is to increase advertising revenues from the site?
A lot of warm words are always uttered in circumstances such as these, but mostly they are insincere. We shall see.
Of course not, no time has passed... But this isn't a court of law, this isn't an innocent or guilty thing, it is just business...
The new owners will want to cut costs, they may well have two sites and two articles, but do you really think they will want to keep paying two groups of people to run the same tests in two different locations on the same hardware?
The new owners want to earn money, and AnandTech has been quite profitable basically since it was created. Cutting costs is generally only needed if a business is losing money, and that's not the case at all. You can look at traffic numbers and estimate how much money AnandTech makes per month, and my bet is it's far more than enough to support everything we do and then some. But since Anand can't really own the site and do much with it (without a severe conflict of interest), he's passing it over to a group that can.
Maybe it has been profitable in Anand's hands, but we don't know how much of those profits have been capitalised in the acquisition price. Nor do we understand the incentives of the new managers. Maybe the business is now highly leveraged, and the managers see a quick return from their advertising network, which they can extract in bonus payments in the next few years without caring about sustainability or quality.
I know, Anand personally scoured the publishing World for a whole year to ensure the site would end up in safe hands, just like Tom's Hardware, oh wait...
The new owners made a capital investment in the business, to get a better return on that investment, they will want to increase profits. That is just how it works...
They may well see a need to invest further money to expand the content, and that is fine. It is also fine if they wish to offset that expense by having AnandTech test the AMD video cards and Tom's Hardware test the nVidia video cars (or the other way around) to save on testing hours and costs.
Are you ok with that change? If I were in charge as a new owner, that is one of the first places that I'd find to cut and you'd have a heck of a time convincing me otherwise. I'd give you a chance, but in the process you'd have to address what else you *wouldn't* be able to afford without the change.
He's passing it on to a group that will ruin it. We know this because we know what happened to other sites that were bought out by the same company. Good luck to you all.
I think Anand was getting tired of AT. And I understand.
Anand and I are the same age and we've both been running our own businesses since high school. I'm growing tired of what I'm doing, but I value the relationships in my business too much to leave everyone hanging. But at some point, I'll realize what Anand did and know I need to look out for myself. Anand was lucky to leave AT in the hands of competent people. That's something I'm not even sure I'll be able to do.
For me Anandtech has been on the decline ever since he started it in the early 90's. While they have become much, much more technical it has also become much more bias in some areas. The latter alone had me visiting the site less and less since Anand started the site.
FWIW, I've been with AnandTech since about 2004, full-time since 2006. I have never had anyone suggest I give a favorable review to a part that wasn't good. If that changes, I value my integrity enough that I'd look for other employment. I've also known Ryan for pretty much that entire time, and he probably has more integrity than I do. The advertising has always been separate, and while there will almost certainly be some changes in content (e.g. to pick up news now that DT is gone), that shouldn't come with any changes in how we generate the content.
I think the staff here at Anandtech has always done a really good job. I stopped visiting tomshardware a long time ago when their quality fell. I do think that the above poster was afraid that people like you would leave the site due to the potential reasons you outlined.
I was replying to: -------------------------------------------- ws3 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link That remains to be seen. --------------------------------------------
I took his comment to mean that he believes AT's integrity is already damaged or is in danger. Perhaps I misinterpreted his comment? My reply was a simple rebuttal to that notion. In that in the 15 years I've been reading AT, I've never seen evidence that AT is in any way compromised.
Jarred, if you happen to read this in the landslide of comments, please understand that I hold AT in the highest regard and trust that you''ll do what's necessary to keep AT thorough, honest, and profitable (just as important).
More news would be good since the news coverage is spotty and arbitrary. And maybe nobody asked for a favorable review because pretty much all were favorable lol.Anandtech has been afraid to point out the negatives for years. A review should hunt for positives and negatives and have a neutral tone not try to find excuses and hope. It got slightly better lately though, maybe this change helps further but i don't dare to dream that you guys will review retail products not samples or that you won't allow others to pay fro your trips. When you review samples there is an increased risk of not being accurate and you end up reviewing what you can get not what you should.. A17, A53 cores are out there and don't think you guys took a look at those yet, isn't that just crazy? Xiami is the 3rd smartphone maker and very likely to grow a lot more, the Redmi 1S has been one of the best selling devices of the year,yet Anandtech never reviewed any of it's products.You've reviewed one Mediatek device in your entire history, yet they shipped some 350 mil smartphone SoCs this year. On the other hand i'll bet we are about to get a Snapdragon 810 preview since they are on a marketing offensive and you guys publish based on what you can get your hands on for free.Buying from retail (does anyone besides Consumer Reports does that anymore?) , not signing NDAs would allow you to review and report what matters not what you are being fed.
I hated DT as well. Sensationalism has no place amongst IT intellectuals. I ended up just coming here and to Tom's for GPU/CPU updates and that's about it. Trying to stay on top of the changing hardware landscape is tough enough without having to sort through all sorts of filth.
I haven't seen anything official; but their over all quality is much lower and more tabloidy than Anandtech's. At the same time DT has been trying to build a presence doing feature length articles meaning that the sites are becoming competitors instead of looking at different market segments.
The real question if if Anandtech will be expanding sidebar content to fill the gap or linking to Toms/Laptopmag instead.
I just don't want to loose the quality you guys put at this site... I stopped going to Toms aloong time ago, around 2002 or 2003. It was my regular site, than it became full of ads, the page is messy... I can't like the site... I don't want Anandtech (to me the best site on reviews) to go away... And I really hope you don't transform into TH, I really do.
Anyway, good work for all these years... I just hope you guys stay on top.
This is exactly how I feel, Toms was a daily site for me in the late 90's.. and now it's not a consideration ever. Same thing happened to Firing Squad after thresh left. I think the guys here are doing a great job now, but the problem with companies like purch is they are filled with talking head management types who only care about bottom dollar and when they drive a good thing into the ground they flat out do not care.
My only complaint with Anandtech, and tech sites in general really in the last few years is the lack of editors. We have plenty of people writing articles, but nobody is proofreading them, fixing mistakes, reading them out loud back to the writer to realize they have abysmal grammar, etc. It's very jarring to read a high level review of some piece of technology, only to find spelling errors, grammar errors, and a lack of complete sentences sometimes. In the words of an old person "Back in my day, Anandtech actually proof read their articles before publishing!"
No irony, you're not being paid to write a professional article, you're making a comment in the comments section, it is ok. If you were paid to write the main article, then yea, unacceptable.
I saw that the feeds from DT were removed a few days back, so I knew some sort of announcement was imminent. I quite liked the AT/DT tie in..... But I can imagine corporate sponsors not wanting to invite Mick along for the ride. Pity.... I quite like Micks contributions... even if he does miss the mark a time or two.
yeah it did strike me as weird too. Now that DT clickbait isn't put under my noise anymore, I don't think I will go there on purpose to read Mick's rants anymore.
Frankly, if you think there shouldn't be any changes in how you generate content with this new ownership, then you're in for a rude awakening...
I'm not questioning your moral integrity, I'm simply saying that it isn't personal, it is business. There is no way that the new owners are going to, long term, pay two teams to run the same tests on the same hardware in two locations. It is a waste of money.
You might get to write articles, but over time the "data sharing" will increase, you'll perhaps run half the tests, Tom's might run the other half, and you'll share the results and write something about it.
Or perhaps all the testing will get moved to one side or another with the testing results passed on.
Your new owners are a business, all the pretty words in the world don't change that, money rules large companies in the end.
Give it 6 to 12 months, then come back and say nothing has changed internally.
I've met with people from THG plenty of times at events, and you know what? Their job sounds pretty much identical to my job. Shocking, I know. If you buy a profitable company to add their income to your revenue stream, but then you totally overhaul everything that made the company profitable, that's sort of an odd approach.
We'll see I suppose, and given AT has always had a very small business feel to it (there's precious little oversight of what editors do, really), it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have some changes. But if I'm told to start writing advertorials or whatever... well, I already get accused of that for having the audacity to write a guide recommending a variety of hardware, laptops, etc. Which is something I've done at AnandTech since the beginning, so really, nothing really changed. (See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/1518, which is probably one of the first five or so articles I wrote at AnandTech. Heck, we even had "weekly" buyers guides in the past.)
I will say that a smart new manager won't make large changes quickly, it is too jarring... You're very unlikely to be told to write "advertorials", rather you're likely to find a new managing editor who has a new role of "quality control" to improve the grammar and presentation of articles.
Professional news publications have these people, their job is to clean up the copy and make sure nothing really offensive goes out, while making sure the headlines are catchy. It is very easy to slowly edit articles via such a person by changing this or that... Sometimes it is easy to spot, sometimes it happens slowly over time...
If there does end up being a union of AT and THG, I expect very little to change at either site, except perhaps a smoothing out of both coverage and reviews. Two very talented teams with extensive laboratories and deep access to many tech companies... my guess is the parent company will attempt to pool resources to maximize efficiency. Ergo, concordantly, vis-a-vis, more articles or similar or better quality. I'll keep my expectations high, thank you.
Everyone here is stating that they used to like Tom's better. We know you'll stand by your former employer, even if you're wrong. It's ok to be wrong, and it's ok to stand beside someone even when they have made a bad decision. We appreciate Anand too, we just adamantly and openly disagree with his choice because we don't have a job or a friend to lose as you do.
Yes, every acquired company says "nothing is going to change, nobody will be fired/replaced, we'll just get better". Usually this honeymoon period lasts a couple months. We'll see where AT is in a year-- I hope bigger, better, and not infested with intrusive ads.
And TBH bigger is not always better. Bigger usually means more spread thin and quality goes out the door. it's better to be great at a few things than good or just okay at many things.
That is what everyone says when they are taken over by a big corporation. I truly hope it is not a "sell out" in the bad sense of the word, but I agree, it remains to be seen. I was particularly put off by the emphasis on mobile in the press release. Anand's already has enough articles on smartphones, watches, mini-pcs and other gadgets.
I worked closely with company that paid exorbitant referral commissions to Top Ten Reviews which allowed them to maintain their #1 ranking -- despite plainly being an inferior product.
I really hope you retain the journalistic integrity you hope for.
No more free ride abusing power in the forum too. I bet this is addressed at some point http://techsoda.com/anandtech-forum-moderators-bia... Anand never brought that place into line, new sheriff in town now boys. :)
You might not have "sold out", but if you think that things will continue as-is, I have a bridge to sell you.
It might take 6 months, it might be a year, but when a new AMD or nVidia card comes out, do you really think the new owners want to pay two teams to run what is really the same tests?
You might write different articles, but don't be shocked when the testing side gets combined and when results start being shared.
""Sold out" implies compromising ones morals or ethics"
True, AT sold out a long time ago, now it just got sold :) Sorry to be that guy to speak the inconvenient and harsh truth, but AT has long abandoned the path of an objective hardware review website to become yet another beacon of consumerism preachment to impressionable chumps.
Anandtech is damn near my home page. I appreciated the independence. The ads are healthy. I have been a reader somewhere since 2007-2009. I miss Anand. I can understand he likely had no personal life with running the show here. His departure worried me a little. Over time I will say his absence is noticeable on the content. Although the site is still the best around. I never click ads on any site. I did here on occasion. Could there be some welcome tweaks to the site? Yes. Be very careful with them though. I have never cared for Tom's hardware. I have read a handful of articles there over the years. I prefer to read here. I did notice the AMD Omega drivers memo being late. I'm okay with that because I have been able to count on the insight at AT to be more valuable than a straight up news release that I can read at a corporate newsroom page.
AT has been great listeners and responsive to readers over the years. I hope that continues. It is a little more sad news today. Hopefully my concern is unwarranted.
I have been reading Anandtech regularly since 1999. Tomshardware quality deteriorated very rapidly after it got acquired, I rerely ever go to that site anymore. For the past 1-2 years the number of reviews at Anandtech have been slowly declining, I don't know how to put it but the site is becoming "dull". With Anand leaving and now this...I don't have much hope but would love to be proven wrong.
I think part of the slowness is down to the industry itself. Back in the day, CPUs, GPUs and later even SSDs came out fast and furious with almost yearly process shrinks pushing them along. Remember when GPUs refreshed every six months? These days it's big news when a 15% faster CPU comes out or someone manages to buildt a faster GPU on a three year old process node without inadvertently creating a space heater.
And with process nodes getting ever more complex to develop, I'm not sure what's next. The reason mobile is important is that it's faster growth (in numbers and relative performance). I can use a variety of laptops and desktops and think they're all "fast enough", but when I hop on my Nexus 5 there are a lot of things that are far slower than I'd like. Rendering web pages is a prime example, but loading simple games takes FOREVER at times (hello PvZ2).
I want my phone to feel as fast as a moderate laptop, and while we're getting closer it's still nowhere near close. That TDP discrepancy is hard to overcome of course, but if software requirements don't bloat much, maybe by the time we're in single digit process technology I will finally have a phone that doesn't make me grumble every time I surf the web.
Also, I need newer and better eyes, because at 41 my smartphone is not really enjoyable for reading content. Yes, that 27" to 30" desktop display is far more to my liking.... When can I upgrade my eyes (with no risk of going blind)? :-)
So where is the nexus 9 review then? New hardware (first ever nvidia cpu, first highish end nexus device), new os (first 64 bit android device). It came out over a month ago, and nothing but a short preview when it was released.
It's in progress... Josh or Andrei is working on it, Ryan is helping, but with school, flu, other stuff it has been delayed. Just like the Omega drivers article, which I spent probably 40 hours or so running benchmarks on. Hopefully that goes up this week, as my part was pretty much done the day they launched. :)
What's not understood, apparently, is that the leading/cutting edge of mobile is battery tech, not node shrinks. Unless/until some Einstein figures out a completely new chemistry (I know....), the envelope remains the same. Mo power to duh peoples.
Put down the Nexus and pickup an iPhone 6 Plus. Yea, yea, you like Android, I know... you want web pages to load as fast as your laptop? You can have that today, and with only TWO CORES! :)
In my work, we've used Motorola, Samsung, etc.. Android phones... the iPhone screens were too small... with the 6 Plus, we've replaced everything across the board with 6 Plus and what a nice change it has been. Expensive perhaps, but they "just work" and a number of headaches are gone.
For all the "tech specs" of the Galaxy S series, it never really felt that fast, I'm quite shocked actually at how well these work, given the 1GB of RAM and dual core CPU, but it is faster than our Galaxy S4s that they replaced when doing almost everything.
Is the iPhone 6 Plus faster than a SHIELD Tablet? Because I have one of those as well, and while it's faster than my Nexus 5 isn't also still clearly slower than my laptop or desktop. Both can be "fast enough" depending on the task, but we're still at least a few more generations of hardware away from the performance I want in a tablet/smartphone. Greedy, I know.
What I do know is that my work laptop is a nice Haswell based Core i7 machine with a 256 GB SSD, and it doesn't pull up AnandTech.com any faster than my iPhone 6 Plus does.
It is twice as fast as my old Galaxy S4, and given the specs on that phone I'm shocked at the difference. Both phones are on Verizon, so no carrier change.
Note that this is not benchmarks, it is subjective feeling, but I did just try it today on both to see the difference.
Frankly I think you rely too much on performance benchmarks that often don't translate in the real world and less on professional experience and opinion. SSDs are a great example. Yes, the Samsung 850 Pro is faster than the 840 EVO, no doubt about it. Much, much faster than the older Intel 320 series, yes?
You know what? Running Windows doing average daily tasks, you can't really tell the difference between any of them. Yes, the benchmarks show a difference, but it doesn't translate. More or less, ANY SSD is a vast improvement over ANY HDD, it really doesn't matter which one.
For the record, I've used OCZ, Samsung, Intel, and Crucial SSDs, we now only deploy Crucial MX100 SSDs due to the price and dependability. I have a 840 EVO in my personal desktop and it is fine, as it the Intel 320 in my laptop. It doesn't really matter. :)
I would say it hasn't been bad since Anand left, but I do feel like the exemplary quality of pieces is down a bit. And occasionally something surprisingly blah.
That's fair. Anandtech have is a lot and we instantly turn on them in this event.
It may be debatable if we are turning on "them", as if it's the same folks now that it's bought. But at least we could have some appreciation for what we got, for free.
I dunno, they already got Daily Tech off of the front page. DT had some interesting articles, but their authors tended to have political views that seeped into their articles and the user comments where positively caustic.
Anandtech gone the way of THG. A sad day indeed. I have only taken the odd glimpse at Tom's since Tom Pabst gave it up and what I have seen since then is heartbreaking since that is where I had started getting into overclocking on 486 systems so long ago. You don't find that kind of in-house quality there anymore. And you won't find the old Anand quality here anymore either.
As long as it doesn't impact your editorial freedom it sounds like a great step forward for AnandTech (I wouldn't know what kinda effect it had on THG since I haven't read THG in like 12+ years, been sticking to AT/HardOCP).
Nothing wrong per se, but they've lacked scale and resources for a long LONG time (since they started reviewing phones, maybe earlier)... They more than make up for it with the quality and depth of the articles for stuff they do cover, not too mention some of their industry contacts.
However, if belonging to a larger company allows them to hire an extra writer or two, or pays current ones better and allows them more writing/reviewing time (or even a better budget for buying products for comparisons) then I'm all for it.
Been reading AT nearly since it's inception, dunno why I've never been active on the boards (used to gravitate towards HardForum), maybe that's where the oldest readers comment... Seems a lot of comments here are from more recent readers, could be wrong.
Best news of the month; that horrible DailyTech is no longer on Anandtech. It should've been gone a long time ago.
Purch seems like a smart owner, otherwise it wouldn't buy AnandTech. It knows the readers that always visit the site value the high-quality content. So it is wise to make sure they got their money worth by making sure Anandtech retains its writers and how they do things. Nobody here is obligated to stay if everything goes bad from now on and the readers will also go find something else.
I bet Jason Mick is fuming and Tiffany will soon be out of a job. Although there is still a link to DailyTech on the bottom of the site :P
I just hope they won't kill the AT forum. It has great tech content and users, but it depends on the tech-unrelated community forums too to drive traffic and form a forum culture. If these guys begin to try and professionalize the forum by eliminating OT, P&N etc., it will go bust, despite being one of the longest-life forums I've ever seen (usually they crash at some point).
Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel as if Tom's has anything it can teach Anandtech. Maybe the other way around, but that doesn't really make Anandtech better...
I quit reading Tom's in the early 2000's because of concerns I had about their ethics, specifically how they handled the parting with Van and then removed his byline. I haven't been back since then. The Internet is a really big place, generally if I leave a website I look for someplace new to hang out and the leaving is permanent. (Other sites I've left have been Gamespot and Ars Technica.)
Anandtech is still on my nice list despite recent changes; I'm hoping they stay there, because I've been a daily reader since almost the beginning.
I think I stopped even before that, it wasn't over the petty squabbles with Kyle at HardOCP but I can't quite remember why I stopped going there... Whenever I've gone back the site looks like a mess, specially on mobile, so I don't stick around.
Ryan, I've noticed a bit of a news slowdown lately here. For instance, I'm really confused how the AMD Omega drivers have not yet been mentioned (even in Pipeline?? At least Omega doesn't show up in search anywhere). Is this due to the sale of the site or somehow unrelated?
I don't know about this. I recall about the whole zdnet acquiring pc magazine and cnet a while back and it seems that the materials from both companies seems to be the same. Let's ope that it won't happen to Anandtech/THG also.
PC magazine went into the crapper much earlier when they went online only tho, and Cnet... Well, it's Cnet, TV reviews are the only thing I've found marginally useful there.
It's usually not hard to follow what's going on if you read bylines tho, PC Mag used to have some good writers. AT still does, if they were to leave I'd hope they find good homes elsewhere.
agreed, seen it so many times before, read so many of this kind of articles before on other sites, I wish AnandTech could be an exception, but I'm not convinced
A good news. Having an appearance of bias never helps when you are in position of making judgments. I congratulate the new start and hope for the site's prosperity.
Please don't turn it into anything like TH. When they were bought out, things went south quickly. As a loyal reader for a number of years, I would hate to see that happen here.
For me Toms hardware used to be the goto place for all things tech, now it's just appalling (I guess around the time it got purchased), when that happenned AnandTech replaced that tech fix, hope this isn't going to be history replacing itself!
This could go one of two ways. Either AnandTech will stay awesome, provide even more awesome content than before, and keep dominating the review and analysis world; or... they will be a slightly better version of the hapless Tom's Hardware (the old days of which are dearly missed).
Stay awesome AnandTech! I believe in you! Heck, if you guys had t-shirts I'd wear one! (Actually a polo preferably, that way the other IT guys in the office know I have good taste in the online world)
What I've found that makes Anandtech special is that you don't raise my blood pressure. Which is to say, your articles don't take that many inflammatory positions. You run benchmarks, you let vendors respond if said benchmarks are horrible and you present your data. I have genuinely enjoyed that content. No one does that anymore.
