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How does Tom (TomsHardware) do it?..

V

VBboy

Diamond Member
My question is: how does Tom Papst (TomsHardware.com) manage to push out quality articles and reviews pretty much every other day? How do they make money to pay reviewers and stay in business, when many good hardware sites closed down? I remember good old days when Anandtech had great articles very frequently, too... 😉

Some of you probably think that Tom gets paid by hardware manufacturers to give positive ratings, but I've seen a lot of hardware that he trashes and rates poorly.

Note: I am not affiliated with them in any way =)
 
I find Tom's being a bit uneven in the quality of their articles.

Some articles, mostly the ones written by Tom himself, are very good and often entertaining as well(I like his style😉), while others are very poor, with loads of spelling errors, bias, factual errors, etc.
Unfortunately, Anand is a tad uneven as well, though I must say Anand's "worst cases" are still better than Tom's.

The only site that IMO only pumps out top notch articles is Ace's, ever since I started reading Ace's a long long time ago, I have yet to become disapointed with one single article.
 
I like Tom but the range of articles is just too broad!! So i only ever read a few... neways who's ACE? url?
 
Ace's

I dunno how any savvy reader could like tom's, his articles aren't particularly enlightening to anyone but hardware neophytes (benchmarks you can get anywhere...), his obvious overpower bias is sometimes more difficult to wade through than quicksand, and his huge ego always peppers articles with distractions.

Not to mention they recently changed all the byline credits of articles written by Van Smith. How much can you trust a site that will stoop to stealing credit for articles ??
 
The key to Anand's site is that he always is on top of the game. Remember the day that everyone could post on the radeon 9700?? Anand was the first and the best article out. There really was no other
 
I would have to guess that the site makes money by being sponsored by many hardware companies for which he does reviews. The companies receive publicity for their products, which helps them generate more sales. It's really a win win situation for them. Sometimes this can affect the integrity of the reviewer because you know that to stay in business you must keep your sponsorships. Most businesses wouldn't sponsor a site to give negative reviews. On the flip side, it encourages companies to put out quality products, because they know any flaws in a product will be shown to the public through the reviews.
 
Dont forget that Anand is a very young man. Maybe he wants to spend a little of his life "normal" and not hugging a keyboard 24/7. Tom is prolly at that age where every minute he can spend away from the "old lady" is prime time.

Lets hope Anand can continue hosting a great site, and still live a normal life. Not all money is good money.. IMHO
 
Originally posted by: mastertech01
Dont forget that Anand is a very young man. Maybe he wants to spend a little of his life "normal" and not hugging a keyboard 24/7. Tom is prolly at that age where every minute he can spend away from the "old lady" is prime time.

Lets hope Anand can continue hosting a great site, and still live a normal life. Not all money is good money.. IMHO
Click to expand...

Anand has a writing/reviewing staff, just like Tom. I don't know any reason why he can't get more articles out. Back in the day, there used to be six hardware guides a week, 3 gaming rigs, 3 SOHO rigs.

Remember also that Tom's articles are likely translated from German (by a native German). For that reason, they're not going to be as gramatically clear as Anand's.

Personally, I like Tom's site, maybe more than Anandtech. It used to not be that way, but there are so few articles at Anandtech.

The key to Anand's site is that he always is on top of the game. Remember the day that everyone could post on the radeon 9700?? Anand was the first and the best article out. There really was no other
Click to expand...

And who knows why he was able to obtain a benching sample. Does he just have a better relationship with ATi, did he sign some kind some kind of anti-defimation agreement about the R300? To get a sample, did you need to do something others thought would compromise their journalistic integrity? We don't know...and Anand isn't talking.

 
i'm not so sure articles about FrontX ports (which have been out for almost 3 years now) and steering wheels constitute "good" articles. i can't remember the last time Tom wrote anything, so most of the articles lately have been subpar. occasionally, they'll have a decent roundup, but nothing you can't find here at AT.

if there was a website out that wrote insightful/technical articles like at Ace's at the frequency that Tom's puts out articles, that would be awesome. i remember when AT was like that...we'd get a new motherboard or video card review every day, it seemed. now every 3 weeks, we get a roundup with pitifully small blurbs about each individual board/card. i used to buy stuff based on Anand's recommendation. if it didn't get a good score from here, i didn't buy it. now, we don't get individual reviews. and just throwing numbers at me with a few layout observations and specs i can pull from the website doesn't help me out much.

i wish i could start up a site and write such articles....but being a grad student doesn't let me do that. plus, chris tom would accuse me of starting up a "me too" site, even if i could...maybe in 6 years when i get my PhD, i'll start something. until then, i'll hope an Ace's/Tom's hybrid pops up (or AT returns to its roots and does more in-depth individual product reviews).
 
Originally posted by: acejj26

or AT returns to its roots and does more in-depth individual product reviews)
Click to expand...

I agree. Anand's is nowhere near what it was a couple of years ago. I'm not saying we need seperate reviews for every Ti 4600, but a couple of different i845g reviews would be cool.
 
Tom's articles always seem like a commercial
rolleye.gif
 
AT has some good articles, I never really liked Tom's stuff....


AT has well written articles IMO...and quality > quantity.
 
Originally posted by: Yobbo
AT has some good articles, I never really liked Tom's stuff....


AT has well written articles IMO...and quality > quantity.
Click to expand...

Yes, but how many people are going to visit a website if it publishes as often as JD Salinger?

 
Originally posted by: Ben50
I would have to guess that the site makes money by being sponsored by many hardware companies for which he does reviews. The companies receive publicity for their products, which helps them generate more sales. It's really a win win situation for them. Sometimes this can affect the integrity of the reviewer because you know that to stay in business you must keep your sponsorships. Most businesses wouldn't sponsor a site to give negative reviews. On the flip side, it encourages companies to put out quality products, because they know any flaws in a product will be shown to the public through the reviews.
Click to expand...

