http://www.edbordenblog.com/2009/03/all-your-pc-boutiques-are-belong-to.html
Here’s a nice article from Ed Borden. It think he does a great job pointing out how people can be headed one direction and a dollar sign comes up turns the whole ship around.
Of course, that dollar sign is is being pushed around by consumers when it comes to getting high-end gaming machines. I’ve noticed that at LAN parties the people sporting big Alienware boxes are often viewed simply having more money than sense.
That’s just what Ed is seeing when he says, ” No one cares who builds their computers…” PCs are being considered more like consoles in as much as people are more interested in playing a game than having some kind of uber1337 machine.
I’m not saying hardware enthusiasts are a dying breed by any stretch. But the number of people just interested in playing a game, who find understanding the hardware not much more than a chore, is growing faster than the true hardware enthusiast.
ir0x0r Uncategorized
For the inaugural post on the ir0×0r blog I’ll just mention a little background on myself so you can get some kind of idea (if you care) about who I am and a little detail on what I’m trying to accomplish. Some people are interested in this kind of thing and some aren’t. Whichever group you fall into I recommend you take all of this with a grain of salt. At best my background should only be mildly interesting and I’m not posting it because it’s really incredible or makes me anything special. It has allowed me to gain an inside understanding of the comings and goings of various manufacturers and has provided me with an income. Beyond that, pffffft.
I’ve been working on the manufacturer side of the PC industry for coming up on 11 years. I’ve worked either for or with a fair number of manufactures including AMD, Palit, DFI and OCZ (before it was sold/bought). I’ve worked in support of those companies with other companies in co-marketing programs and have met an even larger group of marketing and engineering folks at industry events and LAN parties. If anyone was going to recognize me it would probably be from a LAN party.
If you have met me at a LAN party then chances are you probably already know why I started this blog and what I’d like to do with it. I have been telling the truth at these events for years and that’s what I would like to carry on with here. Over the course of my career I’ve seen more than my fair share of shady deals, stupid antics and outright lies and deceptions from virtually every manufacturer on the planet. Some things I can understand because much of the tech industry is very complicated. Trying to explain the inner workings of a CPU to some folks is like trying to teach a pig to sing- it only makes you look foolish and annoys the pig.
But there are times when enough is enough. There are times where we as consumers get taken for a ride and, in my opinion, someone needs to stand up and say, “OI!” There are also times where manufacturers fail in the other direction by not providing any explanation about why a particular technology is good. The honest truth is that most marketing people are not geeks. They just do their job and spew out whatever they are told to spew.
An example of that can be seen in a recent email I received from someone behind the iron curtain that is manufacturing. “I also don’t know what company will do for the name list, we just do our job and execute it.” WTF, right?
So as I wander about the Internetz and talk to my friends still behind the curtain I’ll use this blog as a forum to dispense my own brand of justice; providing a no nonsense point of view and poking holes in the silly things I see come my way.
I’m not always right and I encourage everyone to provide feedback; good or bad. Ir0×0r is a tongue in cheek name. It seems to me there are far too many people “reporting” on industry topics that actually believe their opinions are immutable and can generally do no wrong. So I propose to have some satirical fun and spread some of MY version of the truth.
In the immortal words of “them”, if you think you can do better- go for it!
ir0x0r Uncategorized