I read Toms as well, but it is no where near the same thing. They generate far more content, but much is filler. Sometimes it isn't well researched (no where near your average Anandtech article), it's often the opinion of the writer and sometimes is incorrect (although they do generally notice it eventually). You're both entertaining but for very different reasons. They need to be more like you; not vice versa.
You're going to get a lot of hate for this (because, well, it's the internet). I have none for you and wish you all the best. I am, however, genuinely sad.
Thanks for all you do and have done in supporting this site and the deep tech community. You are the good guys.
I truly hope you can continue your run unabated. I can only hope that Purch understands the savvy user base here won't respond well to ad-splattering and lower quality content. Keep it alive.
To all the sad readers out there: Give your trusted editors/writers a chance. At least give them a proper chance to lose the credibility they've built up over the years. =P
They've said for a long time that the business and the content side are separate, and in the coming years, they will have the chance to prove it. If things change for the worse, we will leave. But if things get better (as I hope they do), more will come. And that's good for all of us.
And so will I. Anand has taught us all to be objective and value our editorial independence high, so if that is jeopardized I'll be on my way to the exit.
It's outlined in the article. Basically the acquisition allows us to keep growing the site as we have more power behind us that helps to negotiate better advertising deals. More money means more editors, which in turn results in more and higher quality content.
Sorry man, you are working on the donut theory there, yes the bigger you make the donut, the bigger the hole in the middle, this is the road to being yet another craptastic review site, well done indeed in following the money!
Anand has traditionally had the very best content of the highest quality, so what makes you think more money is needed to create what clearly has already been provided!
Let me address the quantity first (and for the record, these are just my thoughts and observations and may not represent the Purch' or Ryan's point of views).
There are ton of areas that we could explore more with increased resources. I can speak the best about the SSD and storage side as that's where my focus is in, and what I can say is that our enterprise SSD coverage has been lacking for quite some time now. The reason for that is the fact that one person (i.e. me) is simply not enough to cover both client and enterprise sides in full.
(Sorry, accidental "Submit Comment" click -- I guess it's getting way past my bed time)
...With two (or more) people covering SSDs we could significantly improve our output in that field. More reviews also mean that we have more products to compare to, which ultimately means that we will be able to make better recommendations. Having two editors would also allow one to focus on client and the other on enterprise, which would be beneficial from both content and vendor relations standpoints.
As for quality, with more editors we could have more people working on one review. Take iPhone and iPad reviews for instance -- there are numerous subjects to explore, which take a lot of time if it's all done by one person. With more editors and resources we'll be able publish reviews sooner after the release and explore areas that otherwise we might not be able to do due to time restrains.
While I believe our content is already high quality like you said, there is always room for improvement and the acquisition (at least in theory) allows us to deliver even better content to you guys :)
that's true. If this is just about resources this could really turn into a good thing. The reivews have always been the best here, there just weren't enough of them.
If moar content is all we get and it remains at the level of quality we're used, this will be a huge success, lens hope so as more more more is the only thing I've ever wished out of AT.
I'm not sure there's much sense to that. What I glean from the reviews: you wait for the vendors to freebie the parts rather than spending a couple of hundred (or three or four) bucks. The big deal enterprise vendors won't do that, since their parts go for the kilo bucks, and their potential clients won't use AnandTech reviews in decision making. So, you'll buy a Violin array for test, now that Purch owns you? Was there such a transition at Tom's? I think not.
Prosumer is as far as it makes sense for the site. SMB at the outside. Even there, most ISP/VAR vendors bundle hardware of their choosing.
You hit the nail on the head FunBunny2. Kristian, please contact Purch and have them provide invoices detailing the extra funds they've invested into Toms in order to:
a) Increase the number of editors b) Increase the quantity and quality of content created c) Purchase gadgets for themselves to review that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise d) Or otherwise improve their infrastructure
All this talk of more money equaling more higher quality content with a longer reach and a wider focus seems to contradict my subjective viewpoint that Tomshardware has only gotten worse in all of those metrics since their acquisition. I hope the evidence will show otherwise.
Sampling isn't only about money, but also about getting access to parts under NDA. Take the 850 EVO for instance -- it's not launching for retail until sometime after Christmas. If we waited for retail availability, our review would easily be over a month late compared to our competition.
We already have close relations with pretty much all of the big enterprise SSD guys (Intel, Samsung, SanDisk/Fusion-io...) and get samples from them, even though the parts cost thousands of dollars. Storage arrays are a very interesting, yet complicated topic, but ultimately most storage arrays consist of SSDs made by the aforementioned companies.
"Sampling isn't only about money, but also about getting access to parts under NDA. Take the 850 EVO for instance -- it's not launching for retail until sometime after Christmas. If we waited for retail availability, our review would easily be over a month late compared to our competition."
I call BS on that. The LG 34UM95 monitor became available retail in the U.S. on May 1st. I know because I purchased mine on that very day and had it running on my desk that night. On June 2 the full review was up on my website. AnandTech's review and Tom's review only appeared WEEKS AFTER that.
Maybe the SSD segment works different, but you are mistaken thinking that buying a retail sample equals a delay. I can point to many examples where having a retail sample to review would have put me in the very front of the line, ahead of all the "big name" media outlets, and I'm just a one-man operation.
It certainly depends on the product and company. Some of the SSD companies I deal with don't do NDA samples (even though I've tried to convince them) and you are correct that sometimes it would be faster to buy a retail unit.
However, generally speaking, I see nothing wrong with being sampled by the manufacturer. We could argue about the possibility of rigged samples, but the truth is that eventually companies get caught and then sh*t will hit the fan big time, so any rational company should understand that it's not worth the risk.
Kingston's V300 is a prime example as Kingston went and changed to slower NAND without a notice. We called them out and I know for a fact that their sales plummeted after that (I got access to major retailer's sales data here in the Nordic region). That also explains why Kingston is no longer offering us review samples... But I couldn't care less about that -- I value the truth and integrity higher than a relationship with a company that isn't honest with its customers.
And just to add (since there's still no edit button...), nothing should change for us editors. The business side of the site will go through a full revamp, but the business and editorial sides have always been completely separated. As long as that promise is kept and we can continue our work like yesterday, you should see absolutely no change either, at least for the worse.
However, if things do change for the worse, then I'll (and likely others too) be on my way out as well, so Purch should have every motive to keep us happy.
Kristian you know that's not true. Business and editorial are not separate. Google adsense called complaining about youtube downloaders, and you purged the forums.
Forums have absolutely nothing to do with editorial. Some of us editors are registered and post there, but we have no mod/admin rights or any say regarding what happens in the forums, including the recent Google issue (for the record, I didn't even hear/know about it until yesterday when reading through the acquisition thread).
I get what you're saying, but to make such comments tells me that you've never lived through a corporate buy out.
I have... you're in for some enlightenment, if you're paying attention. It won't all come at once, it won't be an overnight shock, the idea is to ease everyone into the "new normal".
You can't toss a frog into boiling water, it jumps out. But you slowly turn up the heat and you're eating Frog Legs for dinner.
There is too much money to be saved by moving the deck chairs around, the hopeful comments by people in this form are rainbows and unicorns, the comments leaning towards "R.I.P." are likely from those who have lived it.
At the end of the day, always remember... "It isn't personal Sonny, it's just business".
You are right that I haven't lived through an acquisition. Do I have concerns? Sure. Am I scared about the future? Hell yes. But at the same time I trust what Ryan has told us i.e. that we will remain editorially independent and there won't be any significant changes for us editors. I also trust that what Purch is feeding Ryan is true because I trust that Anand wouldn't do a deal that would hurt his work that he spent nearly 18 years building. Heck, the site still carries his name.
If I had no belief for the future I might as well find the exit right now. I'm willing to give Purch the benefit of the doubt that they will handle this well and I think more of the commenters here should do so as well. Tom's isn't a good example because they had been acquired several times before, so the original team that built Tom's and its reputation has been long gone. We, on the other hand, are the same people who worked here under Anand and more importantly were trained and taught by Anand.
Nothing has changed for now -- I'm still working on the same review as I was earlier this week. If things change over time, then it's time for us both, readers and editors, to re-evaluate the situation. But let's not make any rushed conclusions yet.
The almighty dollar wins again. Greed might be one of the most powerful forces in the universe.
Anandtech, by doing this you've taken everything that made your site worth reading and have chucked it carelessly into the fire. I will take no joy in watching your decline into the clickbait abyss, but by selling yourself to the highest bidder i can't say it wasn't earned.
And the gradual decline of the fourth estate continues.
I'm sure Anand joining Apple was a big part of this. Now that he has no financial interest in AnandTech it frees him from conflicts of interest, and may actually improve independence at AT since it can't be claimed that Ryan et al were secretly acting to support Anand's new employer.
I have never seen a company get sold which ended up being a better company or a better place to work. Anand has cashed out. This was basically for his benefit and no one elses. Give it 18 months and this site will be finished.
Just to be devil's advocate here, you most likely are going to hear about company buy outs that were bad for a reason--it gets more attention than the other way around. I worked at a place that bought out another company, and that old company seemed great, but it was managed unsustainably and was headed for bankruptcy. In that case, "the good ol' days" weren't going to last either way.
So what of Anandtech? It's a wait and see game. Personally, I think most tech sites have fallen into a rut lately. Many aspects have flatlined because of the mobile push. Who buys desktop CPUs anymore? GPU tech is at a crawl. SOC advancement is slowing down. Much of this is due to process node barriers that are getting quite expensive to overcome. New smartphones are largely just spec bumps with needless increases in pixel density. With all of the above, tech sites start becoming product review sites (of which there are too many options to thoroughly review).
It is perplexing that people take this news as a "sellout" of AnandTech. Isn't it the opposite? The previous owner was an Apple employee. Surely there would be an appearance of impropriety had he remained as an owner of the site while working for a company whose products he reviews. And it would be ridiculous for any of you to demand Anand to quit working at Apple and to keep running this site.
No, as soon as some latched unto it they'd scream bloody murder and ever comments section would be about nothing but that... Besides, I imagine Anand took a full time job over there and running the site was already a full time job, unless he clones himself he can't possibly devote the time to both.
Though on a second thought (thanks for the reminder), I can't help but think that he made sure to put like-minded folks in places that matter. Joshua Ho and Brandon Chest come to mind..
I really wish this was good news. But I've NEVER seen a sellout like this add something good. I give you maximum a year.
All anand-like sites that I've loved SO much over the years since the 90's (heck, I even tried to start one myself) have declinen and ended up like crap. Every ****** single one.
I had a feelin this would happen when Anand quit, so I've looked for substitutes since then.
Please, please prove me wrong (I really wish I could bet money on this .... and loose).
Maybe now they'll have the budget to actually buy something they want to review (or we want them to review) instead of just depending on what vendors give them to review.
That's the only positive outcome I can possibly see right now... Hopefully all the negatives I can see coming will not come to fruition.
To the new owners of Anandtech: I love Anandtech not only for the content, but because it is one of the few sites on the internet that has proper use of advertisements. Because of this I, and I suspect many others, who typically use ad-blocking software specifically turn it off in support of this kind of responsible use of ads.
If you flood one of the last great websites with advertisements I will visit it less often, and I will re-enable ad-blocking on the site. Please do not ruin a good thing. We are much more tech savvy when it comes to how we consume content, and if your crank up the ads, we will simply turn them off and ruin the revenue stream. Of course you could be like Tom's Hardware and dumb down your content to attract an audience who does not care... but then you would no longer be Anandtech in the first place.
Agree that Toms has nothing to teach Anand in the writing and reviewing department. I've been reading AT since 2005. I discovered Tom's around the same time. I quickly realized that Tom's was garbage and stopped reading it around 2006. Please do not learn from them.
Remember Tomshardware before Purch (for those of you like me that can), and look at it now.
There are going to be changes. A lot of them won't have anything to do with keeping the content quality at the same level. That being said, bottom line, for me, while Tomshardware produces a lot more stuff I don't care about, it still has editors that do a good job, it still has the occasional well-written article I am interested in. I suspect the same will remain true of Anandtech.
And I already have NoScript set to block out the majority of those crap ad site links Tomshardware tries to connect me to.
Hopefully this will allow for more content. I really miss the AnandTech Podcast, and the off-the-cuff discussions & speculation & behind-the-scenes talk that allowed, as AnandTech in print can be rather clinical. I'd like to see more curiosity-driven reviews of esoteric/niche computing gear like Jarred Walton's fabulous series on radical ergonomic keyboards (I am now a Kinesis Advantage user as a result).
I often felt that AnandTech didn't have the resources to cover _everything_ they might want to, so hopefully this acquisition makes their coverage more robust rather than watered down. AnandTech has a loyal long-term readership and a unique identity among tech sites. There are more inspired ways to leverage that than just plopping ads in every nook & cranny. (I often wondered if AnandTech could offer premium content a la Giant Bomb instead of depend solely on ads.)
Toms Hard Ware - Sister to TOMS HARD WARE, that crap filled ad ridden tracker infested excuse of a so called tech site ( as of today Toms Hardware Home Page alone connects to 107 third party sites, 107, yes that's ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN connections to third parties on ONE PAGE!).
Oh Dear RIP Anandtech it was fun whilst it lasted. you are oficially removed from my Favorites, good luck and well done on selling out down the road to junk status in the community!
I can't help noticing how often the term "ads" pops up in previous staff comments. Better ads, more editors, more quality. Go check silent pc review, they haven't even reskinned the site for quite a while, and still remain the de facto standard in the field they explore. Owners, ads, opportunities, leave this bs for those who care, which is not the (majority of the) people that praise anandtech for its quality. I really liked the donut theory comment above, says it all.
Ultimately as a user I don't decide which ads I get, or which crap company buys one of the best tech sites on the internet, I decide whether to visit the site or not. I wasn't sold on all the talk about how Anand leaving the site is actually a good thing. I'm not sold on "being owned by a bigger is better", either. If the site declines, I'll stop coming back. What's wrong with you people, wanting to turn every decent site out there into a freakin cash machine.
It's relatively easy for Silent PC to remain at the top of their game when they cover such a laser focused niche tho... I like the way AT's content has expanded, specially over the last six years, but it was always clear they lacked the resources and man hours to do ALL they really wanted (whether it was review more phones, more enterprise stuff, have more gear on hand for comparisons, etc).
I'm cautiously optimistic, they've earned that much IMO, even if I won't touch THG with a ten foot pole.
Congrats Anandtech, I hope it works out in the best possible way for you guys. Anandtech is one of the top sites around and I trust you'll continue to push top notch articles and reviews. People always freak and overreact to change. For those of you panicking, just realize the full disclosure at this point in the venture shows the ongoing character that has caused us to trust this crew in the first place. I hope to see the site expand and for all of you to benefit professionally and personally.
Bullshit, xbitlabs is DEAD, Tom's has become a pile of crap, AnandTech's been sold to the company that made tom's a pile of crap. Phoronix has this irritating dude, but he has a few good things on his site, Slashdot is horribly annoying with those new banners, new looks.... Dailytech lately is being irritating too, I like the stupidity the articles are being written... it's more entertaining to me than irritating. TPU, holds still, Videocardz is wonderfull, Fudzilla is still wonderfull. well, there are still sites that offer a descent content. There is a shitload of people who could make this site a community driven/funded site, or at least since it has a healthy status it could've been managed/acquired by it's employees, but instead let's take an arrow in the knee and talk business. I'm off the ship too.
Given how rapidly and starkly Tom's Hardware declined after Purch purchased them, you can hardly blame people for being somewhat pessimistic and a tad dubious that AnandTech will remain what it once was. I doubt even the most optimistic of people is likely to argue that Ton's Hardware is even a tenth the site it was at it's peak.
Purch has developed an awfully negative reputation, and while you understandably have to present this in a positive light you must also be aware of that reputation and why they have it. As the content posted is now under the purview of Purch it's only logical to expect Purch to handle things similarly to how they have in the past. And I don't think how they've handled things in the past is a manner anyone thinks highly of.
Best of luck. However these guys also bought toms hardware, so i have a hard time beleiving they are good investors.
Best have a plan up your sleeve for replacing dailytech though. I imagine you've just gone and lost a substantial number of regular visitors as a result. While reviews were detailed, they were far and few between, many of us came here mostly for dailytech, with the idea of reading a review as a secondary purpose. No reason for myself to visit this place on even a semi-frequent basis now.
Best of luck. However these guys also bought toms hardware, so i have a hard time beleiving they are good investors.
Best have a plan up your sleeve for replacing dailytech though. I imagine you've just gone and lost a substantial number of regular visitors as a result. While reviews were detailed, they were far and few between, many of us came here mostly for dailytech, with the idea of reading a review as a secondary purpose. No reason for myself to visit this place on even a semi-frequent basis now.
"That search led to a number of interesting potential partners"
And you chose Purch? That's what make me sad and pessimistic about the future of this site.
I think most of us long time readers are not really complaining about the editors/writers or doubt them, but we are concerned the future of this lovely site with Purch driving it.
Because personally what I see from their track record, I doubt they'd be concerned about replacing the whole editorial team if they want to, and be satisfied to have acquired the brand and the domain name.
I can see how this is going to pan out. There will be more content pushed at the pretense of "more eyeballs equals more ad revenue" at the expense of quality. This leads to slow vicious cycle of poorer quality and slow death like Toms hardware. Pardon me for being skeptic but people like me who have followed PC hardware since 90's have seen this happen too many times. Hope Ars does not sell to Purch. Sad day for a lot of us.
"There will be more content pushed at the pretense of "more eyeballs equals more ad revenue" at the expense of quality"
With the preface that there is always some kind of speed/quality tradeoff in every action we take, we have not and will not intentionally pick speed and meaningfully compromise the quality of our articles. Our commitment to quality remains today as it was last week and last year. Quality is what makes you guys (our readers) come back day after day.
truly sad news. Anandtech and [H] are the sites that convinced me to remove adblock from my browsers. Toms is certainly bad now content wise, but my last favorite thing is easily the annoying ads. Especially the scrolling ad that slows down you scroll speed on mobile. Infuriating.
I have always respected this site, having read it since 99 or 2000. I remember when they implemented Intellitext AND LET YOU TURN IT OFF. Doubt that will happen with the new owner.
I am sad to see this. I do not want to see AnandTech become a site where a 5 page write up becomes 10 pages loaded with adds and links that make power-reading a chore not a pleasure (Tom's Hardware). In the last year or so the number of updates and posts to the site dropped off noticeably. Since Anand left, I have found few articles that drew my attention enough to read. Please write more reviews like what AnandTech was based on.
I remember when Voodoo Extreme and Gamespy were bought by IGN.
Anandtech and Toms Hardware being owned by the same larger company reminds me of that. One is going to be dominant and the others are going to be drained from, thrash about with irrelevance, and eventually completely subsumed.
I'll remember you like I remember Sharky Extreme, Voodoo Extreme, Gamespy Online, and others. You were great once before Mobile took over your mind so much that you even mention it as your main point of interest over your bread 'n butter material.
I guess you already know that mobile is your angle now and Toms gets PC hardware, so you're playing up to that post-haste. Probably why the "Rented by AMD Cheap" section is finally gone, too?
Time for that agreement to end if you guys are going to be "The Mobile SOC Site," right? ;) Yeah, I remember when VE was going to be the "PC section" of IGN. Or when Gamespy were going to be independent...
I hope you guys aren't really believing what you're saying here. Lying to others is one thing, but lying to oneself is dangerous indeed.
The realities of life are that PC growth is stagnant, and very likely it will shrink in the coming years. We're well into the "fast enough" era of computing, and in another five years the trends happening now will be even more visible. Anand felt very strongly for the past couple of years that focusing purely on the PC side of things was the road to irrelevance. GPU articles still get great traffic, and so do CPU reviews, but most of our tablet reviews get far more traffic than any of our laptop reviews.
We're not abandoning PCs by any means, but the problem is we haven't really had any uptake in advertising for the mobile section -- so despite much greater traffic in our mobile section, it's not really paying the bills (and then some) like it could. I don't know how much companies pay for advertising on AnandTech, but let's just say as an example that our PC content makes on average a penny per page view because there are advertisers that want ads in the "PC" section (but it would really be GPUs, CPUs, SSDs, Laptops, etc.). If the mobile section generates just as much traffic but only earns on average 0.1 cents per view, then there's likely a lot of room to improve things.
Bigger sites right now are getting the bigger advertisers, especially in mobile. They're getting sampled more hardware. That brings more traffic, which enables them to hire more people, and the cycle repeats. Mobile supports PC just like PC supports mobile, and they grow together. Hopefully we can get on that end of the cycle. That's the plan at any rate.
Thanks for confirming I won't need to visit Anandtech anymore in the coming when I have interest in PC reviews as you're abandoning your core readers and passing them off to the shit pile that's Tom's so I'll only if I want to know about the next apple phone or SoC once every 2 years
Jarred didn't say that we are abandoning PC reviews and the core of our readers -- in fact he said the exact opposite. The truth is that mobile presents a bigger growth opportunity for us, so like any business it's logical that we invest in it. What this means is that you will likely see more and more mobile content from us in the future, but it for sure doesn't mean that there will be a decline in quantity or quality of our PC reviews. Basically, it's just more content overall -- it isn't away from anything that we currently do.
