PC World Gets Confused, Releases Best of 2008 List in May

Look at PC World's just-released Best Tech of 2008 list. Yes, it's May, the fifth month of 2008. The hot, bleeding edge tech that made the list? The New York Times website! YouTube! Windows XP! More »

PC World Editor-In Chief Harry McCracken Moving On

PC World Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken announced in a blog entry today that he will be stepping down in June to build his own tech site from scratch. McCracken gained notoriety last May, after temporarily resigning due to the publisher's pressure to kill an anti-Apple piece. Giz wishes Harry the best of luck in the next stage of his career. [PC World]

PCWorld's Test Center Director Remembered

PCWorld's Ulrike Diehlmann passed away on January 17th, succumbing to cancer after a long battle. She was responsible for developing the performance charts of PC gear and later HDTV reviews. Rest in Peace, Uli. [PCWorld]

PCWorld Calls Vista the Biggest Tech Disappointment of 2007

PCWorld has listed the 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007, and Windows Vista went for the gold. Their article begins, "Five years in the making and this is the best Microsoft could do?" and really just snowballs from there. While PCWorld enjoys Aero, better networking and faster searches, they thought that both the price and third party hardware incompatibilities were unacceptable. And this clever turn of phrase made us laugh out loud: More »

MacBook Pro Fastest Windows Laptop? Not So Fast

"The fastest Windows notebook we tested this year is a Mac," writes PC World about the MacBook Pro after it scored an 88 on its WorldBench 6 Beta 2 benchmark. Only problem is, it looks like that same publication reviewed a Eurocom D900C Phantom-X laptop that achieved a better score on that same benchmark, a 97 (higher number is better). So what gives? Too bad PC World contradicted itself, but the Apple propaganda machine played right along, trumpeting in one of its annoying spots the humiliating results of a MacBook Pro running Windows better than any other laptops. Not quite. Check out PC World's benchmark tables of the two machines, side-by-side: More »

PC World's Newbie Guide To Buying Flat Panel TVs

With the Black Friday deals just hours away, PC World gives neophytes a guide to buying a flat-screen TV. [PC World]

MacBook Pro Is the Fastest Windows Vista Notebook

Looking for a shiny new notebook to slap your shiny new Windows Vista on that'll run it all super snappy and buttery smooth? According to PC World's tests, the fastest Windows Vista notebook this year is (or ever): the MacBook Pro. Yeah, it makes throw up in my mouth a little bit before forcing me to contemplate succumbing to Apple's siren song. Anyway, for the record, its WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 bests Gateway's E-265M by one point, making it the king of Windows on the road, at least for now. It's just a little sad, that's all. [PC World]

PC World's McCracken wonders who the "brilliant engineer" behind iMovie '08 is. Apple generally doesn't glorify individual engineers, so he won't get an official answer. Anyone know? [PC World]

PC World Editor Harry McCracken Returns Victorious

In an interesting reversal, departed PC World Editor Harry McCracken has returned to the magazine as "vice-president, editor in chief" as of this morning. What's even more surprising is that CEO Colin Crawford has been dropped from the CEO position and is taking up the executive vice president, online position. He's even given the editorial staff an apology for killing the story. His blog has removed the post about the EIC changes at PC World. The situation sounds sour for him, but I doubt Harry would have returned to work with Crawford after such a public disagreement. More »

PC World Publishes Tame "10 Things We Hate About Apple" Story

Everyone was talking late last week about Harry McCracken and his resignation from PC World due to a breach of the editorial/advertising wall. The story, in short, was that Harry wanted to run something called "10 Things We Hate About Apple", and the CEO didn't, because of possibly upsetting advertisers (namely, Apple). Well, PC World ran the story today anyway. More »

PC World Editorial Firewall Breach, Part 2

Wired has an interesting follow-up piece about Harry McCracken's resignation from PC World. Crawford's blog says that "We have and will continue to run editorial and content that both praises and criticizes as appropriate without regard to the vendor relationship." More »

Incorruptible Editor McCracken Resigns from PC World

In case you weren't aware from coverage at our sister sites Valleywag and Gawker, PC World Editor in Chief Harry McCracken has resigned. The reason he resigned—the company's CEO killing a story entitled "Ten Things We Hate About Apple"—shows how the magazine's editorial is fighting hard to keep its integrity, and that McCracken's departure shows that he's not going to put up with this crap. More »

PC World vs. PC Mag: Windows Geeks Take a Gander at Apple TV

Here's another perspective on Apple TV from non-Mac devotees: A reviewer at PC World took Apple's media streaming device out for a spin, and generally liked what he saw. It's a good read, praising the easy setup and straightforward operation. More »

PC World Germany's $26K PC From Hell...Part Two

When I think of PC World, I think of them as solid, if not a little pale, lab rats of computer review. Harry McCracken, Editor, blogs about his German counterparts, at PC Welt. As you can tell from this pet project $26k PC of theirs, the Höllenmaschine II, PC Welt is a little bit more about metal, S&M, and Hasselhoff. The "Machine from Hell...Part Two", includes top line parts, 4.3 TB of HDD, and a $1k Porsche paint job, and $2500 in watercooling. (What, no phase change?)

It also features Triple Quad to operate Quad CPU, Quad Core, Quad Graphics and even 24 drives simultaneously.

I just want to understand how they spent that much loot and ended up with a mere 24-inch monitor. Oh, I see, they went with a RAID setup using a few 15k RPM Cheetahs SCSI Drives instead of SATA. Owie, that'll cost ya. More »

PC World's Secret HDTV Test Lab (AKA Nerd Cave)

Not many people know this, but PC World does one hell of a job testing out TVs. According to my inside sources, they've a entire HDTV facility dedicated to LCD, Plasma, and CRT molesting. This week, editor Laura Blackwell spilled the beans on how they put the sets through the wringer to "evaluate technology products in a real-world setting, with applications that an average user is apt to use day in and day out." Like: More »