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Hardware

THG Debuts Networking Guide 191

fist_187 writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has opened their new site Tom's Networking. The name pretty much says it all."
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THG Debuts Networking Guide

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  • by Azadre ( 632442 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:31PM (#7868862)
    But can it help me network a beowulf cluster?
  • Networking, (Score:4, Funny)

    by p5 ( 102346 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:32PM (#7868870)
    Maybe Tom needs to learn about load balancing.
  • by Bobby Onions ( 735795 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:33PM (#7868876)
    In Soviet Russia, Hardware Guides Tom!
  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:34PM (#7868887)
    So does visiting the site apparently:

    This document contains no data
  • by __aawwih8715 ( 4861 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:34PM (#7868891)

    "This week we overclock the latest NIC's, and do a torture test to our site -- We will be linked to at slashdot."
    • by JagEsquire ( 314144 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:45PM (#7868936) Homepage
      This actually has me laughing on the floor.

      New site about Networking and the site is down. I lost my trust in Tom when he stopped making an informed decision and started saying that the people that advertise with him have the best products. Launching a Networking site that can't stay up under load just makes me laugh even harder and will make me never come back.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        I lost my trust in Tom when he stopped making an informed decision

        Whoa. When did he do that? Because actually I pretty much don't care about the latest hardware trends and every time I have to buy a new graphics card or CPU I consult good ole' Tom. Are you implying this was a mistake?
      • For many of us 'networking' has to do with a lot more than a networked machine running Apache.

        Furthermore, if you connect to the site without a slashdot referrer, you have no problem. So who is the 'bumbling incompetent'? Someone who has their site filter on referrer, or someone who apparently doesn't even understand that's what happened?

        On the other hand, looking at the 'Toms' page, it looks like another gear-review site. Fine enough, but there's more to networking than that.
  • C'mon, posting a brand new site on slashdot? Thats just plain MEAN!
  • Anyone else read THD debuts networking guide? Well it certainly got me thinking how you could take "advantage" of total harmonic distortion in networking.
    • Anyone else read THD debuts networking guide?


      No, but everytime I see THG I keep thinking "The Humble Guys" and am wondering if they've got some new 0-day warez out like Police Quest II or Space Quest.

  • by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <.mark. .at. .seventhcycle.net.> on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:37PM (#7868903) Homepage
    Oh well... There goes my faith in Tom's Networking Ability (Tm)
  • by Aliencow ( 653119 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:38PM (#7868906) Homepage Journal
    I haven't seen the site since it doesn't load, but most people I know who are fans of Tom's Hardware are gamers who will tell you stuff such as "OMFG LOL!!!111 Did u see that burning athlon on tomshardware !? AHHAR ROFLELFELFLE" and who will never actually READ anything unless it's a chart with big colorful bars for FPS rates on video cards.
    • Come on....do you mean to tell me that if you run a CPU without a heatsink, it can be damaged? Next up on Toms Horsepower Guide, running an '03 Mustang GT without a radiator causes stalling
      • The article and video in question was demonstrating poor AMD design quality, in that the AMD proc kept on going until the point of meltdown once the heatsink was removed, the p3 locking up completely, but no damage to the processor, and the p4 clocking itself down.

        Of course you can't run a pc without at the very least a heatsink on the CPU, but some die more gracefully than others.

        Signed,
        A Dedicated AMD FanBoy, regardless of heat issues.
        • Tom's is a fraud. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03, 2004 @06:57PM (#7869672)
          Actually, the problem with that Intel vs AMD CPU
          cookout video that Toms showed a while back was
          not AMD's fault at all. They claimed the AMD CPU
          will continue to run until it fries itself, while
          the Intel CPU used Speedstepping to cool itself
          down if needed.

          The problem with the video was that the CPU *DID*
          have an on core thermal diode... but Tom's
          PURPOSELY used an Athlon based motherboard THAT
          DID NOT SUPPORT IT. It was the fault of the
          motherboard maker and Tom's unsurprisingly
          selective choice of that motherboard... and that
          was why the CPU fried itself. Hello? Has anyone
          SEEN those CPU Shutdown Temp settings in the BIOS?
          I turned those on in my test rig and COULD NOT
          fry my AMD CPU.

          So much for Tom's "in depth" reporting. The guy's
          a total sell-out. (Which is obvious) But since he
          did the worst possible thing in the reporting and
          journalistic point of view: Changed the credits
          on articles previously written by another writer
          just to spite him. (Van Smith over at Van's
          Hardware.) Bad. I have absolutely no respect or
          trust for Tom's anymore and never will because
          of these two incidents... and there have been a
          few more. I'm sure other /. posters will
          eventually point them all out.

          Fuck it, I'll link the examples myself.

          Link One [aceshardware.com] - Kyle from HardOCP's
          comment about Tom's misleading video.
          Found in the Ace's Hardware Forums.