(For the record, this is just my view and interpretation of this. Ultimately any and all content strategy decisions are up to Ryan, but I for sure am sticking with the PC side and SSDs)
But here is the thing. You HAVE abandoned PCs pretty much for years now. Slowly, you focused more on mobile devices and tablets a WHOLE LOT more that you should of had. Anandtech was a site that was all about PC hardware and software - and you guys were giving us less and LESS of such content as time passed on - you people just didnt care enough anymore and you went to where the money is - plain and simple. Its ALWAYS about the money. That why Anand left - Apple was probably giving him more money than what he was making from the site. Thats probably why Justic Sklavos left (one of the best PC case reviewers ever). And thats why the remaining Anandtech staff have become a bunch of sellouts. Money talks.
Actually, since I am on the inside on a lot of this, I can tell you that Dustin (not Justic) left for Corsair because they offered a salaried position with benefits and more pay. Vivek went to Razer for similar reasons, and Brian is at Apple again for similar reasons.
If you didn't know, the paycheck of a typical hardware reviewer/journalist is not exactly monstrous -- I'm well short of six figures for example, and other than site owners I haven't ever heard of a tech journalist making that much. But a good engineer at any good tech company could definitely make in the six figure range. There are tons of other benefits (working from home, playing with the latest gadgets, doing something you enjoy, not having a rigid 8-5 work schedule), but it takes a lot of effort to live on a journalist's pay.
As far as PC vs. Mobile, again, we need both. AT started with motherboard reviews, because it was a hot topic in the 90s. These days motherboards are all reaching a level where for most users it's not a huge part of the overall experience -- most boards perform similarly, so it's just a question of what features you need. If AT hadn't evolved from motherboards, what would have happened? If we hadn't added smartphone, Apple, tablet, SoC, etc. coverage, would we still be as relevant?
But we still have Ian doing mobo reviews, so our roots haven't disappeared. We still have Ryan doing GPUs, I do laptop stuff mostly (and guides, which is basically where I started), Kristian is on SSDs -- all PC stuff. Josh, Andrei, and Brett are more mobile focused, and we'll probably add people to that segment over the coming months, but that takes time.
Ok then on a more serious note and on a politely manner: From my experience from working in three different companies in all my years of employment, when people leave its either because A) they fumbled big time or B) they found something better with more money. And im guessing that B) is the answer here when it comes to Anand, Dustin, Vivek and Brian. I was mostly surprised by Anand's choice, because its litteraly the other way around of what you would expect him to do: Most people get employed by someone else, with the aspiration to build something of their own in the future. Anand LEFT something that he built on his own and went to work under somebody else. As much as i try to understand it, i cant (so you can understand that my "outrage" earlier, came from a lot of dissapointment from seeing Anand go). Now as for the PC hardware coverage... you guys still do the BEST motherboard, CPU and Videocard reviews out there, clean and thorough. I liked your work and i was sad to see it diminishing over the years. Thats all. My apologies for the previous rant.
To be fair: Anand's new (old?) employer there in Cupertino stopped being a computer company and morphed into an appliance company about a decade ago. "Fast enough" applies across the board. 3-D NAND might change the plateauing of semi-conductor tech a bit, but the fact is: humans know all there is to know about how the universe works. We've just made the parts a tad smaller. Has that made any real difference in our lives? Well, you can not only pop your pimples on the subway, but play games on a device that you may never actually use to talk to another human being. You could, if you wanted to, of course. This is progress?
Trying to keep an open mind, but cant see much good coming of this. Reading the release, it seems like the focus is going to shift even more to mobile, which is the exact opposite of what I would like to see. I pretty much just follow the site now for the forums anyway, since in depth testing and benchmarking have been getting less and less common for a long time now.
When Anand left the day-to-day my initial reaction was fear that a long time resource for me would decline in value. Now the fear strikes anew I must say. Still - only the future knows. I'm still reading Anandtech for deeper insights and hopefully I'll be able to continue to do that and have faith in the information for a long time to come.
I already see DailyTech content missing.. As annoying as a lot of their stuff could be I liked seeing it listed on AT. I'm likely going to be coming here less often.
+1. It's entirely possible for Purch to leave the editorial content alone while destroying the site via ads and some kind of "Partner News" section, though to be fair, it's hard to imagine something worse than DailyTech.
I am a tech site reader, before I think Tom's is shallow in content but since purch acquire them the content is more like anandtech, so I think It;s good for anandtech to be acquired by Purch to extend the quality of the site.
I would hope you could reconsider. Just because we're owned by Purch does not mean we have any intention of becoming like Tom's. Not in content nor design. We run our own affairs, as does Tom's.
You intentions don't matter anymore only what Purch wants will matter from here on so I'm gonna have myself the trouble of the massive amounts of future ads and crosslinks ala Toms and just let Anandtech enjoy going back into the land of adblock with toms /. and most other overly ad heavy sites. Being affiliated with Toms hardware is about the worst thing you all could of done as it gives everyone whos been around long enough to know exactly whats coming.
I really hope the editorial content doesn't suffer the same way Tom's Hardware has. I used to frequent Tom's all the time, but in the last few years has become terrible, the worst kind of tabloid hack rubbish. I await to be surprised, don't let me down.
My first tech site was Tom's... when it started to turn in a junk, I went and discovered AT. It starts to sound like history repeating itself now. Will see in a few months.
Oh, so that's why Tom's H. quality dropped drastically lately... and it became a bloated, full of ads, full of bugs piece of garbage website. I guess it's Goodbye Anandtech as well. *sigh*
First things first: Is there enough cash for an edit button please? Now, down to serious business:
Both Tom's and Anandtech are my favourite two hardware news sites. I like their differences, and I read most news articles on both sites.
This sentence, "AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another," is cause for some mild concern. Please don't unify, I like your differences.
The fact that Purch now owns: all the "Tom's" brand sites Anandtech, Top Ten Reviews, LiveScience, Space.com, BuyerZone,
And a few others that I'm sure I'm missing gives it, in my eyes, INCREDIBLE power to sway people's opinions about things. I have re-enabled Adblock Plus on Tom's and Anandtech until my suspicions go away, which will probably be just after lunch when I'm going to go have some McDonald's. (Hey, what can I say? Food makes most things better. :-)
I have been reading Anandtech since the Core 2 QX9650/Intel X48 era (2007). Anandtech really set the standard at that time in the PC Enthusiast World. Who can forget the following epic articles:
-http://www.anandtech.com/show/2427/4 This was one of the most influential articles in the word of PC Enthusiasts/Overclockers. In it, Anandtech explains in detail the TRD concept (Northbridge Latency) and how to achieve the best possible performance out of your X48 board.
Anandtech really, really was THE authority in PC overclocking.
Lately, the only article I saw that came close to the very high Anandtech quality standard was this:
I have noted a decline in articles focusing specifically on overclocking and PC enthusiasts. It is wrong IMHO to neglect the PC enthusiast/Overclocker segment of your fanbase. PC related articles lately seem more like a presentation of products rather than in-depth analysis. It is the "in-depth analysis" and the "uncovering of overclocking secrets" that brought substantial fame to Anandtech.
My two cents anyway. I'd say the same things to Anand himself.
First things first: Is there enough cash for an edit button please? Now, down to serious business:
Both Tom's and Anandtech are my favourite two hardware news sites. I like their differences, and I read most news articles on both sites.
This sentence, "AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another," is cause for some mild concern. Please don't unify, I like your differences.
The fact that Purch now owns: all the "Tom's" brand sites Anandtech, Top Ten Reviews, LiveScience, Space.com, BuyerZone,
And a few others that I'm sure I'm missing gives it, in my eyes, INCREDIBLE power to sway people's opinions about things. I have re-enabled Adblock Plus on Tom's and Anandtech until my suspicions go away, which will probably be just after lunch when I'm going to go have some McDonald's. (Hey, what can I say? Food makes most things better. :-)
Years ago, I would hit Tom's Hardware site 3 to 5 times a day, and often find new articles, news stories and other things I was interested in. I read through every single article soaking up the info being presented.
Then, it because obvious that something had changed. I didn't know what. But going to Tom's more than once a day for almost anything because rather useless. There were far fewer news stories, and reviews suddenly only appeared at midnight or whenever some NDA expired. And getting more than 1 story/article/review a day released almost never happens.
About 8 weeks ago, I posted on Toms that their forcing ads onto the bottom news pages despite my running AdBlocker was something I would not put up with. I later discovered a way to turn those off. Now I have to assume this is coming to Anandtech as well.
So to now read that the same people that bought Tom's are going to be running Anandtech hurts.
I assume that this means that now I am pretty much losing most of the info I have gotten over the years from this site.just as I did on Toms site. I find this very disappointing.
I guess the old adage applies... Follow the money. Thats all it is ever about... The money.
Anand leaving for something as big as Apply meant that this site needed to get out from underneath him and now we have the results of that.
I will admit that I read TH but the quality is low compared to AT and the quantity certainly does not make up for it. I am strongly sitting on the fence now to remove both from my favorites and move on.
What I don't understand people saying "hope this acheives their goals". The goal of this site is to attract viewers to top editorial talent, top quality, and top articles to drive data driven decisions in terms of commerce, or on the other hand to attract viewers who have a deep interest in understanding tech and are the 'go-to techie' in their circles and are held in a position of trust. AT is in a position of trust in our circles, as the readers the sale of the site is an invitation to the abuse of that position of trust. Only time will tell if steps are taken through that door but this plan of "more ad = more revenue = bigger = better" will QUICKLY FAIL and the _readers_ will leave.
Thanks for all the hard work over the years, I truly hope you prove the nay-sayers wrong and this pillar can stand strong.
I stopped reading TH because the ads became out of control. Go take a look at that site - it's impossible to read. I'm very disappointed that AT is now owned be TH. I view competition as a good thing, and now there is less in this space.
I love that they are using the space vacated by the much hated DailyTech to display Facebook links to stuff 8 months old. I kinda liked Daily Tech and really don't want to be reminded on how to waste the power of a GTX 780ti from back in May.
Well, hopefully this all works out for the best. As long as the current staff stays on, I have complete faith that the quality of this site will not change.
I stopped going to Toms about a decade ago, but still come here 1-2 times a day.
Keep up the great work Ryan (and others) and those of us that are long time viewers will continue to enjoy this site.
Funny thing went through my head as I was reading this... "I hope it wasn't the same company that bought Tom's hardware", since I didn't know who Purch is. Then I saw, and was a bit more concerned. Hopefully this site won't go in the same trajectory as Tom's. Now mind you that Tom's still has great articles (Chris Angelini might be my favorite), but at the very least the site's presentation has gone to the pooper.
So I guess we shall find out. I am hopeful that this site will keep delivering the good stuff. I don't have too many places to turn to. Actually, on that subject, what other sites do you guys recommend that has in-depth stuff?
The quality at Tom's hardware went way downhill after they sold out to 'big business' (same owners now). I'm very much expecting the same to happen here. It saddens me to see htis happening since it is the creators of a site that gives that site its spirit. When the site's creator leaves it int hands of others who are in it purely for the money, it diminishes to the point of becoming jut another soulless tech magazine.
No disrespect to Ryan, but Anand Al-Shimpi was Anandtech's soul. Without him and his vision, Anandtech has lost its soul. That is not something that Purch can replace.
I have been there since the beginning... 1997. In a way I kind of feel like I grew up with Anand and Anandtech. More than anything it has been his passion and curiosity for computers and technology, especially processors, his ability to cut to the chase and get to what's important in an review, and to at once speak naturally and professionally that has made this site so endearing to me. I have learned so much from this site over the years...
Losing Anand was like losing a friend in a way. But I told myself that is passion and style had been thoroughly ingrained into the people he hired. And more importantly he found people that had those same qualities he himself possessed so all he had to do was nurture what was already there in his new hires. That last point is especially important to the survival of the greatness of Anandtech because it's not something that will wither in time with Anand's passing. Hopefully it is an inherent quality in all who work here and will continue to work here.
I am optimistic for Anandtech. Passion, curiosity, and great writing are key. If you are going to keep the name "Anandtech" then make sure you keep the qualities that made it great in the first place.
All that being said if I start to see those adds that block out the entire screen on Anandtech I will know it's the beginning of the end.
I am in the same boat, reading Anandtech and may other hardware sites since 1999. Anandtech has been my favorite and has been my number one bookmark for more than a decade. What made Anand's reviews so special were the insight he brought about the category and industry in general. I could read the first page and tell if it was written by Anand. Anand leaving was a big blow and now this. Reading the comments from the editors it seems they are still committed to Anandtech... may be there is some hope.
Take a look at WindowsCentral.com.. (formally WPCentral.com *windows phone*). That site has Purch as an Advertsing Partner. Key difference you'll note right away is more advertising (10 different ads... as opposed to the 6 that appeared here) from very interesting vendors like Subaru and Mercedes Benz. Daniel Rubino's site is obviously Windows centered... it's a fan site of sorts... but he doesn't appear to be overly tainted.
Maybe you can upgrade website to autofit screen sizes of users who browse it. I don't understand how websites are made with a good 4 inches of wasted space on both sides of screen. Don't get me started on the terrible color schemes used. White on black..seriously. That is just the thing i love to see when i wake up and visit popular websites..freakin bright white backgrounds on every page.
The appropriately named "bluesnews" background is perfect, easy to read with nice background.
I hope that this new deal allows the site to expand as it needs to. Anandtech is in a league of its own quality-wise for reviews of anything it addresses, and always has been.
As mentioned above, the pace of change in the PC sector has slowed to a crawl, which coupled with Anandtech's in-depth approach isn't helpful from the point of generating "launch day" content. Perhaps a change into more long-term testing, reliability-based reviews etc could solve that. Widening the scope of testing could also help, I've mentioned more than once that reviews of *genuine* low-end or mid-range hardware is sadly lacking in practically all areas of the site, with motherboards and RAM reviews particularly standing out. Motherboard reviews seem to assume that $200 is "midrange" at this stage. At the moment we've got x99 and 10GbitE motherboards being reviewed, but there's nothing on the apparent slew of H and B series motherboards that will overclock even though they're not officially supposed to. "Roundup" reviews where multiple competitors of the same type also seem to have gone by the wayside.
Editorially, I think everyone is on the same page that: Tom's Hardware is a site full of junk reviews which offer nothing whatsoever to Anandtech in terms of "learning". I wouldn't even trust Tom's to have benchmark donkey-work farmed out to them.
"The company (Purch) helps marketers achieve their branding and performance objectives in a high-quality, brand-safe context. Its sites connect in-market shoppers with more than 7,000 marketers and sellers, driving industry-leading conversion rates and $1 billion in commerce transactions annually."
A marketing firm has purchased AnandTech? Get ready to be bombarded with ads on every page.
i've been with anandtech & tom's hardware for many many years (lurking/reading mostly). stopped going to tom's a few years back when it became a cesspool of ads.
what happens here is yet to be seen, hopefully it doesn't devolve into merely yet another ad-delivery mechanism like 99% of websites.
there's always ars/engadget/slashdot for good birds-eye-view of the sector, but not much left for the ground level view.
Tragic news, as I've been following the site for over half of my life. I had hoped that the site might find a way to continue after Anand's departure, but I suppose it was always unlikely that it would survive the loss of that much talent in such a short time. It's just especially disappointing to see it sold to a garbage content farm company.
So long Anandtech. You used to be a great resource on computer hardware. Now you've gone full retard. Getting rid of Brian Klug was strike 1. Selling out to Purch is a weak line out to the pitcher. You wont be missed. Deleting the shortcut from my browser after this is posted. Good luck Ryan. You're gonna need it with all those shitty writers you have working for you.
Thanks. Let me make another "crappy" comment for you to enjoy....
First, "getting rid" is hardly what happened to Brian Klug. He had a great job opportunity and is likely making several times as much money as he could have made sticking with AT. As for Anand, he really was quite tired of all the travel and something a bit less chaotic is a nice change of pace. Think about how long he was doing the same thing, day after day, year after year -- and not as one of us crappy writers; he had to run the site as well. At one point he had a post saying something like, "This is the first vacation I've taken in ten years." I'm sure he earned plenty of money, but money as they say can't buy happiness.
So if you're thinking it's time to do something else, what do you do? You find a way to pass the torch to someone new, get out while you're still doing well and have a business worth buying. That's basically what happened. I realize this is the Internet, so every time there's a major announcement of change like this everyone likes to come out of the woodworks and proclaim the end of the world. That way if they're right, they can pay themselves on the head and say, "I told you so." And if they're wrong, as they usually are, they go back into hiding and wait for the next time to forecast a dire future.
The fact is that the people writing for AnandTech have not changed in the past several months. Everyone who was with AT when Anand retired is still alive and kicking. Reviews are still in progress, and delays sometimes happen. Several of the editors are in school as well, which inherently creates a slow down in output.
If anyone reads this and thinks they could do a better job at writing articles, by all means write something and submit it to Ryan, Ian, or me. If you can string together a bunch of coherent sentences about technology and you are passionate about the subject, there's certainly room for adding people. Or you can continue to go around grumbling about the collapse of the site, lack of quality reviews, etc. because it's a lot easier to do that I suppose.
"If anyone reads this and thinks they could do a better job at writing articles, by all means write something and submit it to Ryan, Ian, or me."
LOL I have done that in the past... and received only radio silence.
Proper spelling, grammar, technical knowledge and journalistic integrity no longer matter. My computer knowledge spans close to three decades, and have been writing full-time for almost seven years. I started my own website back in 2008 because I believed I could offer something that I saw was missing at the time - hands-on information, critical reviews and honest, unbiased, expert opinion. Articles written by an enthusiast, for the enthusiast, with detailed, specific, niche information. Not the marketing hype echoed by the tech media elite, nor the lies spread on endless forum threads by dubious posters.
No, I don't want to be "some guy on YouTube", there are plenty of those already. There will be things that you just cannot cover in a five minute video, that's where I appreciate guys like TTL. But even he still relies on written content, and owns his own website.
The downfall happens when some rich guy who's last written piece was his term paper in high-school tells the minimum-wage English grad who thinks a pot is something you keep in the garden to write a motherboard review. Meanwhile, the guys who have been elbow-deep tinkering with their overclocks see the end result and think to themselves WTF.
I reckon selling it to Purch was a pretty bad idea because the company will become too big which would be detrimental for the Hardware folks in some ways. Anyway, it's happened so it's past.
It was quite a great journey to be immensely proud of. My best wishes to AT staff.
Or maybe you cannot put a price on honest, unbiased, expert opinion... You would be surprised at some of the offers I have received. At least I don't pretend to run a bakery with sugar-coated articles.
You are very wrong there - I can take constructive criticism. The irony is being told you're over qualified when there are some really shitty writers out there.
Ryan and team: I've been a casual reader since the Pentium 3, and I always read your reviews before making a computer purchase. I've even started reading your mobile content before making purchases. I have great respect for you and your team, and I will continue to visit your site regularly. The ranters and ravers out there probably care too much, but then they'll probably come back time to time to see what's going on...and in time well be regular visitors again. Don't sweat them. I wish you all the best...and early Merry Christmas :-)
I only hope this Purch won't force you guys to put as many ads as on Toms and that your reviews will keep current high standards and won't change into prepaid/pre-scripted ads with millions links to Amazon, Newegg etc. Only time will tell if the last IT mohycans(Anandtech) just got stabbed into back or not.
For the missing edit option: why don't you guys use fast, secure & properly working Disqus instead of this joke?
I am amazed at the attacks being lodged against the writers and other staff at Anandtech; people who are human beings just like you & I. People who (generally) have put in a lot of hard work making Anandtech what it is.
For those who really think they can do a better job, go ahead and do it! Don't just sit there and badmouth the writers here. Show a bit of respect here!
It's fine to have an opinion and offer constructive feedback, but quite a lot of the comments here have been anything but constructive.
Sad day indeed. I have been around the internet tech sites since day one for most and Anand lal Shimpi was the person that made Anandtech what it was.
When the bigger sites started selling out (Windrivers was one of the first), that spelled the death of truly unbiased editorial. Most of the reviews started to be the same including bigging up flawed hardware to the point that it was pure fanboism (yes I know not a word!) over the actual truth. The only site that continued to truthfully review products is HardOCP with no airs or graces other than the truth.
I wish all the best to Anand and will now remove the bookmark from my browsers.
I think Anandtech deserves the benefit of doubt. I am not surprised to hear some people predicting the end of the world. It always happens in these situations. What matters is not them, but how things will develop over the next months and years. Anand left, which is undoubtedly a loss, but the rest of the team still makes an excellent job, so I will keep on reading them every day, and I am sure many will do too. I am not too worried about ads, if big popups start to appear I will simply remove AT from Adblock plus whitelist... But as long as people like Kristian, Ganesh and the others stay on-board I will stay with them... If they start leaving I will leave the boat too.
