Ads on Tom's Hardware

[brandonclone1]

My experience on Tom's Hardware is ruined by advertisements. I've been a member on this site for years and will continue as such, but more and more I find myself looking elsewhere because the advertisements here are so bad.

Tom's Hardware is not alone. Akin to making a deal with the devil, advertising allows a website to remain "free" for visitors (good) while targeting ads based on YOUR search history (bad), ads that require a mouse machete to get to the actual page content (bad), and everybody's favorite "Free download, 100% safe" ads that mislead and infect the sh*t out of your computer (also, bad).

So, what is the solution? I'm not here to tell you. I'm actually asking the question in hopes of finding a Best Answer for this thread. A popular method is the subscription based ad-free experience for your favorite websites. I believe the average internet user, like myself, is a fan of tens of hundreds of different websites. If you've ever dumped your browser's saved passwords into KeePass or a password database, you'll know what I mean. At $4.99/mo for your top ten favorite websites, your already empty wallet would sacktap you, real quick. Adblock is sort of like anarchy, where you stick it to the man (Advertisers) but aren't really helping anyone (Tom's Hardware). Wikipedia asks for a cup of coffee- I mean $3- on the regular, because they do not employ advertising on their website.

It is possible that there is no Best Answer. The Internet, web browsing, and electronic communication is still free(ish) and completely volatile. Dealing with ads, starving websites, and freemium/pay-to-play are all a part of our current system.

Tom's Hardware community has a great voice, I look forward to your comments.

 

[13thmonkey]

you are not wrong.

 

[10tacle]

I am forced to use Adblock for Tom's on my slower PC and laptop (both older C2D CPUs with 4 and 6GB RAM I use just for websurfing and file backups and nothing else). The new website layout has made it even worse IMO as the page takes forever to load. It's not an issue with my faster i5 PCs with 8GB and 16GB RAM and a laptop with an i7 and 16GB.

Even with ABP however, I find those auto loading promotional videos extremely annoying and disabling Flash does nothing to stop them from loading. It's on every single page as you flip through many pages of a review. I'm thinking "okay guys, I got the memo on Page 1, but seriously, EVERY page??" And on any of my systems since the new website format, the page has to double load/refresh before displaying the full page. Frustrating to say the least.

 

[13thmonkey]

try it on 1368x768.

 

[10tacle]

I never thought of trying that, but it made no difference in performance for me when switching to the laptop's native display resolution. It's running a 1600x900 native resolution monitor, so running at 1368x768 looks terrible. Even with that change, the website on this thing is still moving slower than a sloth in a tub of molasses.

 

[13thmonkey]

I never thought of trying that, but it made no difference in performance for me when switching to the laptop's native display resolution. It's running a 1600x900 monitor.

on 768p the adverts are immense it's not an actual suggestion.

 

[10tacle]

LOL. I missed what you were getting at. I wouldn't think about running it just off that 14.1" display, hah!