OS/2 e-Zine! - Editor's Note on Hardware Reviews

Editor's Note on Hardware Reviews

After hundreds of reader requests over the last year, we have finally begun a regular series of reviews of PCs by manufacturers who preload OS/2. That's right! Each month in our pages you will find reviews of PCs by a variety of manufacturers that will preload Warp on your new computer and ship it to your door!

While many readers might assume that there aren't that many companies willing to do this, the truth is there are. In fact, we probably will not be able to dig up every one of them in the course of the next year. But if you would like to do some digging of your own, we recommend the OS/2 pre-load list as a great starting place.

A Note about Benchmarks

In order to give readers an empirical starting point from which to compare machines from month to month, or against their own machines, we realized that we would need a scientific measure of various system components. After much deliberations, we settled on Sysbench 0.9.1c as a standard.

There are many arguments for and against various benchmarking programs but we decided that the most important feature for our purposes is wide availability. Sysbench 0.9.1c is a freeware program available on the OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 277k). Any OS/2 user can download Sysbench and test his or her system as a basis of comparison with the machines reviewed in our pages. (Source code is included with Sysbench as well!)

Sysbench is simple to use but, at the same time, comprehensive. It tests a variety of hardware in a PC and reports on their performance. It is also relatively up to date with indications that the author intends to continue improving and supporting the software.

Overall Ratings

Each month, our hardware reviews will also be accompanied by a loose rating system as follows:

(5 out of 5 -- Excellent)

(4 out of 5 -- Good Buy)

(3 out of 5 --Average Quality)

(2 out of 5 -- Inferior Machine)

(1 out of 5 -- Worthless)

These ratings are not meant to be exact quantitative measures of PCs. For example, we will not be awarding 4.35 out of 5 to one machine and 4.49 out of 5 to another because we do not believe that anyone can decide conclusively that one machine is absolutely right for every user. We believe that with a consumer item such as a computer, there are many factors that combine to affect the overall value of the PC. Accordingly, these ratings are meant to be used only as recommendations so that readers can quickly compare machines from different companies reviewed in different issues.

As always, please feel free to send us your feedback on our benchmark decisions, review criteria or any of our articles. We are listening!

[Our Sponsor: EmTec Innovative Software - OS/2 ISDN, modem and telnet software.]

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