Holiday Buyer's Guide 2007: Part 1

This time our focus is on CPUs, memory, motherboards, and other key PC components.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/1 [...] index.html

Very funny article! Had me laughing all the way through! Thank you.

I second that! What's the use of holiday buyers guides if they come out too late to do any buying??

At least it's not too late to change dates!!!

What's the basis for Tom's recommending buying this HS by including it in the guide?

They have a Sense of Humor and it's a neat heat sink.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor

I was skimming through the article and actually stopped reading any of the body text after seeing the butterfly cooler recommendation.

The pictures were a nice touch but the article itself seems to be a joke of some kind. Though, I did not really get it, as some of the items seem to be decent choices.

Speaking of paying to be in the guide, I was wondering how Gigabyte ended up with 3 of the 10 items... But that's probably my cynical attitude showing up.

Clint

There were no shots of her rear end though !?

i have to say she is gorgeous... can we get a few wall papers of just her... maybe without ram or motherboards... and hike up the skirt a lil? maybe a few that are 1440 x 900 for people like me... please tom?

As lovely as Sarah is, she wasn't holding some of the circuit boards in an ESD-safe manner. I'd be happy to work closely with her to show her which parts are safe to touch, and which are not

Regards,

Altazi

I am surprised the zerotherm was in there without ever seeing a review here....

Did anyone even read their suggestions??

I know for one I didnt. Was just hoping this guide would keep going and going and going!

had the exact same thought

so far from each other, so close in tastes....

I don't dig the elf outfit.

i wasn't even looking at the products... were they good?

from the 2005 guide

"the Best Gaming System Ever: AAC Liquid XS
When it comes to gaming systems, nothing currently beats water-cooled SLI and dual high-end graphics cards.
The Liquid XS screams speed in every conceivable way, from its Athlon 64 4000+ CPU, to its stock use of Corsair XMX XL Pro RAM (2 x 512 MB DIMMs set to 2.5-3-3-7 timings), to its dual WD 74 GB Raptor drives, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, and Antec Neopower 480W PSU. Of course, the heart of any gaming system is the motherboard and graphics cards - in this case, the DFI LANParty UT nF4 SLI-D and two XFX 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX PCI-E graphics cards have what it takes to do gaming right."

the good old days

go ramo!

you can do it!

Hiya! I'm the guy who's coordinating the buyer's guide and therefore in the know about how products get selected. We use a two-prong process for selection: we inform our advertisers about the guide and ask them to submit selections, and then we ask our editors (all 40-some-odd of them) to submit their suggestions, and to provide responses to the vendor submissions. After that Editorial coordinator Barry Gerber and I go over the list with the other big dog site editors (Patrick Schmid and Rob Wright, from Tom's Hardware and Tom's Games, respectively, as Barry is also the big dog for Tom's Guide) and make a final selection.

There's no requirement that an item have been granted a format review in any of the Tom's sites to qualify for the holiday buyer's guide, though it certainly doesn't hurt, and clearly drives a lot of the editor's selections. We try to pick stuff that's useful, a little offbeat, and affordably giftable.

Those of you who don't like our selections are pretty open about your reactions and estimations of such things. You could help us and our readers more by adding you recommendations for substitute items.

As for the timing of the guide installments, I agree that waiting until 12/23 to publish the last installment makes it something less than useful for its intended purpose, especially for that final installment. We've already promised to stick to the published schedule, so I'm not sure we can speed things up for contractual reasons. But I'll find out about leaking selections for the final installment when the next-to-last one posts with "the powers that be," if that will help any.

Thanks to one and all for your feedback. We always pay attention to your postings and try to learn what we can from your input.

--Ed--

Hi etittel

How about a nude Sarah with suitable high-end PC components to preserve her modesty...

Seriously though I'll take all the motherboards and RAM off your hands that got zapped with ESD from her Santa suit... :-)

Bob

P.S. Glad to see that THG is still the last the bastion of testosterone fueled overclocked, overvolted, rugged, manly hardware type stuff!!