A Favor, Share your AnandTech Stories
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 17, 2010 2:11 PM EST- Posted in
- Site Updates
I've been out in California for the past week for IDF, followed by some extra meetings with the usual suspects: AMD, Intel and NVIDIA. The information I gained from these meetings will show up in articles over the next few weeks, months and even years. I really enjoyed covering the show this year not only because of the information we had access to but also because of the new team members I was able to cover it with. This was the first IDF for both Brian and Vivek. AMD even made this IDF an awesome experience by giving us great access to Zacate after our initial encounter. I have to say that for the first time in a while I'm actually looking forward to the next tradeshow.
For those of you who don't know, I don't employ any sales people at AnandTech. The company is strictly editorial. We have an exclusive advertising partner who handles all sales/marketing for the site. We own no share in them, and they own no share in us. While out here I met with our advertising agency who came to me with a request. They have a potential advertiser that wanted to know if we had any success stories from our readers to share with them. They are looking for stories about how reading something on AnandTech impacted you, particularly with regards to enterprise hardware/software decisions. While the request was for enterprise stories, I'm interested to hear them all if you've got one. Again what I'm looking for is a story about how something you read here impacted you or your hardware/software decisions in any way.
The stories will be shared with the potential advertiser so be sure to leave out any information that you don't want public. They are simply looking for more anecdotal evidence of the impact of AnandTech. I don't like asking for favors, but if you do have a story to share I'd appreciate it.
I'm back in the office next week, have a great weekend!
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7amood - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
I discovered this site around 2005 and was a casual visitor.Over time, quality and thorough reviews started to attract me more.
I build a lot of mid-ranged PCs for casual users (family, friends, ...etc.)
I rely heavily on CPU and GPU reviews from AnandTech to decide which CPU/GPU is suitable for which type of users (Casual/Gaming).
AnandTech Mobo roundups and reviews a pushed me a lot towards ASUS, and I can't be any happier with their mobos.
What I really enjoy is how new technology is explained. SSDs, new CPU and GPU architectures, motherboard reviews and other explanations are aided with graphs and amazing simplicity.
I do visit other websites for news and reviews, but I ultimately rely on AnandTech for 50% of the decisions I take.
I feel other websites are degrading since most of them started advertising products rather than actually reviewing them.
IGemini - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
Like a couple others, I've been a lurker on this site for a while, roughly since late 2004, but I joined to share my story about the largest influence on my decision-making.In the summer of 2006 I decided it was time to retire my Pentium 4 desktop and build something with a true dual-core for my return to college. I heard from here that Intel was releasing a new processor named Conroe toward the end of summer with some significant improvements, so I decided to wait and see until performance reviews came out. Until then I had earmarked enough to buy an AMD 4200+.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2045/1
When you wrote this article on Conroe's release date, I was floored. For the same price I was willing to spend, Intel had an equal offering that was faster than AMD's entire processor lineup, and offered the same performance as the FX-62 (AMD's flagship at the time) for one-quarter of the price. Tigerdirect was the only one selling OEM processors for the first couple months at that price, but I was willing stand a backorder. One month later, I made my first computer from scratch (previous computers bought were Dell builds) and was very pleased with Core 2. Ever since then I've been an avid reader of the reviews here, and it's the only RSS feed for technology that I have.
As a researcher I also like the methodology that goes into the testing of various products on this site. Compared to other tech review sites, I frequent this one the most (~95% of reading time). It's safe to say that, not only has the site made a profound difference on my purchases, but also that I learned the most in the operations of computing tech with the background that's given on this site, especially with newer technologies. Hope the quality at Anandtech continues for much longer!
lorribot - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
I found Anandtech at some point in time and ever since then it has been an invaluable source of too much information. I don't pretend that I understand everything that gets written, especially the indepth technical stuff, but it all (mostly) gets read and sits in there somewhere to be regurgitated..What I look for is completely unbiased what is happening now, what is happen in the future and what I need to think about to make the decisions about the hardware my company needs to buy.
For my company I read the CPU stuff, with particular attention to what is important re Virtualisation as that is were my focus is at until the end of the year. For myself the GPU, SSD and other bits are important.
What I look for from a site like yours is that I can understand what is important or needs to be considered before I recommend or make a purchase.