Yeah I commented on this yesterday as the Dailytech links were one of the mains reasons I visited this site besides the articles. I'll give it a bit but if they dont come back I'm out.
As someone who has been sh!tted on by megacorporations for being too small to matter I understand.
The only way to fight fire is with fire. You have to get big enough to matter so the megacorpations blink when they lowball you and you tell them to f@ck off.
I am very sad to see this, but at some stage Anand was going to do this. He now has lifelong financial security and the site will deteriorate henceforth.
We now need a new soothsayer to make us a new site with the same quality.
No congratulations here. Every time independent media outlets are purchased, either their quality or integrity or both are compromised.
Tom's site is a great example of this. Sad to see THE premier tech site in the world fall prey to this failed model (as far as content quality and independence goes). The idea behind every case is always noble but something goes horribly wrong along the way. Thanks AT for becoming the best tech site and for all the knowledge I've gained throughout the years. In a couple of years what you did will be sorely missed.
I don’t post in the comments section often, but I read 97% of the articles and have done so for many years. On the one hand, I have noticed decline in the number of in-depth articles, so I hope that this improves. On the other hand, I have seen Tom’s Hardware become a mess and I was wondering why…. now I understand why thanks to the press release.
Tom’s Hardware is now impossible to read on a web browser without an adblocker. Trying to do it on a tablet becomes something between a joke and the most infuriating experience ever. It is a perfect example of “how not to do it”. With every swipe you’re likely to trigger an advert and they pop up all over the place, usually obscuring most of the screen. Is this what we have to look forward to at Anandtech?
I see no reason why this site will be any different and it is a pity. I understand the reasons very well, because, let’s face it, money talks, but I see nothing good in the future for this site.
"Purch acquired one of AnandTech’s biggest competitors in the late 1990s: Tom’s Hardware."
Toms Hardware; A great site except for the fact it's home to every annoying method of advertizing on a website known to man. Closed my account with them years ago.
Maybe after TomsHardware was bought by Purch, it started losing its charm. I didn't know it was sold but started not liking it from around the same time (I would say around 2001). Hope Anandtech doesn't end up at the same corner.
Ryan didn't say Tom's Hardware was bought in the 90's, but that they were Anandtech's big competitor in the 90's. Purch didn't acquire Tom's until July 2013. So whatever complaints we have about Tom's....they are not due to Purch's ownership.
Correct, whilst TH has been deteriorating slowly for some time, it became really bad after the purchase and especially more so recently with ads and links to buy placed everywhere in every article.
I am surprised that people try to look at this with an optimistic view - just take a look at every other "review site" that Purch has purchased (hehe) .... I do not see anything good in the future for Anandtech. What a pity.
A very sad day. I hope the team manage to maintain their independence but every single similar site sellout I can think of ended in the front page car crash that is Tom's Hardware. But who knows, maybe Anandtech will be the first site to prove us all wrong!
Sorry to hear Anadtech was bought, but since Anand left it, not really a surprise. Toms is still doing some good work, and much better than ZDnet, CNET, etc. So I will remain positive, but I will not be surprised to see Toms and Anand merge next year sometime.
I check Anandtech literally daily and have for at least 2-3 years. A few coworkers do as well and we have read articles from other sites before but never trusted it until it was Anandtech. If Anand was a part of it then I trust his judgement and look forward to seeing what comes from it!
Not much of a fan of Tom's Hardware though.. it seriously needs a new design.
Anand has built a respectable, valuable site. I hope that continues and I am not going to get upset before it is needed. Times and interests move on,, so hats off to Anand for building something of value, then going off to try something new and maybe better! The crew at Anand is great, and builds a lot of value in the site. But there are warning clouds out there... for example how Purch has structured Tom's site.
Tom's has some great content, but I go there perhaps as much as 5% as often as Anand. AD's are the reason, not content. Tom's site, once in, takes a hold and wont let go.. A complete browser shutdown is needed to exit tom's site. And those full page ads that block the page content are the most annoying.
Purch believes the more ads, the more aggressive the approach, the more cash (as shown with Tom's site). But I do believe if they are trying to increase Tom's readership (and cash flow), they need to first look in the mirror to find the problem.
The first full page, page blocking ad on Anand, and I am gone. With an obnoxious ad-centric theme aimed to 'better monetize' the site, I am gone. So Purch, if that happens, run your cash flow calculations on my click count compared to what you get now.
And then of course, thinking how Purch may try to gain cash flow and margin, they will be assessing whether 2 sites makes sense. I would smile from afar if they chose something catchy like 'The comprehensive T&A review site'. But consolidation, I fear, is an already done deal somewhere in the executive management plan.
I have followed the site since Anand posted his first article. Anand left and now the site has been sold. I am truly sad. I sometimes follow a link to a THG article and always leave it thinking how much better AT is. Now they are in the same bed together and I really feel betrayed as someone that has supported AT from the start. I have not supported this site to see it get lumped in with the crap that THG puts out. Some of the crap THG writes is clearly paid for infomercial level articles. I so hope AT does not turn into the same cess pool. My stomach turned when I read its was numbers and dollars decision. The bottom line syndrome (must be bigger) is destroying too many great companies.
I will be watching and reading but honestly my hopes are not that high. Too many great companies get sold and destroyed today to believe that AT will one of the exceptions.
And the list of media not owned by a company that's owns by a company that's owns by a company that's owns by Rupert Murdoch gets even shorter...really sad to see this. Tim to remove the anandtech bookmark..
I used to visit Tom's Hardware on a daily basis. Suddenly it became more advertising and less content. I rarely visit now. I understand the need to generate revenue but it severely overshadowed the content. I hope that does not become the path of AnandTech.
He couldn't afford to compete with bandwidth. Instead of arguing if the site went downhill before now or it will after. Thing about this, its about net neutrality. And tech sites aren't the only things being consolidated its EVERYTHING from fast food to slow ass internet dualoplies at 10x the cost outside the United States. I've been around when toms was the place to go, I went here when it was bought out and turned to crap. Next I guess I go to HardOCP until they get bought out. Hopefully I'll die before I run out of sites :p
Lol we all know how "good" toms hardware become after its takeover... Get your ad blocker ready... And u guys are kidding yourselves this will not have en effect on the journalism. You have a boss now that will tell what to write when it means more clicks/ profits or payoffs from a vendor. Bye bye AT
I believe the staff when they say they have no intentions of changing how they do things, and that they will walk if asked to compromise their integrity. However, like others who have posted, I have zero faith in AT's new corporate overlords supporting the autonomy of the staff indefinitely.
As AT's own staff have stated many times, competition is good for consumers. AT and Toms being under the same roof forebodes only ill. There's no way that Purch is going to keep paying two different teams to cover the same material forever, and I fear that AT will get pushed into focusing solely on mobile while Toms gets the entire PC hardware pie.
I also worry about AT becoming a cesspit of hostile advertisement like Toms. Using their site without some sort of adblock makes me want to rage-vomit uncontrollably and never return. You say that Purch should be given the benefit of the doubt, that much of the damage done to Toms was before they took the wheel, but consider this: They could have swept the site clean of the insidious/invasive advertisement fungus Day 1 of ownership, and instead it has remained in place for over a year.
The situation at Toms has not improved in the last year. Why should we believe that they will have any positive impact on AT instead of simply milking it for all the value it has studiously built over these many years, until both the readers and the writers walk away in disgust?
The AT staff may have good intentions, but they are no longer at the wheel. Purch may be allowing them to drive for now, but how long will that last?
I'm going to keep coming back, and I hope that I'm proven wrong... but I doubt it. :/
Can i get back the news column / area that existed on the right side of the pane on the home page? It has been replaced by an ugly face book related area :(
@angryemo, suggest you simply change your bookmark to read "dailytech.com". I've already added that to mine, and if AT doesn't hold onto its old ways, it will be leaving the list.
"Keep comments here, not on Anand’s site please, you know they won’t last."
To be exceedingly clear here, I have deleted a single comment from this thread. It was a piece of spam. No comments are being removed on the basis of content. That's not something we do.
Well... BestOfMedia was a mess. Some of their moderators were problematic and some good staff was lost... and now almost forgotten. I remember when both Toms and Anand were YOUNG websites... Anand had hair and Tom himself was actually active on his site.
Having both websites owned by the same company... not seeing much of a future for both to be objective. Tom has improved in the past year thou.... and their advertising blitz seems to have gone down... so we'll have to see.
Hopefully Anandtech will continue to be the website it currently is... only time will tell.
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tviceman - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
What the heck, I didn't see anything in the for sale forum. I would have at least shot an offer!Wreckage - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I thought AMD bought them years ago...Morawka - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
LMAO thank you sirchimaxi83 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
A banned retard that just can't get enough of AT can only troll the comment sections of articles...my my, how sad.Samus - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Wait I'm confused, I thought AMD bought Tom's Hardware ;)Dakosta Le'Marko - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Stunning! I've started averaging 85 dollars/hourly since i started working online half a year ago... What i do is to sit at home several hours each day and do simple jobs i get from this company that i found over the internet... I am very happy to share this with you... It's an awesome side job to have www.orkan201.tkExodusC - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Anand leaves, AnandTech sold out... The decline continues...Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Sold. Not sold out."Sold out" implies compromising ones morals or ethics, which is absolutely not the case here.=)
ws3 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
That remains to be seen.Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Innocent until proven guilty, or is that no longer a thing? Nothing so far indicates a decline imo.Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Edit: I will add that Anandtech has much better content than Toms Hardware, along with being much less ad-infested as well. The main page of tomshardware shows up with *TWENTY SIX* ads. Some of it might be the background or something, but that's just ridiculous. Meanwhile, Anandtech blocks like two ads. Please don't go that way.On the other hand, maybe the influx of cash will bring an actual edit button :)
otherwise - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I might be hugely biased, but I think Anandtech was much better than Tom's before the purchase, so it's not causation.Senti - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I can say that content of Anandtech lately was far from uniform: one awesome article, several good, several awful.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Lately? :) I've been reading AnandTech since nearly the start, it has been a long time since it was all goodness. :)Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
That I definitely can't weigh in on. I didn't start reading until about three years ago or so, and I believe Toms was already purchased then.JFP - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Tom's was purchased by Purch in July 2013. Prior to that it had passed through the hands of several companies.letsreboot - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
+1. Also, Tom's used to be comparable some years ago (before the "Best of Media") era.Another +1 to @Senti's post below ref. perceived variable quality of published articles in the post-Anand era.
Sad reality is that it's all about the $$$/profits in the end.
Dug - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
Yes most businesses are. But it's also about sustainability going forward. There's only so long you can work at minimum wage before you realize you would like something better in life.Money equals happy workers. Happy workers equals better content.
Wolfpup - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
When was Tom's bought? It's still one of the hardware sites I go to, but maybe a decade ago I kind of switched to Anandtech as my main one.This is kind of sad, but I hope doesn't spell disaster. It's nuts that they had to do that to get ad revenue! I don't even KNOW of what big hardware sites these would be. Cnet maybe? IMO they're not worthless, but are more complementary than a competitor IMO since they can review a lot more stuff but obviously aren't very in depth and don't really cover technology.
chang3d - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
For the longest time, Tom's was mostly posting Apple related news. I remember I was one of those guys who hit them on that in the comments, which got me banned for a week... I brought up the question why did Apple WDC get 20 articles and Google IO only got 1? Later Tom's defended itself by saying Apple news drives up hit counts, despite the fact most comments on those articles were overwhelming negative. It's like 10 of the 15 most recent articles were on Apple and expect us not to click on at least one of them to complain about why there are SO MANY Apple articles. So I quit Tom's.But, since Purch got Tom's, Tom's is now a more balanced hardware news site. I would say that Purch has done a pretty good job.
random2 - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
I quit close to a decade a go when they were bought out by Bestofmedia in 2007, and started running popups, and popovers.JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
I too no longer have a Tom's account. I still surf it a bit, but I'm not nearly as actively involved. They turned Nazi and you can't disagree with anything there now.cuex - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I don't see any ads in Anandtech and Toms Hardware. Ops, I forgot that I have adblock plus.Stonedofmoo - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
lol, thanks for that tip. Not a plugin I'd heard of before. Makes viewing Tomshardware much smoother without irritating full screen adverts I have to get rid of.gw74 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
yes it's so irritating that they have to find a way to monetise a service you are getting for free. douche.gw74 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
so not only are you reading Anandtech's journalism for free, you are blocking their ability to pay themselves for no reason and gleefully boasting about it. congratulations.JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
It's not as if we were going to click on their ads anyway...AnnihilatorX - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I have whitelisted both Anandtech and Ars technica because the ads are so modest I don't mind and it helps them. If you adblock the ads, the site makes no money (it's not about whether you never click ads), which is bad for them. So whitelisting adblock for sites you like is a mean to support their business.JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
The get paid per page hit, not whether or not you download the picture.fluxtatic - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I hope what AT takes away from Tom's is what not to do. I can't even really put my finger on why, but I despise Tom's Hardware.Thus far, after the departure of the man himself, I haven't seen much difference in the quality of AT (and that's a good thing), so I'm willing to keep an open mind as to what will happen now. I understand the reasoning behind it, but just the same, it's a little sad to lose such a kickass voice existing independently.
damianrobertjones - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Tom's didn't even review the SUrface Pro 3!Dribble - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Anandtech hasn't reviewed the nexus 9!JohnMD1022 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Quite frankly, I thought Anandtech sliiped in the past few years.I grew quite tired of cell phone articles.
JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
I did too, but they did have some really good articles still. Tom's on the other hand started selling sex appeal at Xmas, among other things. While I like sex, I have porn for that. Tech articles should be about tech. Most of their "news" revolves around trying to lure readers with boisterous headlines that are exaggerated.melgross - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Ads pay for the content. Unless you'd rather pay some upfront fee that would need to be rather large.Arstechnica has a $75 a year fee for those of us willing to pay that for no Ads, and the ability to get more focussed content, as well as downloadable pdf's of articles. I do that, and it wouldn't hurt here either. People don't have to pay. It's a choice.
Marthisdil - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Neither of them show up with any ads for me....adblock plus ftwdesignerfx - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I'd think Anand leaving may have had to do with Purch.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Not sure if I agree. Quote from the article:"Before his departure, Anand spent almost a year meeting with all of the big names in the publishing space, both traditional and new media players"
DanNeely - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
It's unlikely his departure was an abrupt thing even if Apple's veil of secrecy precluded announcing it in advance. If he decided to try selling the site because Apple offered him a job, or if Apple made an offer because they heard he was trying to sell the site is a separate question; but doubt they're unrelated.LauRoman - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Not when you think about what Tom's has become.ET - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Innocent until proven guilty? That's not the internet way!Stuka87 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
People like you that block the Ads are part of the reason AnandTech was not profitable enough to stay independent. If you truly cared about this site and enjoyed it, you would turn off the stupid add block software.StevoLincolnite - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You imply that Anandtech has the right to advertising revenue from it's audience.News flash: It's not.
There have been multiple instances when Anandtech and Dailytech's advert delivery systems had been infected by malicious maleware/greyware/spyware/virus/other nasties, which was in-turn passed onto users who did not block adverts.
It is simply safer to block adverts.
Internet is faster if you block adverts.
You save money with internet caps you block adverts.
You save even more money if with power consumption if you block adverts.
Personally, I only visited Anandtech for Dailytech.
And I only visited Dailytech for Anandtech.
Thus I will now visit neither.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You can't have your cake and eat it. If everyone shared your view on this, there would be no free content on the Internet (or all free content would be sponsored content i.e. native advertisements). AnandTech isn't a special business that runs on fairy powder, and neither do us editors. Just like in any other business money is needed to pay salaries and other expenses to keep the firm operating.We have never run malicious or disturbing ads on purpose and as soon as we have gotten the heads up the ad has been taken down.
FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Here's the problem: some of us have never, and never will, click an advert site. Too many nasties be there. Unless, of course, you've got an advert pusher who gets paid just for the fact of display. And that isn't any different from the newspaper model; and we know what's happened there. Those who choose to block ads do so because they've no intention of going down that rabbit hole. Both you and the advert pusher have, in fact, lost nothing.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Even the view helps us financially. From the about page:"Success in our advertising campaigns is measured by both the number of times an ad is loaded/viewed and the number of clicks an ad receives. Even if you have no intentions of clicking on an ad, the view itself helps support AnandTech."
So yes, even if you have zero intention of clicking an ad, you can support us by whitelisting AnandTech in your adblocker.
FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
That is fine that you take the ad down, but you also have to (or should have to) pay damages to anyone infected.Does the ad income provide enough of a cushion to do that? If not, then you shouldn't be running the adds.
You are responsible for everything on your site, including the ads. Until web sites start compensating victims for malware from ads, I'll continue to block them.
stadisticado - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I could understand your perspective if you paid to Anandtech to view their website directly and then malicious code struck your computer within their 'paid' walled garden. On the free internet, I'd consider a better analogy to be if a roadside political poster or a sign spinner struck your car with their sign by accident. In those cases, the sign installer or sign spinner might be liable for striking your car, but not the object of the advertisement.In the same way, ad-serving companies are at fault for malicious ads. Not the website or metaphorical roadway where you're struck by them.
FlyTexas - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I see your point, but in this case, the sign installer or sign spinner was picked by the political poster and is paid by the spinner.There is a financial relationship, so AT has a duty of care that they don't pick sign spinners that cause harm.
If a business hires a sign spinner and the spinner damages your car, rest assured the business is liable.
StevoLincolnite - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Who says I want my content free?Anandtech has never given me a choice on the matter.
You may not have intentionally ran the questionable advertising, you may not have intended for your viewers to loose their time and money.
But the fact is... It did happen, multiple times. Do not expect for users to reciprocate and leave themselves vulnerable.
This is where capitalism, which I am a big proponent of, comes into play.
If you run a business model that relies on advertising revenue... And that revenue enters into decline, then you need to adapt and change and look towards other business models for growth... Or fall into obscurity.
This is where innovation and out-side-of-the-box thinking can change the landscape dramatically.
Again, you are not entitled to our advertising revenue, in-fact you lost my trust years ago in that regard.
And I ask everyone to block adverts, the internet is a faster, safer and better place without them.
StevoLincolnite - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Also, don't forget, that Wikipedia is proof of different business models working.It is one of the largest websites on the internet.
And does not have a single advert.
FlyTexas - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Wikipedia is a good example, and I donate my $35 to them every year...If AT ran in a similar fashion, I'd do the same...
TinHat - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
+100JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
A good product sells itself. Marketing is not necessary for economy. The business college I attended defined marketing as convincing a consumer that a want is a need. You might call it tricking, brainwashing, etc. I don't need to be marketed to and I prefer not to be. If I have a need, I will research a solution. If I have not heard of a "must-have, state-of-the-art product" then odds are I can do without it. The profits of my hard labor are not free for the taking any more than a writer's are. Your view places a writer's time above my own and because you are a writer your opinion is biased.I'd be fine paying for newspapers online. However, it would be nice to not have garbage printed online and a bit more accountability for so called "journalists" who never studied writing at all or know what integrity is.
akula2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
AT wasn't profitable? Who said that?JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
Did you read the article? It just said that Anandtech has been very profitable as of late...Klug4Pres - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
That is a thing in criminal prosecutions, yes.However, when it comes to estimating the effect on a business of a corporate take-over, the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" can only be used metaphorically, and in that sense I would say the reverse is true - "guilty until proven innocent".
So many businesses are destroyed by new management. Who do you think would care more about the quality of content on Anandtech, the renowned and eponymous founder, Anand Lal Shimpi, or a corporate employee whose job is to increase advertising revenues from the site?
A lot of warm words are always uttered in circumstances such as these, but mostly they are insincere. We shall see.
FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Of course not, no time has passed... But this isn't a court of law, this isn't an innocent or guilty thing, it is just business...The new owners will want to cut costs, they may well have two sites and two articles, but do you really think they will want to keep paying two groups of people to run the same tests in two different locations on the same hardware?
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
The new owners want to earn money, and AnandTech has been quite profitable basically since it was created. Cutting costs is generally only needed if a business is losing money, and that's not the case at all. You can look at traffic numbers and estimate how much money AnandTech makes per month, and my bet is it's far more than enough to support everything we do and then some. But since Anand can't really own the site and do much with it (without a severe conflict of interest), he's passing it over to a group that can.Klug4Pres - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Maybe it has been profitable in Anand's hands, but we don't know how much of those profits have been capitalised in the acquisition price. Nor do we understand the incentives of the new managers. Maybe the business is now highly leveraged, and the managers see a quick return from their advertising network, which they can extract in bonus payments in the next few years without caring about sustainability or quality.I know, Anand personally scoured the publishing World for a whole year to ensure the site would end up in safe hands, just like Tom's Hardware, oh wait...
FlyTexas - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
The new owners made a capital investment in the business, to get a better return on that investment, they will want to increase profits. That is just how it works...They may well see a need to invest further money to expand the content, and that is fine. It is also fine if they wish to offset that expense by having AnandTech test the AMD video cards and Tom's Hardware test the nVidia video cars (or the other way around) to save on testing hours and costs.
