Introduction
I feel like an interloper on 20 years of history, having been at the helm of Tom's Hardware for less than three years. I know all but one of the former editors-in-chief personally. Omid Rahmat is the lone exception, but he graciously acquiesced to my request to share some of his thoughts on his bit of history with Tom's Hardware.
On the other end of the equation, I've known David Strom, who was at the editorial helm only in 2005, for more than 25 years, and he gave me my first job in journalism where I served as his Reviews Editor at Network Computing Magazine, back when they used to put printed words on paper; it was there that I got my first spark of interest in hardware, and it was there where we reviewed everything from Sun and IBM Unix servers to early campus Wi-Fi gear (including microwave technology) to storage area networks to heavy duty routers and switches at big labs on university campuses, and even client/server applications and middleware.
Meanwhile, Chris Angelini, who preceded me here, is still very much a part of today's Tom's Hardware team, providing lengthy and critical technical edits on our content, and serving as a trusted advisor while also leading our major CPU and GPU launch coverage. I have a feeling -- it's just a feeling, mind you -- that you'll see his name and his words on these pages with some frequency before summer officially begins.
I've also partnered with former EIC (of Tom's Hardware U.S. and Tom's Hardware WorldWide) Patrick Schmid, who works closely now with our European Tom's Hardware team.
And finally there's "Tom," as in "the Tom," as in the founder and namesake of Tom's Hardware, the inimitable Dr. Thomas Pabst. A man I met for the first time at Computex in Taiwan last year, and with whom I've stayed in touch, and whose budding little infant boys provide the gleam in his eyes much brighter than I'm sure Tom's Hardware ever could.
You'll hear from all of them in the following pages. I asked them each to answer the same five questions. I'll take my turn to answer them all here first. The rest of the editors-in-chief follow in reverse chronological order.
We'll let this piece stand alone as our tribute to 20 years of Tom's Hardware. We've posted a new About Us page on the site, along with some history about our forums. But feel free to share some of your favorite Tom's moments and memories from over the years in the comments below.
In exploring the expanse of the web as background and research to satisfy my own curiosity in working on this, I came across a fascinating letter that Thomas Pabst wrote at the turn of the millennium (Tom's Blurb: Thoughts To The Turn Of The Millennium). That piece is chock full of history (the true, early history), with references to some important industry milestone's and this publication's role in them. Along with realizing that our colleagues at Tom's Hardware Russia have wisely held onto some of these historical bits, thankfully, I'm also inspired by Tom's letter and have returned to it often in the days after first reading it. As we set foot on some new hardware landscapes, like VR, it will be important to remember the spirit with which Tom's Hardware Guide was created, and the work Tom (and so many others after him) did to understand hardware performance, and so much more.
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