          Link Two [aceshardware.com] - Post taken from AMDZone
          posted on Ace's Hardware Forums about Tom's
          Hardware modifying Van's articles to credit a
          different author. Forum responses results in
          some additional info. Read through the threads.
          • Re:Tom's is a fraud. (Score:3, Informative)

            by florin ( 2243 ) *
            While it's certainly true that Tom's website has been overtaken by other more in-depth websites when it comes to authoritative reporting, your claim that Tom deliberately engineered the test to make the Athlon look bad is in fact completely baseless.

            There was a very valid point to that test and that is that the AMD Athlon XP and MP CPUs rely on the motherboard to step in and prevent CPU damage in case of overheat, whereas modern Intel chips protect themselves. It just so happens that at the time of the tes
        • Yes but why? We know this to be a NEW feature on the P4. So its kind of silly to proclaim today a failure Athlons have had for an eternity!? IIRC, P3 , P2, P1, K6 and K7 as well.
      • I've run CPUs without heatsinks for decades. In fact, I once attached a heatsink to the Z80 processor on my BigBoard CP/M machine, hoping that would make it stop crashing. It didn't. I had to actually put a fan in a case (actually, first I had to put the BigBoard in a case!) and have air circulating over the entire board before it became stable.

        It wasn't an AMD or Intel CPU, tho, so I suppose I should just step out of the way of the fragging here.

  • Why is it every CMS based site out there now wants to be sectioned out like slashdot?

    Tom if you're listening. Just keep the site the way it is. You don't need to copy slashdot. I go to your site for good reviews. My favorite part about your site is the graph analysis you provide with every review that compares a product to a similiar line of products. Also I know you're a smart guy, who knows his stuff, and I hold your opinion in high regard.

    Keep doing what you do best. Slashdot is here for bullshit co
    • by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @05:30PM (#7869115) Journal
      Tom if you're listening. Just keep the site the way it is. You don't need to copy slashdot. I go to your site for good reviews. My favorite part about your site is the graph analysis you provide with every review that compares a product to a similiar line of products. Also I know you're a smart guy, who knows his stuff, and I hold your opinion in high regard.

      The worst part is, is that you seem genuine about this. Next up on Tom's Networking!

      35k USD Cisco 64 port switch vs 35k USD 64k port 3Com switch! 10+ of explanation why you need one! With 20+ Win32 benchmark tools! 40+ horizontal bar graphs! 60+ pages on senseless bullshit! 80+ of advertisements! Next up, Tom's Applied Mathematics, Tom's Psychological Profiling and Tom's Taxidermy! YAY!

      I'd rather read somethingawful.com articles on networking. "Cliss Yablonksi hates stateful firewalls" and "Photoshop Phriday: Your IPv6 implementation vs The Hulk!" sound quite interesting!"

    • by Anonymous Coward
      "Your site is considered journalism by many."

      I hope to God you're kidding about this. Tom is about as credible and knowledgable as any random /. post.
    • by the uNF cola ( 657200 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @06:12PM (#7869424)

      I go to your site for good reviews

      Then you may wanna go to sites like arstechnica instead.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:44PM (#7868933)
    Imagine TomsDating.com? He could rank all your potential mates with a variety of benchmarks, and even try overclocking them.
  • I'll say it....... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by USAPatriot ( 730422 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:45PM (#7868937) Homepage
    I'll say it because no one else will. Tom is an ass.

    But more importantly his reviews suck! I haven't even looked at this one but i venture to guess it's at least 15 pages, milk that advertising cash cow, tom!

    If brevity is the soul of wit, then you are one dumb mother fucker Tom.

    Now for the informative part of by rant:

    try www.hardocp.com
    or
    www.anandtech.com
    or
    www.ac eshardware.com

    all 100% better than tom's
    • Yeah, but the brains behind it is Tim Higgins.
      He made a great site called www.practicallynetworked.com which I believe he sold off then he went on to make www.smallnetbuilder.com,which he seems to have somehow combined with Tom.

      What will happen? I don't know, but at least give him a chance to go bad.
      • Cool, I didn't know what. back when practicallynetworked was worth a shit (around when dslreports first came out) I was their faithfully.

        But its whored itself fully and I cant even bear to look at it its soo repleate with ads. Cant even recommend it to people anymore.

        Does this guy deserve a 2nd chanse? or does he want to build up and sell this site as well?
    • by W2k ( 540424 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @06:28PM (#7869501) Journal
      Admittedly Anandtech write solid reviews, but HardOCP is run by an idiot with an ego problem. I would not rely on their reviews. As for Ace's, I don't visit it very often, so I've no opinion of it.

      ALL hardware sites are influenced by advertisers as far as I'm concerned. Though I cannot prove this - some of them may very well be clean - but it's safest to assume this and never put your complete trust in a single site.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Admittedly Anandtech write solid reviews, but HardOCP is run by an idiot with an ego problem.