As long as your testing process is transparent and is open to scrutiny I feel confident that what I read is the truth.
Have any articles been written that affect anything I buy, perhaps not as when I buy is not when the article is written, prices change, specs change but at least I am aware of the the performance per buck that I need to make the decision on.
I have made one decision and influenced my company purchase in one way, by stopping the purchase of additional servers for our VMware environment around May this year, and postpone them until next year and planting the seed of a different specification based a several articles I have read on Anandtech.
Anandtech is a holistic thing, it's not one article, it's a culture of asking why?
greenguy - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
I bought the parts to build a workstation about 6 months ago. I used Anandtech to figure out which processor to buy. Basically, an i5-750, or the Xeon equivalent. Since I wanted ECC RAM it meant going with the Xeon 3450. For SSDs I went with mirrored X25-V drives.Of all tech sites I use this the most regularly. Since I am also a silence nut I use silentpcreview as much if not more during an actual build. However, that is after I have decided on CPU, mobo and SSD issues, the rest is just heat sink, case, fans, PSU, that sort of thing. I'm not suggesting that anandtech become SPCR btw, as I think it's easier to just concentrate on your niche and do that well.
I'll continue to use the performance and power figures from Anandtech to decide which CPU and storage to buy, and then build the system with an eye to silence with SPCR.
I'm still amazed that SSDs aren't as widespread as they should be. Take any old laptop and whack in an Intel SSD - it is as good as buying a new laptop, for a quarter the price or so. Amazing.
Scabies - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
If I want to find out what to buy, I go to Newegg.If I want to find out why I should buy it, I go to Anandtech.
adrian_sev - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
The information presented on this site is a reference point for any other IT site. There is no other site with such scientific approach to testing and benchmarking and the technology articles are as deep as a scientific presentation on that subject. Overall this is is as much a learning center as an steering point, a navigational reference about what is going on in the world. There is no other site that influence my buying decisions (personal and business) as anandtech.com. One small problem would be that Linux is mostly absent from tests and benchmarks . Coming from HPC and GRID world i miss the possible test and benchmarks that could be done on Linux platform (given that there is no other useful platform for HPC and GRID)(http://www.top500.org/stats/list/35/osfam) There are not many Linux OS for enterprise so the choice is easy.Anyway, thank you for your work! THANK YOU!
Adrian
JohanAnandtech - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link
Hey Adrian,Rest assured that Linux and OSS will come in the picture again in our IT articles. I am definitely convinced that Linux is a great OS for enterprise servers. It is only a matter of time. If you have suggestions for good Linux testing that doesn't require weeks to setup, let me know.
We are working on a "vApusMark OSS", including Xen/KVM benchmarks.
Johan.
ChrisRice - Monday, September 20, 2010 - link
Wouldn't bother with Xen as its on its way out "Even Redhat has dropped Xen". The true Linux VM's are Vsphere 4.1 and KVM "For corporate" . I have access to both so let me know if you need any help on that Johan. Just email my anandtech email address.adrian_sev - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
well ... this is the only good current linux testing tool that i know of :http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/ ... they did a good job with this tool but they lack the scientifically view and depth of analysis that anandtech.com is so famous of ... maybe something a lot better can come up from both of your views.. i hope that you will have also some OpenCL tests in your linux test :)
On the matter of distros to be tested i will give my 2 cents :) :
On corporate side will be : RHEL and Suse ..
On consumer (free side) : Debian (and now the problems will arise : Debian with latest updates or (maybe and) Ubuntu? ...), CentOS (but in principle if you test RHEL, CentOS presence is redundant), OpenSUSE and Fedora (pretty bleeding edge distro).
IMHO this will cover most of the Linux usage and users.... you could take a look at Page Ranking from Distrowatch.com to have some idea about the main Linux distros ...
Thanks,
Adrian
P.S. Disclaimer :) : this are only my provisional opinions ... as soon as i learn something new i will change my mind :D
thartist - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
Gosh Anand! Do you even need confirmation? I don't have an enterprise story to marvel you but i've been following AnandTech for about a decade learning stuff, keeping up to date and getting a peek at what's still a mystery for other sources!AT is "the" solid, trusted source of hardware analysis and news for many important sites and tech enthusiasts around, me included.