News Tom’s Hardware at 25: 1996’s Best Tech vs 2021

[omaigad]

I still use intelli mouse

 

[alfanet]

One important device missing in the article: Sound Cards. I don't remember what was options were available 25 years ago but for sure one of them was a Sound Blaster by Creative Labs.

 

[Eximo]

One important device missing in the article: Sound Cards. I don't remember what was options were available 25 years ago but for sure one of them was a Sound Blaster by Creative Labs.

That was about when Soundblaster was becoming mainstream. General Midi and Roland being the ultra high end. Gravis Ultrasound etc... All the other knock off sound blasters like Asound. A few years later and sound was just integrated and only higher end PCs had discrete sound cards.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

You should have done a comparison of the website itself and how clean it used to look with next to no adverts compared to the advert infested monstrosity that Tom's sites are now. I just counted and there were 35 large adverts on this article's page. Several of them were animated, half were hugely dodgy clickbait sites. Many are made to look indistinguishable from actual legitimate articles but then lead to identity harvesting websites. The bloat from the adverts stopped several of the comparison images in the article from loading for me so the only ones I can actually see are for CPU, RAM and Phones. It's such a shame to see how far Tom's Hardware has fallen. It's the only site I still visit regularly that makes me want to use some kind of ad blocker.

 

[velocityg4]

I totally understand as I'm old enough to have been one of the people using the model M back then (and actually I used a model M and a clone model M from Unicomp up until very recently). What I said very carefully was "The mechanical keyboard craze hadn’t started yet and most people were suffering with the horrible membrane keyboards their PCs came with." So I think that, while some of us had mechanical keyboards, the movement toward all kinds of switches and people comparing say Cherry to Kailh, etc, was unheardof at the time. And most (but not all) people sadly used membrane keyboards and didn't know any better.

While I know of no one comparing mechanical switches back then. There were people who paid extra for high quality keyboards like the Model M or Apple Extended Keyboard II.

I couldn’t say if there is any percentage difference today. Because one has to keep in mind. People who buy higher end, let alone mechanical keyboards, are a tiny portion of the computer market. Today just like then. Most people just stick with whatever their computer comes with.

Computer enthusiast sites like this are echo chambers like minded people. Making something seem like more of a mainstream trend than it really is.

I’d expect there’s far mechanical keyboard users. Simply because more people buy computers now. But I couldn’t say there is a different percentage.

 

[jelyon]

Didn't know we had SATA power connectors in 1996. /s

We had dreams of SATA in 1996.

 

[hotaru.hino]

One important device missing in the article: Sound Cards. I don't remember what was options were available 25 years ago but for sure one of them was a Sound Blaster by Creative Labs.

Oh there were plenty. Look up Doom E1M1 sound card comparisons on YouTube. There's enough options to fill two 30 minute-ish videos.

 

[logainofhades]

Technically, I still have a ball equipped mouse.

https://www.logitech.com/en-hk/product/wireless-trackball-m570

 

[patrick47018]

Nice blast from the past!

One small correction, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has a 6.8-inch screen, it was the previous S20 Ultra that had a 6.9-inch.

 

[Math Geek]

i still miss my intellimouse. nothing has ever come close to that mouse for me.

 

[cryoburner]

I couldn’t say if there is any percentage difference today. Because one has to keep in mind. People who buy higher end, let alone mechanical keyboards, are a tiny portion of the computer market. Today just like then. Most people just stick with whatever their computer comes with.

I suspect they're a lot more common. Simply because mechanical keyboards tended to be very niche, expensive devices compared to membrane keyboards once those were established as the norm, and you generally didn't find them in stores. Whereas now, mechanical keyboards are widely available as "upper mid-range" peripherals, and some can even be found for around $30 on Amazon, which is about what you might have paid for a basic membrane keyboard in the late 90s, at least when adjusting for inflation. They have also become the norm for "gaming keyboards", whereas keyboards marketed to gamers almost exclusively used membrane designs until relatively recently. There are certainly still very high-end enthusiast options available, but mechanical keyboards have expanded to cover a much wider range now. Bundled keyboards are still going to be primarily membrane designs, but if one is picking up an keyboard on their own, there's a much higher chance it will utilize mechanical switches than there was even a decade ago.