Are you ok with that change? If I were in charge as a new owner, that is one of the first places that I'd find to cut and you'd have a heck of a time convincing me otherwise. I'd give you a chance, but in the process you'd have to address what else you *wouldn't* be able to afford without the change.
JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
He's passing it on to a group that will ruin it. We know this because we know what happened to other sites that were bought out by the same company. Good luck to you all.Samus - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
I think Anand was getting tired of AT. And I understand.Anand and I are the same age and we've both been running our own businesses since high school. I'm growing tired of what I'm doing, but I value the relationships in my business too much to leave everyone hanging. But at some point, I'll realize what Anand did and know I need to look out for myself. Anand was lucky to leave AT in the hands of competent people. That's something I'm not even sure I'll be able to do.
GreenThumb - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
Agree with you Drumsticks. AnandTech continues to be awesome.And some people will always be snarky.
Hiro_x2 - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
Funny, Ive felt like Toms Hardware has gone into the crapper over the past few years.. Hopefully this site doesn't repeat Tom's history.The0ne - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
For me Anandtech has been on the decline ever since he started it in the early 90's. While they have become much, much more technical it has also become much more bias in some areas. The latter alone had me visiting the site less and less since Anand started the site.nathanddrews - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Then open your eyes.JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
FWIW, I've been with AnandTech since about 2004, full-time since 2006. I have never had anyone suggest I give a favorable review to a part that wasn't good. If that changes, I value my integrity enough that I'd look for other employment. I've also known Ryan for pretty much that entire time, and he probably has more integrity than I do. The advertising has always been separate, and while there will almost certainly be some changes in content (e.g. to pick up news now that DT is gone), that shouldn't come with any changes in how we generate the content.blackbrrd - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I think the staff here at Anandtech has always done a really good job. I stopped visiting tomshardware a long time ago when their quality fell. I do think that the above poster was afraid that people like you would leave the site due to the potential reasons you outlined.nathanddrews - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I was replying to:--------------------------------------------
ws3 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
That remains to be seen.
--------------------------------------------
I took his comment to mean that he believes AT's integrity is already damaged or is in danger. Perhaps I misinterpreted his comment? My reply was a simple rebuttal to that notion. In that in the 15 years I've been reading AT, I've never seen evidence that AT is in any way compromised.
Jarred, if you happen to read this in the landslide of comments, please understand that I hold AT in the highest regard and trust that you''ll do what's necessary to keep AT thorough, honest, and profitable (just as important).
Trolls be trollin'.
Chapbass - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I'm going to really miss my daily dose of Jason Mick sensationalist media. Actually browsing to dailytech is sacrilege.jjj - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
More news would be good since the news coverage is spotty and arbitrary.And maybe nobody asked for a favorable review because pretty much all were favorable lol.Anandtech has been afraid to point out the negatives for years. A review should hunt for positives and negatives and have a neutral tone not try to find excuses and hope. It got slightly better lately though, maybe this change helps further but i don't dare to dream that you guys will review retail products not samples or that you won't allow others to pay fro your trips. When you review samples there is an increased risk of not being accurate and you end up reviewing what you can get not what you should.. A17, A53 cores are out there and don't think you guys took a look at those yet, isn't that just crazy? Xiami is the 3rd smartphone maker and very likely to grow a lot more, the Redmi 1S has been one of the best selling devices of the year,yet Anandtech never reviewed any of it's products.You've reviewed one Mediatek device in your entire history, yet they shipped some 350 mil smartphone SoCs this year. On the other hand i'll bet we are about to get a Snapdragon 810 preview since they are on a marketing offensive and you guys publish based on what you can get your hands on for free.Buying from retail (does anyone besides Consumer Reports does that anymore?) , not signing NDAs would allow you to review and report what matters not what you are being fed.
anandreader106 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
DailyTech is gone? YES!!! I fucking hated that site!Note: This is the first time I've ever cursed in a comment. I couldn't figure out another way to express my excitement with an expletive.
JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
I hated DT as well. Sensationalism has no place amongst IT intellectuals. I ended up just coming here and to Tom's for GPU/CPU updates and that's about it. Trying to stay on top of the changing hardware landscape is tough enough without having to sort through all sorts of filth.sonicmerlin - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Why is DT gone again?DanNeely - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I haven't seen anything official; but their over all quality is much lower and more tabloidy than Anandtech's. At the same time DT has been trying to build a presence doing feature length articles meaning that the sites are becoming competitors instead of looking at different market segments.The real question if if Anandtech will be expanding sidebar content to fill the gap or linking to Toms/Laptopmag instead.
B3an - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Because it's shit and sensationalist?It's great that it's no longer on AT. It never belonged on here.
FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Contradicted Fox News too much. :)soccerballtux - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
we're not worried about your journalistic integrity, we're worried about your journalistic integrity not fitting in anymore causing you to leave :(V3ctorPT - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I just don't want to loose the quality you guys put at this site... I stopped going to Toms aloong time ago, around 2002 or 2003. It was my regular site, than it became full of ads, the page is messy... I can't like the site...I don't want Anandtech (to me the best site on reviews) to go away... And I really hope you don't transform into TH, I really do.
Anyway, good work for all these years... I just hope you guys stay on top.
TheSlamma - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
This is exactly how I feel, Toms was a daily site for me in the late 90's.. and now it's not a consideration ever. Same thing happened to Firing Squad after thresh left. I think the guys here are doing a great job now, but the problem with companies like purch is they are filled with talking head management types who only care about bottom dollar and when they drive a good thing into the ground they flat out do not care.James5mith - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
My only complaint with Anandtech, and tech sites in general really in the last few years is the lack of editors. We have plenty of people writing articles, but nobody is proofreading them, fixing mistakes, reading them out loud back to the writer to realize they have abysmal grammar, etc. It's very jarring to read a high level review of some piece of technology, only to find spelling errors, grammar errors, and a lack of complete sentences sometimes. In the words of an old person "Back in my day, Anandtech actually proof read their articles before publishing!"Takamata - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I agree. Deep professional analysis can suddenly seem amatatuer when the writing style is amateur.It doesn't happen all the time here, but I distinctly remember a few times being like "did anyone read this over before posting?"
Takamata - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Yeah, I see the irony in my comment. That's what happens when you don't re-read. (Or when you type comment on iPhone on subway.)FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
No irony, you're not being paid to write a professional article, you're making a comment in the comments section, it is ok. If you were paid to write the main article, then yea, unacceptable.HardwareDufus - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I saw that the feeds from DT were removed a few days back, so I knew some sort of announcement was imminent. I quite liked the AT/DT tie in..... But I can imagine corporate sponsors not wanting to invite Mick along for the ride. Pity.... I quite like Micks contributions... even if he does miss the mark a time or two.Murloc - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
yeah it did strike me as weird too. Now that DT clickbait isn't put under my noise anymore, I don't think I will go there on purpose to read Mick's rants anymore.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Jarred,Frankly, if you think there shouldn't be any changes in how you generate content with this new ownership, then you're in for a rude awakening...
I'm not questioning your moral integrity, I'm simply saying that it isn't personal, it is business. There is no way that the new owners are going to, long term, pay two teams to run the same tests on the same hardware in two locations. It is a waste of money.
You might get to write articles, but over time the "data sharing" will increase, you'll perhaps run half the tests, Tom's might run the other half, and you'll share the results and write something about it.
Or perhaps all the testing will get moved to one side or another with the testing results passed on.
Your new owners are a business, all the pretty words in the world don't change that, money rules large companies in the end.
Give it 6 to 12 months, then come back and say nothing has changed internally.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I've met with people from THG plenty of times at events, and you know what? Their job sounds pretty much identical to my job. Shocking, I know. If you buy a profitable company to add their income to your revenue stream, but then you totally overhaul everything that made the company profitable, that's sort of an odd approach.We'll see I suppose, and given AT has always had a very small business feel to it (there's precious little oversight of what editors do, really), it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have some changes. But if I'm told to start writing advertorials or whatever... well, I already get accused of that for having the audacity to write a guide recommending a variety of hardware, laptops, etc. Which is something I've done at AnandTech since the beginning, so really, nothing really changed. (See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/1518, which is probably one of the first five or so articles I wrote at AnandTech. Heck, we even had "weekly" buyers guides in the past.)
FlyTexas - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Yes, only time will tell...I will say that a smart new manager won't make large changes quickly, it is too jarring... You're very unlikely to be told to write "advertorials", rather you're likely to find a new managing editor who has a new role of "quality control" to improve the grammar and presentation of articles.
Professional news publications have these people, their job is to clean up the copy and make sure nothing really offensive goes out, while making sure the headlines are catchy. It is very easy to slowly edit articles via such a person by changing this or that... Sometimes it is easy to spot, sometimes it happens slowly over time...
nathanddrews - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
If there does end up being a union of AT and THG, I expect very little to change at either site, except perhaps a smoothing out of both coverage and reviews. Two very talented teams with extensive laboratories and deep access to many tech companies... my guess is the parent company will attempt to pool resources to maximize efficiency. Ergo, concordantly, vis-a-vis, more articles or similar or better quality. I'll keep my expectations high, thank you.Tegeril - Monday, December 22, 2014 - link
I am so glad DT is gone. It was such a plague of biased garbage.JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
Everyone here is stating that they used to like Tom's better. We know you'll stand by your former employer, even if you're wrong. It's ok to be wrong, and it's ok to stand beside someone even when they have made a bad decision. We appreciate Anand too, we just adamantly and openly disagree with his choice because we don't have a job or a friend to lose as you do.schizoide - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Yes, every acquired company says "nothing is going to change, nobody will be fired/replaced, we'll just get better". Usually this honeymoon period lasts a couple months. We'll see where AT is in a year-- I hope bigger, better, and not infested with intrusive ads.But I'm not optimistic.
TheSlamma - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
And TBH bigger is not always better. Bigger usually means more spread thin and quality goes out the door. it's better to be great at a few things than good or just okay at many things.frozentundra123456 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
That is what everyone says when they are taken over by a big corporation. I truly hope it is not a "sell out" in the bad sense of the word, but I agree, it remains to be seen. I was particularly put off by the emphasis on mobile in the press release. Anand's already has enough articles on smartphones, watches, mini-pcs and other gadgets.designerfx - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Really?Because I don't believe for a second that a site named Purch is going to deliver on the real news that anandtech is known for.
Sold out implies credibility as well, which is something that is now clearly gone.
mpbrede - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Ditto on "sold out". Have you seen the advertising overload on Tom's?Takamata - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Purch owns Top Ten Reviews as well.I worked closely with company that paid exorbitant referral commissions to Top Ten Reviews which allowed them to maintain their #1 ranking -- despite plainly being an inferior product.
I really hope you retain the journalistic integrity you hope for.
Obsoleet - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
No more free ride abusing power in the forum too. I bet this is addressed at some point http://techsoda.com/anandtech-forum-moderators-bia... Anand never brought that place into line, new sheriff in town now boys. :)alfredska - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You may not have a choice in the matter.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You might not have "sold out", but if you think that things will continue as-is, I have a bridge to sell you.It might take 6 months, it might be a year, but when a new AMD or nVidia card comes out, do you really think the new owners want to pay two teams to run what is really the same tests?
You might write different articles, but don't be shocked when the testing side gets combined and when results start being shared.
ddriver - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
""Sold out" implies compromising ones morals or ethics"True, AT sold out a long time ago, now it just got sold :) Sorry to be that guy to speak the inconvenient and harsh truth, but AT has long abandoned the path of an objective hardware review website to become yet another beacon of consumerism preachment to impressionable chumps.
ddriver - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
And hey, I don't say that as if it is something exceptionally bad, selling out is like the norm, sure it is bad... but it is NORMAL :) Sadly...JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
You obviously don't read Tom's. Ryan how long do you think you'll be working for Anandtech now? I wouldn't give you a year.eanazag - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Anandtech is damn near my home page. I appreciated the independence. The ads are healthy. I have been a reader somewhere since 2007-2009. I miss Anand. I can understand he likely had no personal life with running the show here. His departure worried me a little. Over time I will say his absence is noticeable on the content. Although the site is still the best around. I never click ads on any site. I did here on occasion. Could there be some welcome tweaks to the site? Yes. Be very careful with them though. I have never cared for Tom's hardware. I have read a handful of articles there over the years. I prefer to read here. I did notice the AMD Omega drivers memo being late. I'm okay with that because I have been able to count on the insight at AT to be more valuable than a straight up news release that I can read at a corporate newsroom page.AT has been great listeners and responsive to readers over the years. I hope that continues. It is a little more sad news today. Hopefully my concern is unwarranted.
soccerballtux - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
similar sentiments, where else is there to go for quality reviewing?agoyal - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have been reading Anandtech regularly since 1999. Tomshardware quality deteriorated very rapidly after it got acquired, I rerely ever go to that site anymore. For the past 1-2 years the number of reviews at Anandtech have been slowly declining, I don't know how to put it but the site is becoming "dull". With Anand leaving and now this...I don't have much hope but would love to be proven wrong.Mr Perfect - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I think part of the slowness is down to the industry itself. Back in the day, CPUs, GPUs and later even SSDs came out fast and furious with almost yearly process shrinks pushing them along. Remember when GPUs refreshed every six months? These days it's big news when a 15% faster CPU comes out or someone manages to buildt a faster GPU on a three year old process node without inadvertently creating a space heater.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!And with process nodes getting ever more complex to develop, I'm not sure what's next. The reason mobile is important is that it's faster growth (in numbers and relative performance). I can use a variety of laptops and desktops and think they're all "fast enough", but when I hop on my Nexus 5 there are a lot of things that are far slower than I'd like. Rendering web pages is a prime example, but loading simple games takes FOREVER at times (hello PvZ2).
I want my phone to feel as fast as a moderate laptop, and while we're getting closer it's still nowhere near close. That TDP discrepancy is hard to overcome of course, but if software requirements don't bloat much, maybe by the time we're in single digit process technology I will finally have a phone that doesn't make me grumble every time I surf the web.
Also, I need newer and better eyes, because at 41 my smartphone is not really enjoyable for reading content. Yes, that 27" to 30" desktop display is far more to my liking.... When can I upgrade my eyes (with no risk of going blind)? :-)
Dribble - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
So where is the nexus 9 review then? New hardware (first ever nvidia cpu, first highish end nexus device), new os (first 64 bit android device). It came out over a month ago, and nothing but a short preview when it was released.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
It's in progress... Josh or Andrei is working on it, Ryan is helping, but with school, flu, other stuff it has been delayed. Just like the Omega drivers article, which I spent probably 40 hours or so running benchmarks on. Hopefully that goes up this week, as my part was pretty much done the day they launched. :)OldFred - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Get some reading glasses!FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
What's not understood, apparently, is that the leading/cutting edge of mobile is battery tech, not node shrinks. Unless/until some Einstein figures out a completely new chemistry (I know....), the envelope remains the same. Mo power to duh peoples.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Jarred,Put down the Nexus and pickup an iPhone 6 Plus. Yea, yea, you like Android, I know... you want web pages to load as fast as your laptop? You can have that today, and with only TWO CORES! :)
In my work, we've used Motorola, Samsung, etc.. Android phones... the iPhone screens were too small... with the 6 Plus, we've replaced everything across the board with 6 Plus and what a nice change it has been. Expensive perhaps, but they "just work" and a number of headaches are gone.
For all the "tech specs" of the Galaxy S series, it never really felt that fast, I'm quite shocked actually at how well these work, given the 1GB of RAM and dual core CPU, but it is faster than our Galaxy S4s that they replaced when doing almost everything.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Is the iPhone 6 Plus faster than a SHIELD Tablet? Because I have one of those as well, and while it's faster than my Nexus 5 isn't also still clearly slower than my laptop or desktop. Both can be "fast enough" depending on the task, but we're still at least a few more generations of hardware away from the performance I want in a tablet/smartphone. Greedy, I know.FlyTexas - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I don't know, I haven't used a SHIELD Tablet...What I do know is that my work laptop is a nice Haswell based Core i7 machine with a 256 GB SSD, and it doesn't pull up AnandTech.com any faster than my iPhone 6 Plus does.
It is twice as fast as my old Galaxy S4, and given the specs on that phone I'm shocked at the difference. Both phones are on Verizon, so no carrier change.
Note that this is not benchmarks, it is subjective feeling, but I did just try it today on both to see the difference.
Frankly I think you rely too much on performance benchmarks that often don't translate in the real world and less on professional experience and opinion. SSDs are a great example. Yes, the Samsung 850 Pro is faster than the 840 EVO, no doubt about it. Much, much faster than the older Intel 320 series, yes?
You know what? Running Windows doing average daily tasks, you can't really tell the difference between any of them. Yes, the benchmarks show a difference, but it doesn't translate. More or less, ANY SSD is a vast improvement over ANY HDD, it really doesn't matter which one.
For the record, I've used OCZ, Samsung, Intel, and Crucial SSDs, we now only deploy Crucial MX100 SSDs due to the price and dependability. I have a 840 EVO in my personal desktop and it is fine, as it the Intel 320 in my laptop. It doesn't really matter. :)
DarkStryke - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Non-Anand content has been seriously lacking and quite frankly shallow in many areas, especially mobile.Saw this coming.
Takamata - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I would say it hasn't been bad since Anand left, but I do feel like the exemplary quality of pieces is down a bit. And occasionally something surprisingly blah.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Go back and read some stuff from 10 years ago, then tell me it isn't bad. It has been going down for some time now. :)Rezurecta - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Why are people so damn mean.How about Good luck Anandtech and I hope this helps you achieve your goals.
Takamata - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
That's fair. Anandtech have is a lot and we instantly turn on them in this event.It may be debatable if we are turning on "them", as if it's the same folks now that it's bought. But at least we could have some appreciation for what we got, for free.
Mr Perfect - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I dunno, they already got Daily Tech off of the front page. DT had some interesting articles, but their authors tended to have political views that seeped into their articles and the user comments where positively caustic.Lets see where this site goes.
cyberguyz - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Anandtech gone the way of THG. A sad day indeed. I have only taken the odd glimpse at Tom's since Tom Pabst gave it up and what I have seen since then is heartbreaking since that is where I had started getting into overclocking on 486 systems so long ago. You don't find that kind of in-house quality there anymore. And you won't find the old Anand quality here anymore either.So sad
Doomtomb - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
THEY SOLD OUTImpulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
As long as it doesn't impact your editorial freedom it sounds like a great step forward for AnandTech (I wouldn't know what kinda effect it had on THG since I haven't read THG in like 12+ years, been sticking to AT/HardOCP).alacard - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
How is it a "great step forward"? Was there something wrong with the old anandtech? Please edify me.Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Nothing wrong per se, but they've lacked scale and resources for a long LONG time (since they started reviewing phones, maybe earlier)... They more than make up for it with the quality and depth of the articles for stuff they do cover, not too mention some of their industry contacts.However, if belonging to a larger company allows them to hire an extra writer or two, or pays current ones better and allows them more writing/reviewing time (or even a better budget for buying products for comparisons) then I'm all for it.
Been reading AT nearly since it's inception, dunno why I've never been active on the boards (used to gravitate towards HardForum), maybe that's where the oldest readers comment... Seems a lot of comments here are from more recent readers, could be wrong.
Black Obsidian - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
On the upside, the sidebar of nonsense from DailyTech is gone, so it's not all bad news, guys.barleyguy - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Agreed totally. DailyTech seemed to evolve from decent tech news to sensationalist crap over the last couple of years. I won't miss them a bit.Takamata - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I always wondered why daily tech was on there... It's journalistic quality runs in sharp contrast to Anandtech.That said, Jason Mick is such a bafoon that it was funny to marvel at the idiocy from time to time.
magreen - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
So true about Mick. And the commenters there seemed to appreciate his buffoonery. They'd downvote anyone who criticized his writing.(Btw, I like "bafoon"--seems to combine baboon and buffoon into one descriptively rich word.)
Guspaz - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
DailyTech is a spinoff of AnandTech, hence why they were featured on front page.Egg - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Hey, this is possibly worth it for just that...MikhailT - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Best news of the month; that horrible DailyTech is no longer on Anandtech. It should've been gone a long time ago.Purch seems like a smart owner, otherwise it wouldn't buy AnandTech. It knows the readers that always visit the site value the high-quality content. So it is wise to make sure they got their money worth by making sure Anandtech retains its writers and how they do things. Nobody here is obligated to stay if everything goes bad from now on and the readers will also go find something else.
Murloc - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I bet Jason Mick is fuming and Tiffany will soon be out of a job. Although there is still a link to DailyTech on the bottom of the site :PI just hope they won't kill the AT forum. It has great tech content and users, but it depends on the tech-unrelated community forums too to drive traffic and form a forum culture.
If these guys begin to try and professionalize the forum by eliminating OT, P&N etc., it will go bust, despite being one of the longest-life forums I've ever seen (usually they crash at some point).