        I stopped visiting Anandtech when he started linking keywords in his articles to advertisers. The only indication that the links were advertisements was that they were a different color (orange I believe). Embedding advertising in editorial content is quite dubious and his ethics are therefore questionable.

        I agree with your comment about HardOCP's owner. A few years back I had an e-mail exchange with him on the

      • I consider HardOCP a very solid site whenever they get around to doing a review, I believe it to be honest.

        But yes, his ego has chased me away and some of his politically incorrect attitudes are offensive. Seems to confuse sensitivity with PC...
      • "ALL hardware sites are influenced by advertisers as far as I'm concerned. Though I cannot prove this"

        I can prove it purely on theory:

        Give every product good reviews, manufacturers love you, consumers view you as a cheap shill and your site dies due to lack of userbase.

        Give every product honest reviews ("this hardware is worthless" included), manufacturers refuse to supply you with demo hardware and you're stuck paying for your own equip and doing reviews weeks later than everyone else. your site dies du
    • I've heard this a lot recently, but didn't know what all the fuss was about until I read a comparison of Athlon 64 motherboards a few days ago -- I wasn't even looking closely, but when I compared information with other sources, there were several factual mistakes in virtually every paragraph! (for example, the roundup claimed that the motherboard I now have only supports single-sided DIMMs in two of the slots, but the manual clearly states that you can use a double-sided DIMM in one of those slots at a tim
    • "Now for the informative part of by rant:
      try www.hardocp.com
      or www.anandtech.com
      or www.aceshardware.com"


      www.hardocp.com:
      Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?

      No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.

      www.anandtech.com:
      Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?

      No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.

      www.aceshardware.com:
      Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?

      No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.
      • Oh, you won't install flash!
        YOU REBEL! Sock it to em in the gnu/linux way. or whatever bizarre rationale that you're applying that won't let you install flash.

        Geez. It's a flash ad. Either ignore it like 99% of the population does or configure your Proxomitron/Squid/Etc to strip the dern things out of the websites. Having a flash ad doesn't mean that they have sold their soul and abandoned all of their journalistic integrity.

        Quit being so damn elitist.
        • "Quit being so damn elitist"

          What's elitist? I'm not going to read a website with high-colour animations, because I physically can't read things with Flash animations next to them. My brain can't concentrate on reading text when there's an animated hammer, or swirly crap, or strobing blue and red trying to grab my attention.

          If a website has Flash on it, I won't read it, nor reccommend it, nor ever come back to it. That's not elitist, that's just something the website owners need to know when they wonder
      • www.hardocp.com:

        Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?

        No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.

        [etc.]

        http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/flashblock. xpi [mielczarek.org]

  • by __aawwih8715 ( 4861 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:50PM (#7868960)

    Maybe tom will test new networking gear by being linked to by slashdot everytime he has a roundup.
  • by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:57PM (#7868989) Homepage
    "In our benchmarks the 3C905C performed poorly, giving only 99.95Mb/s in our benchmarks. In contrast the FA311 (praise be to the advertisers) gave a flawless 99.99Mb and it definately the gamers network card of choice"

    "The fact that the rcom 3C905C stops if you put it in a microwave to 10 minutes then stamp on it, means that the FA311 (praise be to the advertisiers) is the only usable network card in its class"
    • by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @06:04PM (#7869375) Homepage Journal
      I don't know about 100 cards, but there are notable differences in how well gigabit cards operate, differing by as many as hundreds of megabits a second of performance at times. And wireless networking components can be tested for packet rates and speeds given differing distances and base stations.

      I do admit that there is too high of a risk of advertisers having an influence on review methodology.
      • by Hast ( 24833 )
        Gigabit cards can differ a lot since some use drivers to to stuff. (Ie it's your CPU that's doing the job.) Since Gigabit cards are pretty damned fast this can have a noticable impact on your computers performance.

        That's why you should go with the bigger cards, or just be content with 100Mb since that most likely will satisfy your needs anyways.
  • Dear Tom (Score:5, Funny)

    by KU_Fletch ( 678324 ) <bthomas1@NOsPam.ku.edu> on Saturday January 03, 2004 @04:58PM (#7868993)
    Congrats on the nwe site, please accept its first slashdotting with our regards.
  • Domain pollution (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ziplux ( 261840 )
    Yay for the corruption and pollution of DNS! Couldn't they just have used a subdomain off of tomshardware.com? If this site really is a subsite of tomshardware.com, it would make sense (and be more considerate to the Internet community) to use something like "networking.tomshardware.com" instead of registering a new domain name.
  • Im starting to wonder if Tom's Netowrking even worked in the first place when the story was submitted. Who is to blame for this? The submitter of the story or the slashdot poster?

