ncmark wrote on 2024-09-04, 17:37:

BUT you can't deny it's not at all like it was in the 90s

Oh, it's definitely not like it was. There used to be dozens of independent computer stores where I live. Nowadays, there are a handful at most.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-04, 23:43:

I don't get really why Canada Computers came out on top, they're alright, but they weren't cheaper, they weren't flashier, maybe it's coz they actually kept stuff to look at in the store?

I think size - I first discovered them in 2001-2 in Kingston, and they had a store in Kingston, a bunch of stores in the GTA, and it wouldn't have surprised me if they had other stores in southern Ontario. Expanded to Ottawa and Montreal years and years later. Most of the other outfits, I think only had 1-2 stores.

My guess is that their size let them get mildly better prices on stuff, and if they are paying $376 for a given video card and the guy across the street is paying $384 for it, over time that adds up.

Plus, especially in the Internet era, being bigger means that you split the cost of your web site and all those fixed costs across more stores.

Also, one other thing I just thought of - a lot of computer parts buyers in those days were university-aged or so. I don't know when they opened their first stores in London, Hamilton, or Waterloo, I know their Kingston store was open by 2001, but that covers a lot of the universities that GTA folks, especially, would go to. And it goes both ways - if you know their brand from home, you're more likely to go to them than to go to Kingston Computer Planet (the independent store three blocks up the street); conversely, if you know them from school, you're more likely to go to them rather than some other place at College/Spadina.

I guess maybe it's they feel like newcomers to me as they didn't spread much west of Toronto until 10 years or so back.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-05, 00:17:

I guess maybe it's they feel like newcomers to me as they didn't spread much west of Toronto until 10 years or so back.

I think they did a big huuuuuge expansion in the late 2000s. Trying to remember when they turned up in Ottawa - it was around then. Before they turned up, the dominant player had become an outfit called PC Cyber, which was gone within a year or two of CC's arrival. They launched Montreal ("Ordinateurs Canada") around the same time.

I thought their southwestern Ontario presence was older, but maybe not.

bloodem wrote on 2024-08-30, 13:05:

Anandtech is shutting down...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/21542/end-of-t … ndtech-farewell

"we’ve reached the end of a long journey – one that started with a review of an AMD processor, and has ended with the review of an AMD processor." :-(

The only constant is change.

Looks like the main Anandtech website is completely gone now.

Trying to access any old pages (e.g. a period correct GPU review) will just redirect you to the Anandtech forums. It's a real shame that we lost so much great content.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-13, 07:01:

Looks like the main Anandtech website is completely gone now.

Trying to access any old pages (e.g. a period correct GPU review) will just redirect you to the Anandtech forums. It's a real shame that we lost so much great content.

Yeah, Steve from Gamer's Nexus mentioned it in one of the latest videos...
Fortunately, we can still see (part of?) the content through Archive.org (likely with missing graphs in some articles): https://web.archive.org/web/20240816020940/ht … 2/amd-k6-review

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-13, 07:01:

Looks like the main Anandtech website is completely gone now.

Trying to access any old pages (e.g. a period correct GPU review) will just redirect you to the Anandtech forums. It's a real shame that we lost so much great content.

Yeah I noticed that on the weekend and wasn't sure if it was a glitch or it's really gone. Very much a shame to lose all that reference material. Hopefully it's well archived on waybackmachine, but more of a PITA to access there.

And as of last week, Tom's Hardware wants you to subscribe to TH Premium to access certain content. I fear it might be the beginning of the end for them as well.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/wh … -have-a-paywall

the "old" web is fast disappearing 🙁

Of course the web as a whole never actually had a long period of being in a steady state, so some sites became like rocks you could lean on, and now many of those are going too

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-09-04, 03:59:

Today, I think it's mostly the modern internet that makes things more demanding. For example, I have an 8 year old laptop with a Haswell CPU, integrated AMD graphics and 8GB RAM running Debian Linux. It's hooked up to my big TV, and I mostly use it for watching YouTube videos. That worked fine until about a year ago or so, when the AV1 codec became prevalent. Now, the system struggles even with 720p videos, with the fan whirring incessantly because it has to decode content in software, as it has no hardware support for AV1. The 8GB RAM is slowly becoming an issue as well, but not as much as for some other people, since I rarely keep more than 4-5 tabs open at the same time.

Since I noticed the post now...I think they prefer to serve AV1 in the name of bandwidth saving, but have fallbacks to VP9 and H.264 at least. h264ify has been a thing for over a decade now. Also, H.264 is not necessarily the most performant, can be browser/CPU dependent, under some circumstances, software VP9 can work better than hardware H.264. Though it should be the other way in typical dedicated media player.

UI is another horror, I don't bother with stock YouTube at all ever since I found out about Project VORAPIS. AV1 is disableable in its settings. If only it had Flash Player support for fully authentic experience. 😁 Back in the day, 4K video through Flash would crash ATI driver, at least that was the case for me.

gerry wrote on 2025-08-13, 20:44:

the "old" web is fast disappearing 🙁

Of course the web as a whole never actually had a long period of being in a steady state, so some sites became like rocks you could lean on, and now many of those are going too

The only "web" really - there's not much webbing today. Most everything is consolidated into a few large websites (and web hosting providers), and even less actual content on those. Now days everything is on short, temporary posts, or in videos.

The "web" as a whole is dying, period 🙁

I'm very thankful for good traditional forums like Vogons! Even then I wonder how long the historical posts here will be around, or if Vogons will even be here in another 10 or 20 years.

There's neocities and some not so old pages found by wiby search engine.
It's not same, of course, but a little bit of the www is still remaining.

Masejoer wrote on Today, 00:12:

The "web" as a whole is dying, period 🙁

I'm very thankful for good traditional forums like Vogons! Even then I wonder how long the historical posts here will be around, or if Vogons will even be here in another 10 or 20 years.

Yes, sadly this is true - 'content' is either disappearing completely or hidden behind pay/ID walls or exists in only temporary 'media'

I hope vogons lasts too

Jo22 wrote on Today, 00:24:

There's neocities and some not so old pages found by wiby search engine.
It's not same, of course, but a little bit of the www is still remaining.

yes, though i think its at an ever smaller scale compared to the rest of the 'online' world

Masejoer wrote on Today, 00:12:

I'm very thankful for good traditional forums like Vogons! Even then I wonder how long the historical posts here will be around, or if Vogons will even be here in another 10 or 20 years.

Who knows. Existence of this forum is a bit of a mystery, isn't it? Someone must be paying for it. Web hosting isn't free.