Minion4Hire - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel as if Tom's has anything it can teach Anandtech. Maybe the other way around, but that doesn't really make Anandtech better...ws3 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I quite liked Tom's in the late 90's. Now I don't like it at all. Hopefully Purch didn't have anything to do with that.barleyguy - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I quit reading Tom's in the early 2000's because of concerns I had about their ethics, specifically how they handled the parting with Van and then removed his byline. I haven't been back since then. The Internet is a really big place, generally if I leave a website I look for someplace new to hang out and the leaving is permanent. (Other sites I've left have been Gamespot and Ars Technica.)Anandtech is still on my nice list despite recent changes; I'm hoping they stay there, because I've been a daily reader since almost the beginning.
Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I think I stopped even before that, it wasn't over the petty squabbles with Kyle at HardOCP but I can't quite remember why I stopped going there... Whenever I've gone back the site looks like a mess, specially on mobile, so I don't stick around.JFP - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Purch has only owned Tom's Hardware since July 2013, so probably not.MikhailT - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
AnandTech was bought by Purch, the owner of Tom's, not Tom's. There is nothing to indicate that Tom or AnandTech would even touch each other.barleyguy - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Nothing other than having it mentioned in the article you mean.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Nothing other than Tom's and AnandTech cover the same basic market and there is a great place to cut expenses.But you're right, large corporate owners never like to buy companies and then find places to save money. :)
jeremynsl - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Ryan, I've noticed a bit of a news slowdown lately here. For instance, I'm really confused how the AMD Omega drivers have not yet been mentioned (even in Pipeline?? At least Omega doesn't show up in search anywhere). Is this due to the sale of the site or somehow unrelated?Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"Is this due to the sale of the site or somehow unrelated?"That was due to the flu. You can thank H3N2 for that one.
Devo2007 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Damn flu! I'm guessing it masqueraded as some tech product with its fancy "H3N2" model number. I'll put that on my "do not want" list now. :)wye43 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Disgusting. RIP Anandtech.@Anand: how can you live after you sold out your dream?
ws3 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
That's easy. Anytime you start feeling uneasy, you just log in to your bank account and look at the balance.FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Yep... people talk and talk about morals and ethics until they are blue in the face, but most people (perhaps not all, but most) have their price.Five million is about mine... :)
pugster - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I don't know about this. I recall about the whole zdnet acquiring pc magazine and cnet a while back and it seems that the materials from both companies seems to be the same. Let's ope that it won't happen to Anandtech/THG also.Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
PC magazine went into the crapper much earlier when they went online only tho, and Cnet... Well, it's Cnet, TV reviews are the only thing I've found marginally useful there.It's usually not hard to follow what's going on if you read bylines tho, PC Mag used to have some good writers. AT still does, if they were to leave I'd hope they find good homes elsewhere.
Doesn't seem like we're anywhere near that tho...
Gothmoth - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
bad.... bad... very bad.i loved that anandtech was independend.... kind of.
now it´s to become just another shitty ad infested website.
i have seen it so mayn times before.... :(
t3xd0gg - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Yeah if you goto Toms the main banner add is for friggin malware www.driverupdate.net wtf?JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I see Gigabyte ads, though obviously that changes depending on user history and such.maecenas - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
You always have the adblock option if you don't like the ads. As long as the content creation isn't interfered with, there's no problem.Malih - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
agreed, seen it so many times before, read so many of this kind of articles before on other sites, I wish AnandTech could be an exception, but I'm not convincedClockHound - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Another era passes into history...independent reviews fading into corp-speak. Oh, well, it was great while it lasted. Thanks for all the fish!lopri - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
A good news. Having an appearance of bias never helps when you are in position of making judgments. I congratulate the new start and hope for the site's prosperity.wiz329 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Please don't turn it into anything like TH. When they were bought out, things went south quickly. As a loyal reader for a number of years, I would hate to see that happen here.szd - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
For me Toms hardware used to be the goto place for all things tech, now it's just appalling (I guess around the time it got purchased), when that happenned AnandTech replaced that tech fix, hope this isn't going to be history replacing itself!nrage23 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Sad. I stopped reading Tom's due to poor content with far too many adds and now Anandtech has sold out as well. At least there is still Ars.Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Ars isn't independent either, and they do just fine.KPOM - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Ars is owned by the company who owns a Vogue. And I don't like their openly leftist political stances. They should stick to technology.FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Ah, there's always Fox News!! :)Mumrik - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I left Ars when they decided to trawl through their own forums to write tabloid articles about Snowden.Ars sold the site and their soul many years ago BTW.
hansmuff - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Good luck Ryan & team.tipoo - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Just don't follow Tomshardwares decline in quality, please :(IceClaec - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
This could go one of two ways. Either AnandTech will stay awesome, provide even more awesome content than before, and keep dominating the review and analysis world; or... they will be a slightly better version of the hapless Tom's Hardware (the old days of which are dearly missed).Stay awesome AnandTech! I believe in you! Heck, if you guys had t-shirts I'd wear one! (Actually a polo preferably, that way the other IT guys in the office know I have good taste in the online world)
quagga - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
What I've found that makes Anandtech special is that you don't raise my blood pressure. Which is to say, your articles don't take that many inflammatory positions. You run benchmarks, you let vendors respond if said benchmarks are horrible and you present your data. I have genuinely enjoyed that content. No one does that anymore.I read Toms as well, but it is no where near the same thing. They generate far more content, but much is filler. Sometimes it isn't well researched (no where near your average Anandtech article), it's often the opinion of the writer and sometimes is incorrect (although they do generally notice it eventually). You're both entertaining but for very different reasons. They need to be more like you; not vice versa.
You're going to get a lot of hate for this (because, well, it's the internet). I have none for you and wish you all the best. I am, however, genuinely sad.
Kneedragger - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Does this mean the aging forum will get a software update? Sure would be nice..Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Not immediately. But yes, that's on my list of things I want to do.Takamata - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Ryan, et al. --Thanks for all you do and have done in supporting this site and the deep tech community. You are the good guys.
I truly hope you can continue your run unabated. I can only hope that Purch understands the savvy user base here won't respond well to ad-splattering and lower quality content. Keep it alive.
JFP - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I'm Purch's CTO, and don't worry, we are already looking at how to do the upgrade.RazrLeaf - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
To all the sad readers out there: Give your trusted editors/writers a chance. At least give them a proper chance to lose the credibility they've built up over the years. =PThey've said for a long time that the business and the content side are separate, and in the coming years, they will have the chance to prove it. If things change for the worse, we will leave. But if things get better (as I hope they do), more will come. And that's good for all of us.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"If things change for the worse, we will leave."And so will I. Anand has taught us all to be objective and value our editorial independence high, so if that is jeopardized I'll be on my way to the exit.
alacard - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Kristian, if your editorial independence is so highly valued why did you sell in the first place?Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
It's outlined in the article. Basically the acquisition allows us to keep growing the site as we have more power behind us that helps to negotiate better advertising deals. More money means more editors, which in turn results in more and higher quality content.Moricon - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Sorry man, you are working on the donut theory there, yes the bigger you make the donut, the bigger the hole in the middle, this is the road to being yet another craptastic review site, well done indeed in following the money!Anand has traditionally had the very best content of the highest quality, so what makes you think more money is needed to create what clearly has already been provided!
Alacard states it as it is!
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Let me address the quantity first (and for the record, these are just my thoughts and observations and may not represent the Purch' or Ryan's point of views).There are ton of areas that we could explore more with increased resources. I can speak the best about the SSD and storage side as that's where my focus is in, and what I can say is that our enterprise SSD coverage has been lacking for quite some time now. The reason for that is the fact that one person (i.e. me) is simply not enough to cover both client and enterprise sides in full.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
(Sorry, accidental "Submit Comment" click -- I guess it's getting way past my bed time)...With two (or more) people covering SSDs we could significantly improve our output in that field. More reviews also mean that we have more products to compare to, which ultimately means that we will be able to make better recommendations. Having two editors would also allow one to focus on client and the other on enterprise, which would be beneficial from both content and vendor relations standpoints.
As for quality, with more editors we could have more people working on one review. Take iPhone and iPad reviews for instance -- there are numerous subjects to explore, which take a lot of time if it's all done by one person. With more editors and resources we'll be able publish reviews sooner after the release and explore areas that otherwise we might not be able to do due to time restrains.
While I believe our content is already high quality like you said, there is always room for improvement and the acquisition (at least in theory) allows us to deliver even better content to you guys :)
soccerballtux - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
that's true. If this is just about resources this could really turn into a good thing. The reivews have always been the best here, there just weren't enough of them.Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
If moar content is all we get and it remains at the level of quality we're used, this will be a huge success, lens hope so as more more more is the only thing I've ever wished out of AT.FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I'm not sure there's much sense to that. What I glean from the reviews: you wait for the vendors to freebie the parts rather than spending a couple of hundred (or three or four) bucks. The big deal enterprise vendors won't do that, since their parts go for the kilo bucks, and their potential clients won't use AnandTech reviews in decision making. So, you'll buy a Violin array for test, now that Purch owns you? Was there such a transition at Tom's? I think not.Prosumer is as far as it makes sense for the site. SMB at the outside. Even there, most ISP/VAR vendors bundle hardware of their choosing.
alacard - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You hit the nail on the head FunBunny2. Kristian, please contact Purch and have them provide invoices detailing the extra funds they've invested into Toms in order to:a) Increase the number of editors
b) Increase the quantity and quality of content created
c) Purchase gadgets for themselves to review that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise
d) Or otherwise improve their infrastructure
All this talk of more money equaling more higher quality content with a longer reach and a wider focus seems to contradict my subjective viewpoint that Tomshardware has only gotten worse in all of those metrics since their acquisition. I hope the evidence will show otherwise.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Sampling isn't only about money, but also about getting access to parts under NDA. Take the 850 EVO for instance -- it's not launching for retail until sometime after Christmas. If we waited for retail availability, our review would easily be over a month late compared to our competition.We already have close relations with pretty much all of the big enterprise SSD guys (Intel, Samsung, SanDisk/Fusion-io...) and get samples from them, even though the parts cost thousands of dollars. Storage arrays are a very interesting, yet complicated topic, but ultimately most storage arrays consist of SSDs made by the aforementioned companies.
Luscious - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"Sampling isn't only about money, but also about getting access to parts under NDA. Take the 850 EVO for instance -- it's not launching for retail until sometime after Christmas. If we waited for retail availability, our review would easily be over a month late compared to our competition."I call BS on that. The LG 34UM95 monitor became available retail in the U.S. on May 1st. I know because I purchased mine on that very day and had it running on my desk that night. On June 2 the full review was up on my website. AnandTech's review and Tom's review only appeared WEEKS AFTER that.
Maybe the SSD segment works different, but you are mistaken thinking that buying a retail sample equals a delay. I can point to many examples where having a retail sample to review would have put me in the very front of the line, ahead of all the "big name" media outlets, and I'm just a one-man operation.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Luscious,It certainly depends on the product and company. Some of the SSD companies I deal with don't do NDA samples (even though I've tried to convince them) and you are correct that sometimes it would be faster to buy a retail unit.
However, generally speaking, I see nothing wrong with being sampled by the manufacturer. We could argue about the possibility of rigged samples, but the truth is that eventually companies get caught and then sh*t will hit the fan big time, so any rational company should understand that it's not worth the risk.
Kingston's V300 is a prime example as Kingston went and changed to slower NAND without a notice. We called them out and I know for a fact that their sales plummeted after that (I got access to major retailer's sales data here in the Nordic region). That also explains why Kingston is no longer offering us review samples... But I couldn't care less about that -- I value the truth and integrity higher than a relationship with a company that isn't honest with its customers.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
And just to add (since there's still no edit button...), nothing should change for us editors. The business side of the site will go through a full revamp, but the business and editorial sides have always been completely separated. As long as that promise is kept and we can continue our work like yesterday, you should see absolutely no change either, at least for the worse.However, if things do change for the worse, then I'll (and likely others too) be on my way out as well, so Purch should have every motive to keep us happy.
sonicmerlin - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Why isn't there an edit button again?Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Because Kristian would probably never finish a comment otherwise...I kid! Is the site manager getting a raise and does it come with a side if edit button? :p
michal1980 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Kristian you know that's not true. Business and editorial are not separate. Google adsense called complaining about youtube downloaders, and you purged the forums.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Forums have absolutely nothing to do with editorial. Some of us editors are registered and post there, but we have no mod/admin rights or any say regarding what happens in the forums, including the recent Google issue (for the record, I didn't even hear/know about it until yesterday when reading through the acquisition thread).FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Kristian,I get what you're saying, but to make such comments tells me that you've never lived through a corporate buy out.
I have... you're in for some enlightenment, if you're paying attention. It won't all come at once, it won't be an overnight shock, the idea is to ease everyone into the "new normal".
You can't toss a frog into boiling water, it jumps out. But you slowly turn up the heat and you're eating Frog Legs for dinner.
There is too much money to be saved by moving the deck chairs around, the hopeful comments by people in this form are rainbows and unicorns, the comments leaning towards "R.I.P." are likely from those who have lived it.
At the end of the day, always remember... "It isn't personal Sonny, it's just business".
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You are right that I haven't lived through an acquisition. Do I have concerns? Sure. Am I scared about the future? Hell yes. But at the same time I trust what Ryan has told us i.e. that we will remain editorially independent and there won't be any significant changes for us editors. I also trust that what Purch is feeding Ryan is true because I trust that Anand wouldn't do a deal that would hurt his work that he spent nearly 18 years building. Heck, the site still carries his name.If I had no belief for the future I might as well find the exit right now. I'm willing to give Purch the benefit of the doubt that they will handle this well and I think more of the commenters here should do so as well. Tom's isn't a good example because they had been acquired several times before, so the original team that built Tom's and its reputation has been long gone. We, on the other hand, are the same people who worked here under Anand and more importantly were trained and taught by Anand.
Nothing has changed for now -- I'm still working on the same review as I was earlier this week. If things change over time, then it's time for us both, readers and editors, to re-evaluate the situation. But let's not make any rushed conclusions yet.
alacard - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
The almighty dollar wins again. Greed might be one of the most powerful forces in the universe.Anandtech, by doing this you've taken everything that made your site worth reading and have chucked it carelessly into the fire. I will take no joy in watching your decline into the clickbait abyss, but by selling yourself to the highest bidder i can't say it wasn't earned.
And the gradual decline of the fourth estate continues.
KPOM - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I'm sure Anand joining Apple was a big part of this. Now that he has no financial interest in AnandTech it frees him from conflicts of interest, and may actually improve independence at AT since it can't be claimed that Ryan et al were secretly acting to support Anand's new employer.Fx1 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have never seen a company get sold which ended up being a better company or a better place to work. Anand has cashed out. This was basically for his benefit and no one elses. Give it 18 months and this site will be finished.MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Just to be devil's advocate here, you most likely are going to hear about company buy outs that were bad for a reason--it gets more attention than the other way around. I worked at a place that bought out another company, and that old company seemed great, but it was managed unsustainably and was headed for bankruptcy. In that case, "the good ol' days" weren't going to last either way.So what of Anandtech? It's a wait and see game. Personally, I think most tech sites have fallen into a rut lately. Many aspects have flatlined because of the mobile push. Who buys desktop CPUs anymore? GPU tech is at a crawl. SOC advancement is slowing down. Much of this is due to process node barriers that are getting quite expensive to overcome. New smartphones are largely just spec bumps with needless increases in pixel density. With all of the above, tech sites start becoming product review sites (of which there are too many options to thoroughly review).
lopri - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
It is perplexing that people take this news as a "sellout" of AnandTech. Isn't it the opposite? The previous owner was an Apple employee. Surely there would be an appearance of impropriety had he remained as an owner of the site while working for a company whose products he reviews. And it would be ridiculous for any of you to demand Anand to quit working at Apple and to keep running this site.soccerballtux - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
he's pro enough we're ok with it. I think. Spiritually, he owned us and is free to do with us as he likes. We will still love him.Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
No, as soon as some latched unto it they'd scream bloody murder and ever comments section would be about nothing but that... Besides, I imagine Anand took a full time job over there and running the site was already a full time job, unless he clones himself he can't possibly devote the time to both.lopri - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Though on a second thought (thanks for the reminder), I can't help but think that he made sure to put like-minded folks in places that matter. Joshua Ho and Brandon Chest come to mind..JKJK - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I really wish this was good news. But I've NEVER seen a sellout like this add something good. I give you maximum a year.All anand-like sites that I've loved SO much over the years since the 90's (heck, I even tried to start one myself) have declinen and ended up like crap. Every ****** single one.
I had a feelin this would happen when Anand quit, so I've looked for substitutes since then.
Please, please prove me wrong (I really wish I could bet money on this .... and loose).
ezridah - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Maybe now they'll have the budget to actually buy something they want to review (or we want them to review) instead of just depending on what vendors give them to review.That's the only positive outcome I can possibly see right now... Hopefully all the negatives I can see coming will not come to fruition.
CaedenV - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
To the new owners of Anandtech:I love Anandtech not only for the content, but because it is one of the few sites on the internet that has proper use of advertisements. Because of this I, and I suspect many others, who typically use ad-blocking software specifically turn it off in support of this kind of responsible use of ads.
If you flood one of the last great websites with advertisements I will visit it less often, and I will re-enable ad-blocking on the site. Please do not ruin a good thing. We are much more tech savvy when it comes to how we consume content, and if your crank up the ads, we will simply turn them off and ruin the revenue stream. Of course you could be like Tom's Hardware and dumb down your content to attract an audience who does not care... but then you would no longer be Anandtech in the first place.
garbagedisposal - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Toms and top 10 reviews are both garbage. Please don't learn from them.magreen - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Agree that Toms has nothing to teach Anand in the writing and reviewing department. I've been reading AT since 2005. I discovered Tom's around the same time. I quickly realized that Tom's was garbage and stopped reading it around 2006. Please do not learn from them.Sabresiberian - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Remember Tomshardware before Purch (for those of you like me that can), and look at it now.There are going to be changes. A lot of them won't have anything to do with keeping the content quality at the same level. That being said, bottom line, for me, while Tomshardware produces a lot more stuff I don't care about, it still has editors that do a good job, it still has the occasional well-written article I am interested in. I suspect the same will remain true of Anandtech.
And I already have NoScript set to block out the majority of those crap ad site links Tomshardware tries to connect me to.
SeannyB - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Hopefully this will allow for more content. I really miss the AnandTech Podcast, and the off-the-cuff discussions & speculation & behind-the-scenes talk that allowed, as AnandTech in print can be rather clinical. I'd like to see more curiosity-driven reviews of esoteric/niche computing gear like Jarred Walton's fabulous series on radical ergonomic keyboards (I am now a Kinesis Advantage user as a result).I often felt that AnandTech didn't have the resources to cover _everything_ they might want to, so hopefully this acquisition makes their coverage more robust rather than watered down. AnandTech has a loyal long-term readership and a unique identity among tech sites. There are more inspired ways to leverage that than just plopping ads in every nook & cranny. (I often wondered if AnandTech could offer premium content a la Giant Bomb instead of depend solely on ads.)
Moricon - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
YOU ARE KIDDING!!!No seriously, you are kidding right?
Toms Hard Ware - Sister to TOMS HARD WARE, that crap filled ad ridden tracker infested excuse of a so called tech site ( as of today Toms Hardware Home Page alone connects to 107 third party sites, 107, yes that's ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN connections to third parties on ONE PAGE!).
Oh Dear RIP Anandtech it was fun whilst it lasted. you are oficially removed from my Favorites, good luck and well done on selling out down the road to junk status in the community!
Peter Witt - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"I'll be getting off at Southampton, Darlings. I'll be catching a later voyage to New York on some other ship. Happy sailing!"npp - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I can't help noticing how often the term "ads" pops up in previous staff comments. Better ads, more editors, more quality. Go check silent pc review, they haven't even reskinned the site for quite a while, and still remain the de facto standard in the field they explore. Owners, ads, opportunities, leave this bs for those who care, which is not the (majority of the) people that praise anandtech for its quality. I really liked the donut theory comment above, says it all.Ultimately as a user I don't decide which ads I get, or which crap company buys one of the best tech sites on the internet, I decide whether to visit the site or not. I wasn't sold on all the talk about how Anand leaving the site is actually a good thing. I'm not sold on "being owned by a bigger is better", either. If the site declines, I'll stop coming back. What's wrong with you people, wanting to turn every decent site out there into a freakin cash machine.
Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
It's relatively easy for Silent PC to remain at the top of their game when they cover such a laser focused niche tho... I like the way AT's content has expanded, specially over the last six years, but it was always clear they lacked the resources and man hours to do ALL they really wanted (whether it was review more phones, more enterprise stuff, have more gear on hand for comparisons, etc).I'm cautiously optimistic, they've earned that much IMO, even if I won't touch THG with a ten foot pole.
dannoddd - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Congrats Anandtech, I hope it works out in the best possible way for you guys. Anandtech is one of the top sites around and I trust you'll continue to push top notch articles and reviews. People always freak and overreact to change. For those of you panicking, just realize the full disclosure at this point in the venture shows the ongoing character that has caused us to trust this crew in the first place. I hope to see the site expand and for all of you to benefit professionally and personally.dstarr3 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Oh no. Tom's Hardware is such shit. I don't want Anandtech to turn to shit, too. :-(yefi - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Goodbye.leetruski - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
The fact that Purch owns Tom's Hardware says everything. Bye Felicia.Yorgos - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Bullshit,xbitlabs is DEAD,
Tom's has become a pile of crap,
AnandTech's been sold to the company that made tom's a pile of crap.
