Support for this site.Pony up fatasses

[FreeKnight]

It's pretty great that this forum is still chugging along when SO many others have fizzled completely in the face of many changes that I suppose are pretty obvious:

1) the decline of the PC
2) the move of reviews to youtube
3) the lack of overclockability of processors (until a microarchitecture revolution happens, headroom is going to keep declining)
4) the popularity of reddit
5) the collapse of NCIX
6) high price of some components - especially GPUs
7) the death of Moore's Law (not worth upgrading as often)
8) popularity of consoles for gaming

Look at the join dates of the people in this thread - most have been here at least 10 years and I get the sense that many active members are IT types. It's a small niche these days and I am not really in it anymore despite being one of the first members here and a former reviewer and moderator (crappy at both, I am afraid). I haven't upgraded my PC in quite a while because the GPU I bought for $750 in 2014 is still not worth replacing at current prices and I have children now.

I just checked techgage - a similar sort of Canadian tech site to HWC but unlike HWC, techgage still cranks out written reviews, but they haven't had a post on their forums since 2018.

I credit the continued life of this forum to the quality and civility of the members and to a handful of kind and helpful very active members who create a nice atmosphere here.

I hope HWC keeps going though and I would kick in a little dosh if necessary, though not $50 per month

side question: Is HWC still owned GTO Media which is in turn owned by Feng Qing Long a la Netlink?

Sky's touched on that a couple times, A quick post about it is here;
NCIX and Direct Canada removed from PC Part Picker - Page 2 - Hardware Canucks

There's a longer explanation on the forum somewhere, but basically HWC's been its own entity for years.

 

[sswilson]

It's pretty great that this forum is still chugging along when SO many others have fizzled completely in the face of many changes that I suppose are pretty obvious:

1) the decline of the PC
2) the move of reviews to youtube
3) the lack of overclockability of processors (until a microarchitecture revolution happens, headroom is going to keep declining)
4) the popularity of reddit
5) the collapse of NCIX
6) high price of some components - especially GPUs
7) the death of Moore's Law (not worth upgrading as often)
8) popularity of consoles for gaming

Look at the join dates of the people in this thread - most have been here at least 10 years and I get the sense that many active members are IT types. It's a small niche these days and I am not really in it anymore despite being one of the first members here and a former reviewer and moderator (crappy at both, I am afraid). I haven't upgraded my PC in quite a while because the GPU I bought for $750 in 2014 is still not worth replacing at current prices and I have children now.

I just checked techgage - a similar sort of Canadian tech site to HWC but unlike HWC, techgage still cranks out written reviews, but they haven't had a post on their forums since 2018.

I credit the continued life of this forum to the quality and civility of the members and to a handful of kind and helpful very active members who create a nice atmosphere here.

I hope HWC keeps going though and I would kick in a little dosh if necessary, though not $50 per month

side question: Is HWC still owned GTO Media which is in turn owned by Feng Qing Long a la Netlink?

I don't believe so. Pretty sure that during NCIX's bankruptcy "fun" we were informed that Gav and Skymtl had bought out GTO Media's interest in HWC (or possibly bought GTO Media itself from netlink ). HWC's links to NCIX have been severed.

 

[enaberif]

It's pretty great that this forum is still chugging along when SO many others have fizzled completely in the face of many changes that I suppose are pretty obvious:

1) the decline of the PC
2) the move of reviews to youtube
3) the lack of overclockability of processors (until a microarchitecture revolution happens, headroom is going to keep declining)
4) the popularity of reddit
5) the collapse of NCIX
6) high price of some components - especially GPUs
7) the death of Moore's Law (not worth upgrading as often)
8) popularity of consoles for gaming

Look at the join dates of the people in this thread - most have been here at least 10 years and I get the sense that many active members are IT types. It's a small niche these days and I am not really in it anymore despite being one of the first members here and a former reviewer and moderator (crappy at both, I am afraid). I haven't upgraded my PC in quite a while because the GPU I bought for $750 in 2014 is still not worth replacing at current prices and I have children now.

