Changing Seas

I can say with a level head that Centaur is one of the best places to work in the world. I’ll write more about both my experiences at Centaur and CAna Labs soon.

“What about Van’s Hardware?” you might ask. That’s a good question. The site will likely remain on life support for the immediate future.

For an urgent fix of computer hardware information, I can recommend my favorites. Of course, HardOCP, AnandTech and The TechReport seem to be getting better and better and that’s why they continue to flourish.

I love Mike Magee; long live Mike! He’s now writing and editing for TGDaily, a very nice website that was spawned from my old haunt, THG. Likewise, I follow Loyd Case who seems to be just about everywhere nowadays.

My friend Rick C. Hodgin used to be managing editor for Wolfgang Gruener at TGDaily. Rick tempted me a time or two to write for him. Although Rick always spoke very glowingly of Wolfgang, he no longer works for him. Rick is still posting on and off at Geek.com.

For the longest time, our very own Joel Hruska worked for ArsTechnica, another top notch tech site. Now, HotHardware is lucky to have Joel’s services.

Speaking of Tom’s Hardware, I now visit there frequently after all of these years; the content there is quite good again.

I often don’t agree with his takes on NVIDIA, but I’ll never stop following my old friend Charlie.

If you want to dive deep into computer tech, visit Lost Circuits, perhaps the most technically rigorous hardware site of them all.

Sadly, one of my favorite sites is no more. Ace’s Hardware has been defunct for several years now. Fortunately, Johan De Gelas continues to write detailed analysis for Anand. It’s true that a surrogate Ace’s forums sorta still lives on, but I’m not a big fan of message boards.

I haven’t posted on technology related message boards in many, many years. When VHJ was popular, whenever I posted under my real name I always had to be prepared to devote a lot of time for responses. To avoid this, for a few months soon after I began working for Centaur, I posted anonymously under whatever name popped into my head at the time (but I never attempted to hide my IP address out of respect to the forum owners). But even posting anonymously is a headache because it still invites responses, and many message board devotees can be determined, provocative and harsh. Some people simply like to argue. I do not like to argue, and I don’t like to spend my time reading people trade insults, which is all too common on many message boards.

Dave Graham did a fantastic job running our own VHJ message boards. We had interesting discussions there at times, but the message boards were still often a headache despite the fact that they achieved some level of success, largely due to Dave’s work.

Lastly, I like to take a peek at what Andrew Orlowski writes at The Register. I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew many years ago at a conference. He’s a very nice guy and his articles are insightful, intelligent, bold, well written and worth reading.