Laptop Mag Is Shutting Down (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0178247422
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/01/2133224/laptop-mag-is-shutting-down
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/news/695969/laptop-mag-shutdown-future-plc
> Laptop Mag has evolved many times over the years. It started as a print publication in 1991, when Bedford Communications launched the Laptop Buyers Guide and Handbook. Laptop Mag was later acquired by TechMedia Network (which is now called Purch) in 2011 and transitioned to digital-only content in 2013. Future PLC, the publisher that owns brands like PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, and TechRadar, acquired Purch -- and Laptop Mag along with it.
>
> "We are incredibly grateful for your dedication, talent, and contributions to Laptop Mag, and we are committed to supporting you throughout this transition," [Faisal Alani, the global brand director at Laptop Mag owner Future PLC] said. Laptop Mag's shutdown follows the [3]closure of long-running tech site AnandTech , which was also owned by Future PLC. It's not clear whether Laptop Mag's archives will be available following the shutdown.
[1] https://www.laptopmag.com/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/news/695969/laptop-mag-shutdown-future-plc
[3] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/08/30/1235233/anandtech-shuts-down-after-27-year-run
Surprised they lasted this long actually (Score:2)
A whole lot of print publications that later went hybrid and then online-only didn't make it even five years past the end of their print versions. It's surprising that they managed to go over a decade without closing up.
And to be frank about it, I'm surprised that the lights are still on at all here on Slashdot. Can't sign-up for new accounts anymore, they're clearly not trying to keep the site alive through new users, and it wouldn't surprise me if one day I go to pull up the URL and instead get a thanks
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I thought you could still register but you had to manually contact the admins. Not that I can imagine anyone bothering.
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If you have to contact the admins to justify yourself rather than even being as simple as pre-signing-up through a web form and then the admins reviewing signups to approve then that's only one step from not being able to sign up at all.
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Ever since this site came off using open source Slashcode to whatever weirdness they're using now, things have been so fragile I'm just expecting Drew to get drunk and manage to delete Slashdot's YROtab.
It's hard to draw an audience for laptop content (Score:2)
Back in the 90s and early 2000s especially with the advent of gaming laptops, there were plenty of opportunities. Post-covid, where laptops became ubiquitous tools, the enthusiasm for and novelty of laptop journalism content just isn't there anymore. With the lack of transparency around throttling and wattage on any given model and the days of custom BIOS mods and GPU ROMs being pretty much over, technically elite hardcore enthusiasts are few and far between. Without a sizeable community to tweak and push t
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Stuff I've wanted to know hasn't been readily available for a long time anyway. I want to know things like:
maximum brightness, if the screen is legible outdoors in full sun
battery life at maximum brightness
If the keyboard still has physical pgup/pgdn keys or not
max effective speaker loudness
how upgradable the RAM is
how the rear corners are, in terms of trying to actually use it on a lap
Some of this stuff can be found out through vendor sources but a good chunk of it can be a PITA to find without getting h
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That's a reasonable point. I failed to mention that along with the mainstreaming/commodification of laptops and the resulting consumerist orientation, technically oriented reviews have essentially evaporated and so the quality of current laptop journalism is generally abysmal. That kind of deep technical info is exactly what I would try and enumerate on the sites that I ran myself, but compiling that info is tedious and while it leads to high quality content, the page goes stale in a year or two after the n
Oh please! (Score:2)
Don't tell me that "A.I. Weekly" is going out of print. We just got a new puppy.