Phoronix has this irritating dude, but he has a few good things on his site,
Slashdot is horribly annoying with those new banners, new looks....
Dailytech lately is being irritating too, I like the stupidity the articles are being written... it's more entertaining to me than irritating.
TPU, holds still,
Videocardz is wonderfull,
Fudzilla is still wonderfull.
well, there are still sites that offer a descent content.
There is a shitload of people who could make this site a community driven/funded site, or at least since it has a healthy status it could've been managed/acquired by it's employees, but instead let's take an arrow in the knee and talk business.
I'm off the ship too.
Makaveli - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Not like this!Rand - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Given how rapidly and starkly Tom's Hardware declined after Purch purchased them, you can hardly blame people for being somewhat pessimistic and a tad dubious that AnandTech will remain what it once was.I doubt even the most optimistic of people is likely to argue that Ton's Hardware is even a tenth the site it was at it's peak.
Purch has developed an awfully negative reputation, and while you understandably have to present this in a positive light you must also be aware of that reputation and why they have it.
As the content posted is now under the purview of Purch it's only logical to expect Purch to handle things similarly to how they have in the past.
And I don't think how they've handled things in the past is a manner anyone thinks highly of.
rickon66 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I been around pretty much since AnandTech started, first he leaves and now this. It was fun while it lasted - RIP Anandtech.MatthiasP - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
If this was the reason the DailyTech side bar is gone then it's one step in the right direction.Gasaraki88 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Too bad Tom's Hardware turned to shit after they got bought. Now the same thing's happening.... ='(juicytuna - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Does anyone know how much it was sold for? Is that public knowledge?hughlle - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Best of luck. However these guys also bought toms hardware, so i have a hard time beleiving they are good investors.Best have a plan up your sleeve for replacing dailytech though. I imagine you've just gone and lost a substantial number of regular visitors as a result. While reviews were detailed, they were far and few between, many of us came here mostly for dailytech, with the idea of reading a review as a secondary purpose. No reason for myself to visit this place on even a semi-frequent basis now.
hughlle - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Best of luck. However these guys also bought toms hardware, so i have a hard time beleiving they are good investors.Best have a plan up your sleeve for replacing dailytech though. I imagine you've just gone and lost a substantial number of regular visitors as a result. While reviews were detailed, they were far and few between, many of us came here mostly for dailytech, with the idea of reading a review as a secondary purpose. No reason for myself to visit this place on even a semi-frequent basis now.
prime2515103 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Is this why the Daily Tech feed is missing?Malih - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"That search led to a number of interesting potential partners"And you chose Purch? That's what make me sad and pessimistic about the future of this site.
I think most of us long time readers are not really complaining about the editors/writers or doubt them, but we are concerned the future of this lovely site with Purch driving it.
Because personally what I see from their track record, I doubt they'd be concerned about replacing the whole editorial team if they want to, and be satisfied to have acquired the brand and the domain name.
agoyal - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I can see how this is going to pan out. There will be more content pushed at the pretense of "more eyeballs equals more ad revenue" at the expense of quality. This leads to slow vicious cycle of poorer quality and slow death like Toms hardware. Pardon me for being skeptic but people like me who have followed PC hardware since 90's have seen this happen too many times. Hope Ars does not sell to Purch. Sad day for a lot of us.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"There will be more content pushed at the pretense of "more eyeballs equals more ad revenue" at the expense of quality"With the preface that there is always some kind of speed/quality tradeoff in every action we take, we have not and will not intentionally pick speed and meaningfully compromise the quality of our articles. Our commitment to quality remains today as it was last week and last year. Quality is what makes you guys (our readers) come back day after day.
antialienado - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
So, we will have two copies of the same information in Tomshardware and Anandtech.abhaxus - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
truly sad news. Anandtech and [H] are the sites that convinced me to remove adblock from my browsers. Toms is certainly bad now content wise, but my last favorite thing is easily the annoying ads. Especially the scrolling ad that slows down you scroll speed on mobile. Infuriating.I have always respected this site, having read it since 99 or 2000. I remember when they implemented Intellitext AND LET YOU TURN IT OFF. Doubt that will happen with the new owner.
Good luck guys. Please prove us all wrong.
jwaight - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I am sad to see this. I do not want to see AnandTech become a site where a 5 page write up becomes 10 pages loaded with adds and links that make power-reading a chore not a pleasure (Tom's Hardware). In the last year or so the number of updates and posts to the site dropped off noticeably. Since Anand left, I have found few articles that drew my attention enough to read.Please write more reviews like what AnandTech was based on.
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I remember when Voodoo Extreme and Gamespy were bought by IGN.Anandtech and Toms Hardware being owned by the same larger company reminds me of that. One is going to be dominant and the others are going to be drained from, thrash about with irrelevance, and eventually completely subsumed.
I'll remember you like I remember Sharky Extreme, Voodoo Extreme, Gamespy Online, and others. You were great once before Mobile took over your mind so much that you even mention it as your main point of interest over your bread 'n butter material.
I guess you already know that mobile is your angle now and Toms gets PC hardware, so you're playing up to that post-haste. Probably why the "Rented by AMD Cheap" section is finally gone, too?
Time for that agreement to end if you guys are going to be "The Mobile SOC Site," right? ;) Yeah, I remember when VE was going to be the "PC section" of IGN. Or when Gamespy were going to be independent...
I hope you guys aren't really believing what you're saying here. Lying to others is one thing, but lying to oneself is dangerous indeed.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
The realities of life are that PC growth is stagnant, and very likely it will shrink in the coming years. We're well into the "fast enough" era of computing, and in another five years the trends happening now will be even more visible. Anand felt very strongly for the past couple of years that focusing purely on the PC side of things was the road to irrelevance. GPU articles still get great traffic, and so do CPU reviews, but most of our tablet reviews get far more traffic than any of our laptop reviews.We're not abandoning PCs by any means, but the problem is we haven't really had any uptake in advertising for the mobile section -- so despite much greater traffic in our mobile section, it's not really paying the bills (and then some) like it could. I don't know how much companies pay for advertising on AnandTech, but let's just say as an example that our PC content makes on average a penny per page view because there are advertisers that want ads in the "PC" section (but it would really be GPUs, CPUs, SSDs, Laptops, etc.). If the mobile section generates just as much traffic but only earns on average 0.1 cents per view, then there's likely a lot of room to improve things.
Bigger sites right now are getting the bigger advertisers, especially in mobile. They're getting sampled more hardware. That brings more traffic, which enables them to hire more people, and the cycle repeats. Mobile supports PC just like PC supports mobile, and they grow together. Hopefully we can get on that end of the cycle. That's the plan at any rate.
SunLord - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Thanks for confirming I won't need to visit Anandtech anymore in the coming when I have interest in PC reviews as you're abandoning your core readers and passing them off to the shit pile that's Tom's so I'll only if I want to know about the next apple phone or SoC once every 2 yearsKristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Jarred didn't say that we are abandoning PC reviews and the core of our readers -- in fact he said the exact opposite. The truth is that mobile presents a bigger growth opportunity for us, so like any business it's logical that we invest in it. What this means is that you will likely see more and more mobile content from us in the future, but it for sure doesn't mean that there will be a decline in quantity or quality of our PC reviews. Basically, it's just more content overall -- it isn't away from anything that we currently do.(For the record, this is just my view and interpretation of this. Ultimately any and all content strategy decisions are up to Ryan, but I for sure am sticking with the PC side and SSDs)
Ilias78 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
But here is the thing. You HAVE abandoned PCs pretty much for years now. Slowly, you focused more on mobile devices and tablets a WHOLE LOT more that you should of had. Anandtech was a site that was all about PC hardware and software - and you guys were giving us less and LESS of such content as time passed on - you people just didnt care enough anymore and you went to where the money is - plain and simple. Its ALWAYS about the money. That why Anand left - Apple was probably giving him more money than what he was making from the site. Thats probably why Justic Sklavos left (one of the best PC case reviewers ever). And thats why the remaining Anandtech staff have become a bunch of sellouts. Money talks.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Actually, since I am on the inside on a lot of this, I can tell you that Dustin (not Justic) left for Corsair because they offered a salaried position with benefits and more pay. Vivek went to Razer for similar reasons, and Brian is at Apple again for similar reasons.If you didn't know, the paycheck of a typical hardware reviewer/journalist is not exactly monstrous -- I'm well short of six figures for example, and other than site owners I haven't ever heard of a tech journalist making that much. But a good engineer at any good tech company could definitely make in the six figure range. There are tons of other benefits (working from home, playing with the latest gadgets, doing something you enjoy, not having a rigid 8-5 work schedule), but it takes a lot of effort to live on a journalist's pay.
As far as PC vs. Mobile, again, we need both. AT started with motherboard reviews, because it was a hot topic in the 90s. These days motherboards are all reaching a level where for most users it's not a huge part of the overall experience -- most boards perform similarly, so it's just a question of what features you need. If AT hadn't evolved from motherboards, what would have happened? If we hadn't added smartphone, Apple, tablet, SoC, etc. coverage, would we still be as relevant?
But we still have Ian doing mobo reviews, so our roots haven't disappeared. We still have Ryan doing GPUs, I do laptop stuff mostly (and guides, which is basically where I started), Kristian is on SSDs -- all PC stuff. Josh, Andrei, and Brett are more mobile focused, and we'll probably add people to that segment over the coming months, but that takes time.
Ilias78 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Ok then on a more serious note and on a politely manner: From my experience from working in three different companies in all my years of employment, when people leave its either because A) they fumbled big time or B) they found something better with more money. And im guessing that B) is the answer here when it comes to Anand, Dustin, Vivek and Brian. I was mostly surprised by Anand's choice, because its litteraly the other way around of what you would expect him to do: Most people get employed by someone else, with the aspiration to build something of their own in the future. Anand LEFT something that he built on his own and went to work under somebody else. As much as i try to understand it, i cant (so you can understand that my "outrage" earlier, came from a lot of dissapointment from seeing Anand go). Now as for the PC hardware coverage... you guys still do the BEST motherboard, CPU and Videocard reviews out there, clean and thorough. I liked your work and i was sad to see it diminishing over the years. Thats all. My apologies for the previous rant.at80eighty - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
That's sobering to hear. Keep fighting the good fight Jarred & team. Fuck the hatersFunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
To be fair: Anand's new (old?) employer there in Cupertino stopped being a computer company and morphed into an appliance company about a decade ago. "Fast enough" applies across the board. 3-D NAND might change the plateauing of semi-conductor tech a bit, but the fact is: humans know all there is to know about how the universe works. We've just made the parts a tad smaller. Has that made any real difference in our lives? Well, you can not only pop your pimples on the subway, but play games on a device that you may never actually use to talk to another human being. You could, if you wanted to, of course. This is progress?ABR - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I can't think of anything good to say so I won't say anything.MikeMurphy - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Thank you all for the many years of hard work and excellent reviews.frozentundra123456 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Trying to keep an open mind, but cant see much good coming of this. Reading the release, it seems like the focus is going to shift even more to mobile, which is the exact opposite of what I would like to see. I pretty much just follow the site now for the forums anyway, since in depth testing and benchmarking have been getting less and less common for a long time now.coburn_c - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Let me guess, Anandtech will become the mobile site and TomsShillware will take over true hardware.savagemike - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
When Anand left the day-to-day my initial reaction was fear that a long time resource for me would decline in value. Now the fear strikes anew I must say.Still - only the future knows. I'm still reading Anandtech for deeper insights and hopefully I'll be able to continue to do that and have faith in the information for a long time to come.
plonk420 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
did you guys click on the Purch link? they own Tom's.jmunjr - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I already see DailyTech content missing.. As annoying as a lot of their stuff could be I liked seeing it listed on AT. I'm likely going to be coming here less often.LauRoman - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I really hope you don't become as ugly, spammy and view/click chasy as Tom's has.geniekid - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
+1. It's entirely possible for Purch to leave the editorial content alone while destroying the site via ads and some kind of "Partner News" section, though to be fair, it's hard to imagine something worse than DailyTech.mazz7 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I am a tech site reader, before I think Tom's is shallow in content but since purch acquire them the content is more like anandtech, so I think It;s good for anandtech to be acquired by Purch to extend the quality of the site.macs - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Just visited tomshardware and I decided to remove anandtech from whitelist on adblock...Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I would hope you could reconsider. Just because we're owned by Purch does not mean we have any intention of becoming like Tom's. Not in content nor design. We run our own affairs, as does Tom's.SunLord - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You intentions don't matter anymore only what Purch wants will matter from here on so I'm gonna have myself the trouble of the massive amounts of future ads and crosslinks ala Toms and just let Anandtech enjoy going back into the land of adblock with toms /. and most other overly ad heavy sites. Being affiliated with Toms hardware is about the worst thing you all could of done as it gives everyone whos been around long enough to know exactly whats coming.macs - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Ok Ryan, in those years you gained my loyalty and I want to support Anandtech. I hope you will continue this way.backbydemand - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I really hope the editorial content doesn't suffer the same way Tom's Hardware has. I used to frequent Tom's all the time, but in the last few years has become terrible, the worst kind of tabloid hack rubbish. I await to be surprised, don't let me down.HollyDOL - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
My first tech site was Tom's... when it started to turn in a junk, I went and discovered AT. It starts to sound like history repeating itself now. Will see in a few months.wavetrex - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Oh, so that's why Tom's H. quality dropped drastically lately... and it became a bloated, full of ads, full of bugs piece of garbage website.I guess it's Goodbye Anandtech as well. *sigh*
Railgun - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
There's a reason I don't go to TW anymore...Railgun - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
TH that is.AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
First things first: Is there enough cash for an edit button please? Now, down to serious business:Both Tom's and Anandtech are my favourite two hardware news sites. I like their differences, and I read most news articles on both sites.
This sentence, "AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another," is cause for some mild concern. Please don't unify, I like your differences.
The fact that Purch now owns:
all the "Tom's" brand sites
Anandtech,
Top Ten Reviews,
LiveScience,
Space.com,
BuyerZone,
And a few others that I'm sure I'm missing gives it, in my eyes, INCREDIBLE power to sway people's opinions about things. I have re-enabled Adblock Plus on Tom's and Anandtech until my suspicions go away, which will probably be just after lunch when I'm going to go have some McDonald's. (Hey, what can I say? Food makes most things better. :-)
Achaios - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have been reading Anandtech since the Core 2 QX9650/Intel X48 era (2007). Anandtech really set the standard at that time in the PC Enthusiast World. Who can forget the following epic articles:-http://www.anandtech.com/show/3381 This is Anandtech warning Enthusiasts to beware of too high VTT and CPU PLL voltages.
-http://www.anandtech.com/show/2427/4 This was one of the most influential articles in the word of PC Enthusiasts/Overclockers. In it, Anandtech explains in detail the TRD concept (Northbridge Latency) and how to achieve the best possible performance out of your X48 board.
Anandtech really, really was THE authority in PC overclocking.
Lately, the only article I saw that came close to the very high Anandtech quality standard was this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-...
I have noted a decline in articles focusing specifically on overclocking and PC enthusiasts. It is wrong IMHO to neglect the PC enthusiast/Overclocker segment of your fanbase. PC related articles lately seem more like a presentation of products rather than in-depth analysis. It is the "in-depth analysis" and the "uncovering of overclocking secrets" that brought substantial fame to Anandtech.
My two cents anyway. I'd say the same things to Anand himself.
AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
First things first: Is there enough cash for an edit button please? Now, down to serious business:Both Tom's and Anandtech are my favourite two hardware news sites. I like their differences, and I read most news articles on both sites.
This sentence, "AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another," is cause for some mild concern. Please don't unify, I like your differences.
The fact that Purch now owns:
all the "Tom's" brand sites
Anandtech,
Top Ten Reviews,
LiveScience,
Space.com,
BuyerZone,
And a few others that I'm sure I'm missing gives it, in my eyes, INCREDIBLE power to sway people's opinions about things. I have re-enabled Adblock Plus on Tom's and Anandtech until my suspicions go away, which will probably be just after lunch when I'm going to go have some McDonald's. (Hey, what can I say? Food makes most things better. :-)
TheSlamma - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You consider McDonalds to be "food" your credibility is totally goneAndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
@TheSlamma :-)Mark_gb - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Years ago, I would hit Tom's Hardware site 3 to 5 times a day, and often find new articles, news stories and other things I was interested in. I read through every single article soaking up the info being presented.Then, it because obvious that something had changed. I didn't know what. But going to Tom's more than once a day for almost anything because rather useless. There were far fewer news stories, and reviews suddenly only appeared at midnight or whenever some NDA expired. And getting more than 1 story/article/review a day released almost never happens.
About 8 weeks ago, I posted on Toms that their forcing ads onto the bottom news pages despite my running AdBlocker was something I would not put up with. I later discovered a way to turn those off. Now I have to assume this is coming to Anandtech as well.
So to now read that the same people that bought Tom's are going to be running Anandtech hurts.
I assume that this means that now I am pretty much losing most of the info I have gotten over the years from this site.just as I did on Toms site. I find this very disappointing.
I guess the old adage applies... Follow the money. Thats all it is ever about... The money.
creed3020 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Well well, the other shoe drops....Anand leaving for something as big as Apply meant that this site needed to get out from underneath him and now we have the results of that.
I will admit that I read TH but the quality is low compared to AT and the quantity certainly does not make up for it. I am strongly sitting on the fence now to remove both from my favorites and move on.
What I don't understand people saying "hope this acheives their goals". The goal of this site is to attract viewers to top editorial talent, top quality, and top articles to drive data driven decisions in terms of commerce, or on the other hand to attract viewers who have a deep interest in understanding tech and are the 'go-to techie' in their circles and are held in a position of trust. AT is in a position of trust in our circles, as the readers the sale of the site is an invitation to the abuse of that position of trust. Only time will tell if steps are taken through that door but this plan of "more ad = more revenue = bigger = better" will QUICKLY FAIL and the _readers_ will leave.
Thanks for all the hard work over the years, I truly hope you prove the nay-sayers wrong and this pillar can stand strong.
JBVertexx - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I stopped reading TH because the ads became out of control. Go take a look at that site - it's impossible to read. I'm very disappointed that AT is now owned be TH. I view competition as a good thing, and now there is less in this space.Oh well, time to move on.
MrSpadge - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another."Please, don't learn too much from them!
rickon66 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I love that they are using the space vacated by the much hated DailyTech to display Facebook links to stuff 8 months old. I kinda liked Daily Tech and really don't want to be reminded on how to waste the power of a GTX 780ti from back in May.Stuka87 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Well, hopefully this all works out for the best. As long as the current staff stays on, I have complete faith that the quality of this site will not change.I stopped going to Toms about a decade ago, but still come here 1-2 times a day.
Keep up the great work Ryan (and others) and those of us that are long time viewers will continue to enjoy this site.
hammer256 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Funny thing went through my head as I was reading this... "I hope it wasn't the same company that bought Tom's hardware", since I didn't know who Purch is. Then I saw, and was a bit more concerned. Hopefully this site won't go in the same trajectory as Tom's. Now mind you that Tom's still has great articles (Chris Angelini might be my favorite), but at the very least the site's presentation has gone to the pooper.So I guess we shall find out. I am hopeful that this site will keep delivering the good stuff. I don't have too many places to turn to. Actually, on that subject, what other sites do you guys recommend that has in-depth stuff?
cyberguyz - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
The quality at Tom's hardware went way downhill after they sold out to 'big business' (same owners now).I'm very much expecting the same to happen here.
It saddens me to see htis happening since it is the creators of a site that gives that site its spirit. When the site's creator leaves it int hands of others who are in it purely for the money, it diminishes to the point of becoming jut another soulless tech magazine.
No disrespect to Ryan, but Anand Al-Shimpi was Anandtech's soul. Without him and his vision, Anandtech has lost its soul. That is not something that Purch can replace.
Hulk - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I have been there since the beginning... 1997. In a way I kind of feel like I grew up with Anand and Anandtech. More than anything it has been his passion and curiosity for computers and technology, especially processors, his ability to cut to the chase and get to what's important in an review, and to at once speak naturally and professionally that has made this site so endearing to me. I have learned so much from this site over the years...Losing Anand was like losing a friend in a way. But I told myself that is passion and style had been thoroughly ingrained into the people he hired. And more importantly he found people that had those same qualities he himself possessed so all he had to do was nurture what was already there in his new hires. That last point is especially important to the survival of the greatness of Anandtech because it's not something that will wither in time with Anand's passing. Hopefully it is an inherent quality in all who work here and will continue to work here.
I am optimistic for Anandtech. Passion, curiosity, and great writing are key. If you are going to keep the name "Anandtech" then make sure you keep the qualities that made it great in the first place.
All that being said if I start to see those adds that block out the entire screen on Anandtech I will know it's the beginning of the end.
agoyal - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I am in the same boat, reading Anandtech and may other hardware sites since 1999. Anandtech has been my favorite and has been my number one bookmark for more than a decade. What made Anand's reviews so special were the insight he brought about the category and industry in general. I could read the first page and tell if it was written by Anand. Anand leaving was a big blow and now this. Reading the comments from the editors it seems they are still committed to Anandtech... may be there is some hope.HardwareDufus - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Take a look at WindowsCentral.com.. (formally WPCentral.com *windows phone*). That site has Purch as an Advertsing Partner. Key difference you'll note right away is more advertising (10 different ads... as opposed to the 6 that appeared here) from very interesting vendors like Subaru and Mercedes Benz.Daniel Rubino's site is obviously Windows centered... it's a fan site of sorts... but he doesn't appear to be overly tainted.
imaheadcase - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Maybe you can upgrade website to autofit screen sizes of users who browse it. I don't understand how websites are made with a good 4 inches of wasted space on both sides of screen. Don't get me started on the terrible color schemes used. White on black..seriously. That is just the thing i love to see when i wake up and visit popular websites..freakin bright white backgrounds on every page.The appropriately named "bluesnews" background is perfect, easy to read with nice background.
Bobberr - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"The Most Trusted in Tech Since 1997"Now in the same boat as TH. Awesome.
Hairs_ - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I hope that this new deal allows the site to expand as it needs to. Anandtech is in a league of its own quality-wise for reviews of anything it addresses, and always has been.As mentioned above, the pace of change in the PC sector has slowed to a crawl, which coupled with Anandtech's in-depth approach isn't helpful from the point of generating "launch day" content. Perhaps a change into more long-term testing, reliability-based reviews etc could solve that. Widening the scope of testing could also help, I've mentioned more than once that reviews of *genuine* low-end or mid-range hardware is sadly lacking in practically all areas of the site, with motherboards and RAM reviews particularly standing out. Motherboard reviews seem to assume that $200 is "midrange" at this stage. At the moment we've got x99 and 10GbitE motherboards being reviewed, but there's nothing on the apparent slew of H and B series motherboards that will overclock even though they're not officially supposed to. "Roundup" reviews where multiple competitors of the same type also seem to have gone by the wayside.
Editorially, I think everyone is on the same page that: Tom's Hardware is a site full of junk reviews which offer nothing whatsoever to Anandtech in terms of "learning". I wouldn't even trust Tom's to have benchmark donkey-work farmed out to them.
Creig - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"The company (Purch) helps marketers achieve their branding and performance objectives in a high-quality, brand-safe context. Its sites connect in-market shoppers with more than 7,000 marketers and sellers, driving industry-leading conversion rates and $1 billion in commerce transactions annually."A marketing firm has purchased AnandTech? Get ready to be bombarded with ads on every page.
araczynski - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
i've been with anandtech & tom's hardware for many many years (lurking/reading mostly). stopped going to tom's a few years back when it became a cesspool of ads.what happens here is yet to be seen, hopefully it doesn't devolve into merely yet another ad-delivery mechanism like 99% of websites.
there's always ars/engadget/slashdot for good birds-eye-view of the sector, but not much left for the ground level view.
Michael Bay - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Slashdot is only good for loonix circlejerking.cknobman - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Already removed the daily news feed from the homepage. That and the articles were the main reasons I came here.Didn't take 2 days to start screwing a good thing up, nice.
LtGoonRush - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Tragic news, as I've been following the site for over half of my life. I had hoped that the site might find a way to continue after Anand's departure, but I suppose it was always unlikely that it would survive the loss of that much talent in such a short time. It's just especially disappointing to see it sold to a garbage content farm company.pwr4wrd - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
End of an era as we know it, which started with Anand's departure.Red Dawn - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Well let's hope Anand made some serious banksuperflex - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
So long Anandtech.You used to be a great resource on computer hardware.
Now you've gone full retard.
Getting rid of Brian Klug was strike 1.
Selling out to Purch is a weak line out to the pitcher.
You wont be missed. Deleting the shortcut from my browser after this is posted.
Good luck Ryan. You're gonna need it with all those shitty writers you have working for you.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Thanks. Let me make another "crappy" comment for you to enjoy....First, "getting rid" is hardly what happened to Brian Klug. He had a great job opportunity and is likely making several times as much money as he could have made sticking with AT. As for Anand, he really was quite tired of all the travel and something a bit less chaotic is a nice change of pace. Think about how long he was doing the same thing, day after day, year after year -- and not as one of us crappy writers; he had to run the site as well. At one point he had a post saying something like, "This is the first vacation I've taken in ten years." I'm sure he earned plenty of money, but money as they say can't buy happiness.
So if you're thinking it's time to do something else, what do you do? You find a way to pass the torch to someone new, get out while you're still doing well and have a business worth buying. That's basically what happened. I realize this is the Internet, so every time there's a major announcement of change like this everyone likes to come out of the woodworks and proclaim the end of the world. That way if they're right, they can pay themselves on the head and say, "I told you so." And if they're wrong, as they usually are, they go back into hiding and wait for the next time to forecast a dire future.
The fact is that the people writing for AnandTech have not changed in the past several months. Everyone who was with AT when Anand retired is still alive and kicking. Reviews are still in progress, and delays sometimes happen. Several of the editors are in school as well, which inherently creates a slow down in output.
If anyone reads this and thinks they could do a better job at writing articles, by all means write something and submit it to Ryan, Ian, or me. If you can string together a bunch of coherent sentences about technology and you are passionate about the subject, there's certainly room for adding people. Or you can continue to go around grumbling about the collapse of the site, lack of quality reviews, etc. because it's a lot easier to do that I suppose.
Luscious - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"If anyone reads this and thinks they could do a better job at writing articles, by all means write something and submit it to Ryan, Ian, or me."LOL I have done that in the past... and received only radio silence.
Proper spelling, grammar, technical knowledge and journalistic integrity no longer matter. My computer knowledge spans close to three decades, and have been writing full-time for almost seven years. I started my own website back in 2008 because I believed I could offer something that I saw was missing at the time - hands-on information, critical reviews and honest, unbiased, expert opinion. Articles written by an enthusiast, for the enthusiast, with detailed, specific, niche information. Not the marketing hype echoed by the tech media elite, nor the lies spread on endless forum threads by dubious posters.
No, I don't want to be "some guy on YouTube", there are plenty of those already. There will be things that you just cannot cover in a five minute video, that's where I appreciate guys like TTL. But even he still relies on written content, and owns his own website.
The downfall happens when some rich guy who's last written piece was his term paper in high-school tells the minimum-wage English grad who thinks a pot is something you keep in the garden to write a motherboard review. Meanwhile, the guys who have been elbow-deep tinkering with their overclocks see the end result and think to themselves WTF.
Michael Bay - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
"Several of the editors are in school as well"Way to shoot oneself in the foot.
akula2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I reckon selling it to Purch was a pretty bad idea because the company will become too big which would be detrimental for the Hardware folks in some ways. Anyway, it's happened so it's past.It was quite a great journey to be immensely proud of. My best wishes to AT staff.
milleron - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Uh . . . Ryan . . . Don't you mean "in a hands-on business like journalism, that benefit cannot be OVERstated?"Ryan Smith - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Aww jeeze.Yes, you are correct. Thank you for pointing that out.
WeUmina - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"LOL I have done that in the past... and received only radio silence."It probably wasn't very good then...
Luscious - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Or maybe you cannot put a price on honest, unbiased, expert opinion... You would be surprised at some of the offers I have received. At least I don't pretend to run a bakery with sugar-coated articles.WeUmina - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Or it wasn't very good.maximumGPU - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
you think he'd ever face up to that? of course not.He didn't hear anything back because "you cannot put a price on expert opinion..".
Luscious - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
You are very wrong there - I can take constructive criticism. The irony is being told you're over qualified when there are some really shitty writers out there.Tchamber - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Ryan and team:
I've been a casual reader since the Pentium 3, and I always read your reviews before making a computer purchase. I've even started reading your mobile content before making purchases. I have great respect for you and your team, and I will continue to visit your site regularly. The ranters and ravers out there probably care too much, but then they'll probably come back time to time to see what's going on...and in time well be regular visitors again. Don't sweat them. I wish you all the best...and early Merry Christmas :-)
CristianM - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I see the first change after the buyout is the removal of the dailytech feed. Not nice, not nice at all.milkod2001 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I only hope this Purch won't force you guys to put as many ads as on Toms and that your reviews will keep current high standards and won't change into prepaid/pre-scripted ads with millions links to Amazon, Newegg etc. Only time will tell if the last IT mohycans(Anandtech) just got stabbed into back or not.For the missing edit option: why don't you guys use fast, secure & properly working Disqus instead of this joke?
Devo2007 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I am amazed at the attacks being lodged against the writers and other staff at Anandtech; people who are human beings just like you & I. People who (generally) have put in a lot of hard work making Anandtech what it is.For those who really think they can do a better job, go ahead and do it! Don't just sit there and badmouth the writers here. Show a bit of respect here!
It's fine to have an opinion and offer constructive feedback, but quite a lot of the comments here have been anything but constructive.
VanDiesil - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Sad day indeed. I have been around the internet tech sites since day one for most and Anand lal Shimpi was the person that made Anandtech what it was.When the bigger sites started selling out (Windrivers was one of the first), that spelled the death of truly unbiased editorial. Most of the reviews started to be the same including bigging up flawed hardware to the point that it was pure fanboism (yes I know not a word!) over the actual truth. The only site that continued to truthfully review products is HardOCP with no airs or graces other than the truth.
I wish all the best to Anand and will now remove the bookmark from my browsers.
digiguy - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I think Anandtech deserves the benefit of doubt. I am not surprised to hear some people predicting the end of the world. It always happens in these situations. What matters is not them, but how things will develop over the next months and years. Anand left, which is undoubtedly a loss, but the rest of the team still makes an excellent job, so I will keep on reading them every day, and I am sure many will do too. I am not too worried about ads, if big popups start to appear I will simply remove AT from Adblock plus whitelist... But as long as people like Kristian, Ganesh and the others stay on-board I will stay with them... If they start leaving I will leave the boat too.FITCamaro - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Is that why Dailytech links are no longer on the sidebar?cknobman - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Yeah I commented on this yesterday as the Dailytech links were one of the mains reasons I visited this site besides the articles. I'll give it a bit but if they dont come back I'm out.Tchamber - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
What...is it too hard to add DT to you favs? Your life sounds rough, how on earth are you going to cope?zlandar - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
As someone who has been sh!tted on by megacorporations for being too small to matter I understand.The only way to fight fire is with fire. You have to get big enough to matter so the megacorpations blink when they lowball you and you tell them to f@ck off.
klmccaughey - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Anand came, he conquered, and he cashed in,I am very sad to see this, but at some stage Anand was going to do this. He now has lifelong financial security and the site will deteriorate henceforth.
We now need a new soothsayer to make us a new site with the same quality.
nrencoret - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
No congratulations here. Every time independent media outlets are purchased, either their quality or integrity or both are compromised.Tom's site is a great example of this. Sad to see THE premier tech site in the world fall prey to this failed model (as far as content quality and independence goes). The idea behind every case is always noble but something goes horribly wrong along the way. Thanks AT for becoming the best tech site and for all the knowledge I've gained throughout the years. In a couple of years what you did will be sorely missed.
Den - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
The end of an era. I just hope this does not mean Anadtech will go to the dogs like Tom's Hardware did :(theSeb - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I don’t post in the comments section often, but I read 97% of the articles and have done so for many years. On the one hand, I have noticed decline in the number of in-depth articles, so I hope that this improves. On the other hand, I have seen Tom’s Hardware become a mess and I was wondering why…. now I understand why thanks to the press release.Tom’s Hardware is now impossible to read on a web browser without an adblocker. Trying to do it on a tablet becomes something between a joke and the most infuriating experience ever. It is a perfect example of “how not to do it”. With every swipe you’re likely to trigger an advert and they pop up all over the place, usually obscuring most of the screen. Is this what we have to look forward to at Anandtech?
I see no reason why this site will be any different and it is a pity. I understand the reasons very well, because, let’s face it, money talks, but I see nothing good in the future for this site.
Writer's Block - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I hope the reviews remain what has so far seemed unbiased.TinHat - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Ryan, Jarred, Kristian,Unlike some others i wish your new venture all the best. Thats it, ... no digs or reservations.
I look forward to the coming changes.
Doomtomb - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
"new mobile world as we do about the old PC world"If you are using a PC, I guess you must be stuck in the past.
Anandtech sellouts. Founder leaves, then they sellout.
random2 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
"Purch acquired one of AnandTech’s biggest competitors in the late 1990s: Tom’s Hardware."Toms Hardware; A great site except for the fact it's home to every annoying method of advertizing on a website known to man. Closed my account with them years ago.
willstay - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Maybe after TomsHardware was bought by Purch, it started losing its charm. I didn't know it was sold but started not liking it from around the same time (I would say around 2001). Hope Anandtech doesn't end up at the same corner.Tchamber - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Ryan didn't say Tom's Hardware was bought in the 90's, but that they were Anandtech's big competitor in the 90's. Purch didn't acquire Tom's until July 2013. So whatever complaints we have about Tom's....they are not due to Purch's ownership.theSeb - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Correct, whilst TH has been deteriorating slowly for some time, it became really bad after the purchase and especially more so recently with ads and links to buy placed everywhere in every article.I am surprised that people try to look at this with an optimistic view - just take a look at every other "review site" that Purch has purchased (hehe) .... I do not see anything good in the future for Anandtech. What a pity.
jb14 - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
A very sad day. I hope the team manage to maintain their independence but every single similar site sellout I can think of ended in the front page car crash that is Tom's Hardware. But who knows, maybe Anandtech will be the first site to prove us all wrong!Shiitaki - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Sorry to hear Anadtech was bought, but since Anand left it, not really a surprise. Toms is still doing some good work, and much better than ZDnet, CNET, etc. So I will remain positive, but I will not be surprised to see Toms and Anand merge next year sometime.daniel142005 - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
I check Anandtech literally daily and have for at least 2-3 years. A few coworkers do as well and we have read articles from other sites before but never trusted it until it was Anandtech. If Anand was a part of it then I trust his judgement and look forward to seeing what comes from it!Not much of a fan of Tom's Hardware though.. it seriously needs a new design.
KenPC - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
Anand has built a respectable, valuable site. I hope that continues and I am not going to get upset before it is needed.Times and interests move on,, so hats off to Anand for building something of value, then going off to try something new and maybe better!
The crew at Anand is great, and builds a lot of value in the site.
But there are warning clouds out there... for example how Purch has structured Tom's site.
Tom's has some great content, but I go there perhaps as much as 5% as often as Anand. AD's are the reason, not content. Tom's site, once in, takes a hold and wont let go.. A complete browser shutdown is needed to exit tom's site. And those full page ads that block the page content are the most annoying.
Purch believes the more ads, the more aggressive the approach, the more cash (as shown with Tom's site). But I do believe if they are trying to increase Tom's readership (and cash flow), they need to first look in the mirror to find the problem.
The first full page, page blocking ad on Anand, and I am gone. With an obnoxious ad-centric theme aimed to 'better monetize' the site, I am gone. So Purch, if that happens, run your cash flow calculations on my click count compared to what you get now.
And then of course, thinking how Purch may try to gain cash flow and margin, they will be assessing whether 2 sites makes sense. I would smile from afar if they chose something catchy like 'The comprehensive T&A review site'. But consolidation, I fear, is an already done deal somewhere in the executive management plan.
drzzz - Monday, December 22, 2014 - link
I have followed the site since Anand posted his first article. Anand left and now the site has been sold. I am truly sad. I sometimes follow a link to a THG article and always leave it thinking how much better AT is. Now they are in the same bed together and I really feel betrayed as someone that has supported AT from the start. I have not supported this site to see it get lumped in with the crap that THG puts out. Some of the crap THG writes is clearly paid for infomercial level articles. I so hope AT does not turn into the same cess pool. My stomach turned when I read its was numbers and dollars decision. The bottom line syndrome (must be bigger) is destroying too many great companies.I will be watching and reading but honestly my hopes are not that high. Too many great companies get sold and destroyed today to believe that AT will one of the exceptions.
ppi - Monday, December 22, 2014 - link
What happened with the DailyTech news feed?MDX - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
And the list of media not owned by a company that's owns by a company that's owns by a company that's owns by Rupert Murdoch gets even shorter...really sad to see this. Tim to remove the anandtech bookmark..BoyBawang - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
So, How much is the aquisition?djkroon - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
I used to visit Tom's Hardware on a daily basis. Suddenly it became more advertising and less content. I rarely visit now. I understand the need to generate revenue but it severely overshadowed the content. I hope that does not become the path of AnandTech.kizh - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
you guys don't see it.He couldn't afford to compete with bandwidth. Instead of arguing if the site went downhill before now or it will after. Thing about this, its about net neutrality. And tech sites aren't the only things being consolidated its EVERYTHING from fast food to slow ass internet dualoplies at 10x the cost outside the United States. I've been around when toms was the place to go, I went here when it was bought out and turned to crap. Next I guess I go to HardOCP until they get bought out. Hopefully I'll die before I run out of sites :p
Wwhat - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted and now we can see another entity sink into the world of corporate crap.dsumanik - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
Lol we all know how "good" toms hardware become after its takeover... Get your ad blocker ready... And u guys are kidding yourselves this will not have en effect on the journalism. You have a boss now that will tell what to write when it means more clicks/ profits or payoffs from a vendor. Bye bye ATDFA-Havoc - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
This makes me sick to my stomach.I believe the staff when they say they have no intentions of changing how they do things, and that they will walk if asked to compromise their integrity. However, like others who have posted, I have zero faith in AT's new corporate overlords supporting the autonomy of the staff indefinitely.
As AT's own staff have stated many times, competition is good for consumers. AT and Toms being under the same roof forebodes only ill. There's no way that Purch is going to keep paying two different teams to cover the same material forever, and I fear that AT will get pushed into focusing solely on mobile while Toms gets the entire PC hardware pie.
I also worry about AT becoming a cesspit of hostile advertisement like Toms. Using their site without some sort of adblock makes me want to rage-vomit uncontrollably and never return. You say that Purch should be given the benefit of the doubt, that much of the damage done to Toms was before they took the wheel, but consider this: They could have swept the site clean of the insidious/invasive advertisement fungus Day 1 of ownership, and instead it has remained in place for over a year.
The situation at Toms has not improved in the last year. Why should we believe that they will have any positive impact on AT instead of simply milking it for all the value it has studiously built over these many years, until both the readers and the writers walk away in disgust?
The AT staff may have good intentions, but they are no longer at the wheel. Purch may be allowing them to drive for now, but how long will that last?
I'm going to keep coming back, and I hope that I'm proven wrong... but I doubt it. :/
angryemo - Thursday, December 25, 2014 - link
Can i get back the news column / area that existed on the right side of the pane on the home page? It has been replaced by an ugly face book related area :(marvdmartian - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link
@angryemo, suggest you simply change your bookmark to read "dailytech.com". I've already added that to mine, and if AT doesn't hold onto its old ways, it will be leaving the list.kizh - Thursday, December 25, 2014 - link
to hear the truth:http://jakemkh.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/a-repeatin...
Ryan Smith - Monday, December 29, 2014 - link
"Keep comments here, not on Anand’s site please, you know they won’t last."To be exceedingly clear here, I have deleted a single comment from this thread. It was a piece of spam. No comments are being removed on the basis of content. That's not something we do.
Matt Campbell - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
Best of luck guys, hope the transition goes smoothly and opens up new opportunities.ex_User - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
Yeah, baby, take the money and RUN!bendixG15 - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
I can hear the FAT LADY singing .... farewell ...Belard - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
Well... BestOfMedia was a mess. Some of their moderators were problematic and some good staff was lost... and now almost forgotten. I remember when both Toms and Anand were YOUNG websites... Anand had hair and Tom himself was actually active on his site.Having both websites owned by the same company... not seeing much of a future for both to be objective. Tom has improved in the past year thou.... and their advertising blitz seems to have gone down... so we'll have to see.
Hopefully Anandtech will continue to be the website it currently is... only time will tell.
hey, at least they aren't CNET.
JonnyDough - Sunday, December 28, 2014 - link
"In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that Purch acquired one of AnandTech’s biggest competitors in the late 1990s: Tom’s Hardware."And now Tom's is crap. Thanks Anand for selling out. Enjoy the wealth we made you with ads.
geok1ng - Monday, December 29, 2014 - link
And so i am moving to Ars Technica for Mobile reviews. So much for AT vs TH competition.nikon133 - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
So now... are we going to see some sort of amalgamation - Anand's Hardware... or TomTech?