    Has anyone actually been to the site before to know that it even exists?

    There has been a lot of THG's articles posted here over the last few weeks so maybe it was just like, "oh well this is THG related so it has to be good" without even checking the link they post it?
  • by HashDefine ( 590370 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @05:09PM (#7869046) Homepage
    TomsNotWorking.com
  • by martinde ( 137088 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @05:10PM (#7869048) Homepage
    Is it a blog about the people that Tom has met in his social network? If it's about computer networks, he's got a lot to learn since his site is now inaccessible ;-)
  • is the server at tom's diner?
  • Google Cache (Score:4, Informative)

    by armando_wall ( 714879 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @05:16PM (#7869068) Homepage

    The more slashdotted the site is, the more I wanna view it!!!

    Here's the google cache version of THG [216.239.41.104], for the impatient people like me.

  • Pity it's /.ed. I really wanted to read the Friendster/Tribe.net shootout. Or at least look at the pretty charts.
  • There seems to be improvement: Now I get "TomsNetworking is coming Soon".
    I guess his site wasn't ready to go public yet...
  • by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @06:07PM (#7869402) Homepage
    A serious story about your tech site is posted on Slashdot, and the first six of the highest-scored posts are all "Score: 5, Funny."
  • If you look at Tomshardware.com and look on the bottom left where it shows links to different sections such as CPU's, Ram, etc.. If you press on the word Networking, it goes to the recent victim of slashdot, tomsnetworking.com..... Its possible this site has really always existed.. but people browsing tomshardware didnt pay any attention to where their browsers were taking them.
  • This used to be... (Score:5, Informative)

    by bwass24 ( 687639 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @06:27PM (#7869497) Homepage
    Tom's "new" site is actually a buyout of the informative and well written smallnetbuilder.com. (www.smallnetbuilder.com) Too bad :( Apparently selling out to Tom was more satisfying than continuing to do a good job.
  • looks like the servers slowly crawling back to it's knees... to serve up a "coming soon" page.

    News, Reviews and How-To's for Knowledgeable Networkers Coming Soon!
    And by that I'm sure he means they'll have all that fabulous crap when they actually obtain some "knowledgeable Networkers" ;-)
  • Buenas Noches,

    Soy estudiante Ingles (Frances e Historia a la universidad de Warwick) y quiero entender el punto de vista oficial de la republica Cuba sobre su existencia y su tratamiento por el mundo occidental, especialmente por los estados unidos. He aprehendido el Espanol por algunos anos pero no suficientes para entenderlo totalmente. Existe un sitio Internet para que los extranjeros que no hablan el espanol puedan estudiar para que exista el estado cubano actual?
  • by OneArmedMan ( 606657 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @08:00PM (#7869950)
    ..... that is funny, informative and written by someone that acutaually knows what they are talking about without all the bullshit that you usually get. try DansData.com [dansdata.com]

    well just thinking, Dan tends to review more generic stuff than most guys, but he does have a sense of humour, and is very straight foward with what he thinks of things.
  • TomsNetworking will return as soon as our slashdot initiation is finished...

  • Saturday Jan 3 TomsNetworking will return as soon as our slashdot initiation is finished... apparently he doesn't like /. and the /. crowd doesn't like him either.
  • Oops, we did it again...

    http://tomsnetworking.com

    leads to

    http://tomsnetworking.com/index_slashdot.php

    "Saturday Jan 3

    TomsNetworking will return as soon as our
    slashdot initiation is finished..." ;^)

  • Shortest story ever.
  • for thoes that didnt realize, that "comming soon" page is for /. refer only.
  • Tom's Hardware only put up an anti-slash page. Go to Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] Click on the news article about networking or even open in a new window and it works.

    With that out of the way, honestly how much networking stuff is there to cover? I seriously doubt they needed to get a new domain for this. All they can review are routers, hubs, switches, WAP, and network cards, nothing nearly as interesting as mobos, processors, or video cards.

  • >TomsNetworking will return as soon as our
    >slashdot initiation is finished...

    Initiation. Nice word that.

  • I have noticed this with more than a few sites. They apparently check the referrer, and if it's slashdot, then you get their "we're slashdotted" page. But if you paste the url into the browser so you don't have the referrer link, you see the page properly. I think a lot of sites have realized that they need to defend against the hordes who will only look at their site once because it is on slashdot while keeping it accessible to other visitors.

    Try pasting the url http://www.tomsnetworking.com/index.php

  • Many people have said this before and will continue to say it many times again. Once again, you must realize that it is a review, and it might have a slanted view that might be diffrent from your own, hence the opinion. Reading a review and then making your own judgments on a product is so much more educational then just ranting about the guy not knowing what he is talking about [even though he might not].
  • by fishbowl ( 7759 )
    Did anyone else see THG and think "The Humble Guys?"

    Man I miss those days.

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