I just checked techgage - a similar sort of Canadian tech site to HWC but unlike HWC, techgage still cranks out written reviews, but they haven't had a post on their forums since 2018.

I credit the continued life of this forum to the quality and civility of the members and to a handful of kind and helpful very active members who create a nice atmosphere here.

I hope HWC keeps going though and I would kick in a little dosh if necessary, though not $50 per month

side question: Is HWC still owned GTO Media which is in turn owned by Feng Qing Long a la Netlink?

To be honest.. I don't think if Youtube existed HWC wouldn't exist. I don't really see other than out of pocket money how this site can maintain.

With that said... I doubt running this forum costs a lot month to month and its one of those things that is just wash for nostalgia sake.

 

[Marzipan]

doesn't mean it shouldn't be updated. the home page should be made into something that advertises and guides to their YouTube reviews.


and they could provide written material to back those up, for those that like to read.

 

[crazyea]

cant they just come up with some sort of aggregator for the youtube stuff?

 

[enaberif]

doesn't mean it shouldn't be updated. the home page should be made into something that advertises and guides to their YouTube reviews.


and they could provide written material to back those up, for those that like to read.

Oh I 100% agree. I feel there is a lot of "riding on the coat tails" going on here.

 

[Shadowmeph]

personally I love this site. I think that now days it is the norm of things meaning things are done so often that it is normal like most people OC now with a quick setting in the Bios . like in life when you do things so often it becomes a basic habit like getting up grabbing coffee years ago people would talk now because there isnt that much to talk about or in the case of most forums about PCs it has been done so much and I believe that it takes allot of time personal time to do things like reviews and with everyday life it is very possible that the usual reviewers are kind of lack of better word bored of repeating things. now is say a new cpu .mb or vid card comes out that is so different I think it would create that spark but unfortunately this isnt happening this is just the way life is you can only go so far before you might have to change. I used to hang around a site dedicating to slimming down Windows OS's great site great people that even though I never met in the RW I thought of as kind of family but OS's changed and peoples paths go in different directions the forum changed names twice now ti is gone after 12 years . there are very few forums that I have checked out ,out there a that are clean and are decent like this forum but like I have repeatedly said the forum is adapting at least in my eyes which is ok to me. I still go through older posts looking for answers to questions of things I dont know .

 

[belgolas]

I won't stop going to this forum. It has great people that will try to help you and we mostly share the same interests. There is also the BST part that also keeps me here. I do like the written reviews and check after every major release. There hasn't been any written review in awhile as nothing major has come out and they don't do some reviews written like cases for example. You still get the more important CPU and GPU written reviews here.

I agree it would be smart to modernize the front page and include the YouTube videos but every YouTube video is posted they do link the site and forums.

 

[Soultribunal]

Not to make this a personal attack, but seriously... you are one of the most negative people I've ever seen on a forum. Everything you post sounds like Eeyore. You need some positivity in your life.


Sadly though, I do agree that the tides are turning with regards to content consumption. But, as has been mentioned already, simply linking their YT and other content on to the front page of the forums can keep traffic fresh here, and still give the written community a place to hang out that doesn't feel like it's abandoned.

We've had some interesting people in my 11 years here on this site, Enaberif is definitely one of them but sometimes Its nice to have a 'tell it like it is' person. I don't take him as negative, I take him as a realist.

And from the people I've seen come and go, I'll take him any day of the week. (I could always re-instate Zero82 or DanGTX if you wanted some 'color' on the forum again) h34r:h34r:


-ST

 

[enaberif]

We've had some interesting people in my 11 years here on this site, Enaberif is definitely one of them but sometimes Its nice to have a 'tell it like it is' person. I don't take him as negative, I take him as a realist.

And from the people I've seen come and go, I'll take him any day of the week. (I could always re-instate Zero82 or DanGTX if you wanted some 'color' on the forum again) h34r:h34r:


-ST

oh god ... Zero82 and Dan... :shok: