Personal computing discussed

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Deathright
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2650
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2005 1:19 am

Re: TR Dead?

Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:49 pm

Vrock wrote:
Questors wrote:
What happened? I obviously missed something.

TL;DR version:

-site was not profitable and was sold to a soulless "entrepreneur"
-new management has not invested time and resources into the site nor do they understand/care to understand the community
-slowly but surely, anyone who had any passion for tech and hardware left the site
-site now consists of inane listicles and a forum that's 90% dead

This is the fate of all large computer hardware sites, eventually, IMO. Tech is a commodity now and has been for quite some time. And you don't see thriving websites reviewing and discussing the merits of toilet paper and laundry detergent, because no one cares.


I don't think that it is people don't have interest in tech, there are large YouTube channels dedicated to it. That is the issue more than anything, is people started consuming news from YouTube.
Network theory sucks.
 
integer
Gerbil Team Leader
Posts: 294
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Location: New Jersey

Re: TR Dead?

Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:02 pm

Visiting the site after ages - wanted to check on the latest System Guide, but the front page looks very different.

Nice to see some of the recognizable user handles. Thanks to @JustAnEngineer and @Flying Fox who helped me with my PC builds (9 and 12 years ago).
(My build, thanks to TR) i5-3570k | P8Z77-V | DDR3 1600 (4x4 GB) | 7950 | 850 EVO 500 GB | m4 128 GB | Blue SE16 500 GB | Green SE16 1 TB | Xonar DG | M12II 520 W | 550D | LP2475W | Blu-Ray | Shine Zero | MX310 | Windows 10 Home
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: TR Dead?

Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:19 pm

9 years ago? Dude! you are way past due for a new gaming PC.
· R7-5800X, Liquid Freezer II 280, RoG Strix X570-E, 64GiB PC4-28800, Suprim Liquid RTX4090, 2TB SX8200Pro +4TB S860 +NAS, Define 7 Compact, Super Flower SF-1000F14TP, S3220DGF +32UD99, FC900R OE, DeathAdder2
 
Vrock
Gerbil God
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Location: The Land of the Looney Lolcats

Re: TR Dead?

Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:31 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
9 years ago? Dude! you are way past due for a new gaming PC.

I only recently upgraded from FM2 to a Ryzen 5 2400G.

Then again, my PC gaming is all stuff from many moons ago.
 
dagathon
Gerbil In Training
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 3:38 pm

Re: TR Dead?

Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:30 pm

Compare the front page articles to these techreport.com/page/268/ articles from 2017...

Video games, hardware, Mozilla, Kaby Lake vs. Ryzen was the talk of the day in 2017.

Today?

Small business vs. big corps, getting the most out of a customer data platform, small business tools, smart mattresses, appy pie, compliance burdens, business automation, tech innovation...

When did the tech in tech report get replaced by a small business blog?
 
meerkt
Gerbil Jedi
Posts: 1754
Joined: Sun Aug 25, 2013 2:55 am

Re: TR Dead?

Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:12 pm

dagathon wrote:
When did the tech in tech report get replaced by a small business blog?


Sometime between Jul 2019 and a few months after that.
 
cphite
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1202
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:28 am

Re: TR Dead?

Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:59 pm

dagathon wrote:
Compare the front page articles to these techreport.com/page/268/ articles from 2017...

Video games, hardware, Mozilla, Kaby Lake vs. Ryzen was the talk of the day in 2017.

Today?

Small business vs. big corps, getting the most out of a customer data platform, small business tools, smart mattresses, appy pie, compliance burdens, business automation, tech innovation...

When did the tech in tech report get replaced by a small business blog?


When it was bought by people with no interest whatsoever in the site, and handed the reigns to someone named Renee (who may be a bot, jury is still out) who has no understanding or interest in tech.
 
meerkt
Gerbil Jedi
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Re: TR Dead?

Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:18 pm

Why diss Renee? Probably not her call, and she's just doing what the owners hired her to do.
 
cphite
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1202
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:28 am

Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:39 am

meerkt wrote:
Why diss Renee? Probably not her call, and she's just doing what the owners hired her to do.


Whether or not it's her call, it's the reality of what has happened to the site.

The owners have shown no interest in the site beyond using it as a click magnet; they stripped it down to nothing, and the only new content is obvious SEO garbage.

Renee has shown absolutely no knowledge of, or even any interest in, the kind of technology articles that this site was previously about. Many of her articles come across as thinly veiled marketing script from advertisers. And even the stuff that she apparently writes herself comes across as something she just Googled and tried to summarize. Either way, the articles are just filler to get keywords into something a search engine will catch.

I get that is what the new ownership wants - it's a way to make some money with minimal effort - but that doesn't mean we have to give her any kind of kudos for coming up with crap that most folks would just use a bot to produce.
 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
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Location: Vermont, USA

Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:43 am

C'mon Powerball.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
meerkt
Gerbil Jedi
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Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:48 am

No kudos, of course. But no blame either.

Unless she's secretly pulling the strings, and the registered owners are just a front for her.
 
cphite
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1202
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:28 am

Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 2:35 pm

meerkt wrote:
No kudos, of course. But no blame either.

Unless she's secretly pulling the strings, and the registered owners are just a front for her.


Blame really doesn't come into it. Someone asked when the site became a small business blog; I said it was when someone with no interest in the site hired someone with no interest in the subject. If you want to call that "blame" then okay... I call it pointing out what happened.
 
Canageek
Gerbil
Posts: 73
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Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 2:50 pm

While there are still people on the forums, and they are still up: Is there a good replacement? Tech Report was my guide when I built my current PC, and I'm hoping to build a new one soon without all the mistakes I made with this one, and I'd love to know what the best places to get this type of graphics card review and system guides is this days. Is anyone else doing the 99% Frame Time analysis for example?

Also: Have any of the very skilled writers from the old tech support moved on to other sites so I can follow what they are doing?
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Attributed to Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
 
Flying Fox
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Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:51 pm

Canageek wrote:
While there are still people on the forums, and they are still up: Is there a good replacement? Tech Report was my guide when I built my current PC, and I'm hoping to build a new one soon without all the mistakes I made with this one, and I'd love to know what the best places to get this type of graphics card review and system guides is this days. Is anyone else doing the 99% Frame Time analysis for example?

Also: Have any of the very skilled writers from the old tech support moved on to other sites so I can follow what they are doing?

Jeff and Damage are now on Twitter for you to stalkfollow. Jeff was recently featured during CES 2021.

Closest to the old System Guide may be this one, by our own derFunk too.
The Model M is not for the faint of heart. You either like them or hate them.

Gerbils unite! Fold for UnitedGerbilNation, team 2630.
 
Canageek
Gerbil
Posts: 73
Joined: Wed Sep 18, 2013 12:49 pm

Re: TR Dead?

Wed Jan 20, 2021 4:30 pm

Thanks! Back when I was in high school Ars Technica was pretty cool to read and they'd get really into how computers worked, and over time it moved more and more to being a news site. However, they got TechReport to do a system build for them one year, which lead me to this place right when I had the funds to build my first gaming PC, so thanks for leading me to the next place along.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Attributed to Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
 
anotherengineer
Gerbil Jedi
Posts: 1688
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:53 pm
Location: Northern, ON Canada, Yes I know, Up in the sticks

Re: TR Dead?

Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:23 pm

Vrock wrote:
Questors wrote:
What happened? I obviously missed something.

TL;DR version:

-site was not profitable and was sold to a soulless "entrepreneur"
-new management has not invested time and resources into the site nor do they understand/care to understand the community
-slowly but surely, anyone who had any passion for tech and hardware left the site
-site now consists of inane listicles and a forum that's 90% dead

This is the fate of all large computer hardware sites, eventually, IMO. Tech is a commodity now and has been for quite some time. And you don't see thriving websites reviewing and discussing the merits of toilet paper and laundry detergent, because no one cares.


Indeed, instead you see Mr.Beast, SSSniperwolf, etc. etc. on youtube with 30M views in 2 days..........................sad times
Life doesn't change after marriage, it changes after children!
 
Starfalcon
Gerbilus Supremus
Posts: 12008
Joined: Mon Oct 14, 2002 10:43 am

Re: TR Dead?

Sat Apr 24, 2021 4:43 pm

Yeah Ive been hanging out on the [H]ardOCP forum, plus been slowly posting my hoard/collection up on it if some people want to check it out. Got a lot of cool retro collectors there at least.
 
krazyredboy
Gerbil Elite
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Contact:

Re: TR Dead?

Fri Apr 30, 2021 10:04 am

Oh, this is tough. I had spent the last 4 years being homeless. Up until two months ago, I had spent 12 months being jobless. Just as I'm putting things back together, potentially getting a home soon, and potentially getting back to positive on budget, I decide to visit an old friend... the TR.

Wow. I... was not... prepared.

Honestly, I'm happy to see everyone here in the forums and see that some of us are still kicking. I know I didn't post a lot even as a regular but I did like to consistently read the different conversations in our extensive forum. I was always comfortable here, even though I was in other forums like Guru3D and the like, I always called TR home. It became that home when I started reading the articles back in 2002. I finally joined the forums a few years later and even donated when I had the money. It's terrible to feel like I've lost another home, after not having a literal one for just over 4 years, now.

I hope everyone that reads this is well and getting by in these trying times. Take care, Everyone.
 
bdwilcox
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1262
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:21 pm

Re: TR Dead?

Thu May 13, 2021 1:03 am

Holy mackerel. I feel like I came back home for my 10 year class reunion and my high school is closed with broken windows and halls filled with standing water, cobwebs and broken beer bottles.
 
meerkt
Gerbil Jedi
Posts: 1754
Joined: Sun Aug 25, 2013 2:55 am

Re: TR Dead?

Thu May 13, 2021 6:12 am

krazyredboy wrote:
some of us are still kicking

Barely. It is surprising that the forums are still, technically at least, alive.

bdwilcox wrote:
and my high school is closed with broken windows
Ah, nostalgia... :)
 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
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Location: Vermont, USA

Re: TR Dead?

Thu May 13, 2021 6:30 am

Forums will be "alive" until Renee-bot kicks me out.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
Shouefref
Gerbil
Posts: 40
Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2012 7:47 am

Re: TR Dead?

Fri May 14, 2021 7:11 am

meerkt wrote:
krazyredboy wrote:
some of us are still kicking

Barely. It is surprising that the forums are still, technically at least, alive.


I guess it's only kept alive because they make some money with advertisements, sometimes for dating sites for grown up men.
 
Shouefref
Gerbil
Posts: 40
Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2012 7:47 am

Re: TR Dead?

Fri May 14, 2021 7:13 am

Reminds me of a Bowie song:
"We are the dead"
 
thegleek
Darth Gerbil
Posts: 7460
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2003 11:06 am
Location: Detroit, MI
Contact:

Re: TR Dead?

Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:53 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
Forums will be "alive" until Renee-bot kicks me out.


^ I don't even know what that means.

95% of the point of TR was to only live for the annual TRBBQ. The people. And cornhole. And ribs. And all the things that happen there!

That is all that was left and hopefully still left of this place.

kthx
––•–√\/––√\/––•–– nostalgia is an emotion for people with no future ––•–√\/––√\/––•–-
 
Vrock
Gerbil God
Posts: 25243
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: The Land of the Looney Lolcats

Re: TR Dead?

Thu Aug 12, 2021 4:42 pm

What's up Gleek!
 
adisor19
Gerbil First Class
Posts: 161
Joined: Sat May 17, 2003 12:18 am

Re: TR Dead?

Wed Aug 18, 2021 1:03 pm

Ouff..
 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
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Location: Vermont, USA

Re: TR Dead?

Wed Aug 18, 2021 1:26 pm

Gleek sighting? Party on!
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
lordT
Darth Gerbil
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Re: TR Dead?

Thu Sep 23, 2021 5:03 pm

Oh wow, TR is still around. Just not the way I expected it to be though. I’ll miss the detailed system guides.
 
Deathright
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2650
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2005 1:19 am

Re: TR Dead?

Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:51 pm

lordT wrote:
Oh wow, TR is still around. Just not the way I expected it to be though. I’ll miss the detailed system guides.


Don't we all
Network theory sucks.

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