For us editors of Tom's Hardware Guide, judging products by their technical specs, features, reliability and performance may be a common practice. Day in and day out we supply you with our evaluations and recommendations. You, the reader, however, are mostly playing a rather passive role of reading and digesting our articles. In the end, of course, you are making your own choice once you go and buy a product based on the material you heard and read about.

This time, we asked you, our valued reader, to get actively involved one step earlier. We wanted you to choose the best product in six different categories, based on your experience, knowledge and somehow maybe also based on the stuff you read at Tom's Hardware. For the first time we asked readers to give their recommendation to other readers, and also to state their opinion to hardware manufacturers.

Readers' Choice In 6 Different Groups

In the time between December 21, 2001 and January 25, 2002 we asked you to give us your choice for

When the 36 days were over, we had collected 55,618 valid votes and today we are finally lifting the curtain to present the first Tom's Hardware Guide Readers' Choice Awards.