I know for a fact that we never paid Tom's or Anandtech a dime to review our products. One way they make money is through "Pricegrabber" they get a royalty everytime someone clicks through to pricegrabber from the site.

 
I wouldn't say that all of Tom's Articles are quality. In fact, I really can't even remember the last article that Tom himself wrote. I really find some of the errors and typo's in Tom's articles really distracting. Graph's not labeled properly, poor gramar, things like that.

I will say this though. They have done a couple of really original writeups. The one about Laptop harddrives in a RAID 0 config was really cool in my book. Not something you'd think about doing every day but definately a neat idea worth exploring just to see what kind of results you get.

- J
 
Originally posted by: JHeiderman
I wouldn't say that all of Tom's Articles are quality. In fact, I really can't even remember the last article that Tom himself wrote. I really find some of the errors and typo's in Tom's articles really distracting. Graph's not labeled properly, poor gramar, things like that.

- J
Click to expand...

I think when you can translate your English to flawless German, you have a right to complain about his errors. I think it's great that he's open to an outside Germany market.
 
Originally posted by: BDawg
Originally posted by: mastertech01
Dont forget that Anand is a very young man. Maybe he wants to spend a little of his life "normal" and not hugging a keyboard 24/7. Tom is prolly at that age where every minute he can spend away from the "old lady" is prime time.

Lets hope Anand can continue hosting a great site, and still live a normal life. Not all money is good money.. IMHO
Click to expand...

Anand has a writing/reviewing staff, just like Tom. I don't know any reason why he can't get more articles out. Back in the day, there used to be six hardware guides a week, 3 gaming rigs, 3 SOHO rigs.

Remember also that Tom's articles are likely translated from German (by a native German). For that reason, they're not going to be as gramatically clear as Anand's.

Personally, I like Tom's site, maybe more than Anandtech. It used to not be that way, but there are so few articles at Anandtech.

The key to Anand's site is that he always is on top of the game. Remember the day that everyone could post on the radeon 9700?? Anand was the first and the best article out. There really was no other
Click to expand...

And who knows why he was able to obtain a benching sample. Does he just have a better relationship with ATi, did he sign some kind some kind of anti-defimation agreement about the R300? To get a sample, did you need to do something others thought would compromise their journalistic integrity? We don't know...and Anand isn't talking.
Click to expand...

lets not talk about his relationship with ATI....somethings are never meant to be known......

 
Toms Hardware pulls in a lot of readers and there discussions always seem a little slow to bring up.

Sometimes I look at the HARD|OCP site. They had a good article on the Abit IT7 Max. Abit took a radical move removing the Paralell, PS2, and Serial ports. Nothing but USB and Firewire and they have Serial ATA EIDE ports. Asus said they are coming out with 3 new Serial ATA 8X AGP boards also. Havent seen anyone selling a 8X Video card or a Serial ATA Drive. I think the hard drive folks are trying to sell all of their existing drives.
 
I don't even think Tom contributes to his site anymore. His last article was ages ago and the staff he has now just don't seem to cut it IMO.

Dean
 
i'd have to agree with the folks who note that the quality of articles on tom's sight varies wildly. some seem like little more than promo plugs, or are so simple they only have value for the very green newbie. some articles are, however, quite good. i personally really enjoy tom's writing style, tho he obviously has quite an ego.

i also agree with the complaint that the volume of articles on AT has dropped significantly. i pine for the days whey i could count on a mobo review, a vid card review, and a couple of good price/system articles per week. i suspect that at is suffering from that fact that most of it's contributors are also college students and have some major commitments outside of the site! however, i do think the overall quality of at articles is above any other site i've been to (tho they do seem to be getting thinner lately).

that said, it seems that ALL sights have been dropping in depth and sophistication of their reviews lately. i think there are several reasons for this:

1) we seem to be in a lull for major cpu updates. both amd and intel are currently spinning revs of previously released architectures. it's been a while since anything new and exciting has been released. personally, i'm thinking cpu development is going to slow down. after 2Gig, who the heck needs a 3gig cpu?

2) gpu's have become incredibly complex & very few people can really understand what they're doing. this applies to reviewers as well, especially reviewers who are attempting to reverse engineer the thing by playing with the settings. i think the days are past when we see in-depth reviews of gpu's 'cause nobody would understand it anyway!

btw, i also really like HardOCP - in addition to writing their own reviews they link to new reviews posted all over, so you can always count on a few interesting tidbits per day.

my two bits,

joe

ps - i'll be checking out aces next!
 
Both Anand and Tom's sites have gone downhill IMO. Toms best moment was when he trashed Intel's PIII 1.13ghz and got it recalled. Now he barely ever writes articles himself, and those written by his staff do seem like PR. And of course here at Anandtech the frequency has gone down, as has the detail. There is no reason why more articles can't be written - there are many very smart and respected enthusiasts on these boards who I'm sure would be happy to contribute. From the banner ads urging you to get the Anandtech newletter, to almost never seeing Anand on the forums makes the site seem like some huge corporation now. I do like Evan Lieb's more in-depth writing on the newest motherboard roundup though. Oh yeah, Kyle seems like an honest guy who wouldn't hesitate from criticizing a product that deserved it, but I don't really like the overclocking/fps obsession the community over there seems to have...
 
Aces is definitely the BEST hardware site IMO. Their forum owns also. Alot of the guys over there definitely know their stuff. They don't fight over the same old amd/intel, nvidia/ati crap like alot of people do here. This forum is ok, but not like it used to be. Same ole - should I buy amd or intel or ati or nvidia. amd is faster/ intel is faster. Blah Blah Blah. Of course this is all just IMO.



Jason
 
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