Welcome to the new Tom’s Hardware Guide UK & Ireland ! Change can be unsettling, so you may be wondering about our new site design and trying to find out where all the buttons and knobs have gone to. Sorry about that, but progress must be made and let me assure you that you will - once you have gotten used to it - find this new design streamlines your Tom’s Hardware browsing experience ; hopefully a great deal compared to the sometimes less than adequate design used previously.

Visually the site has changed quite a bit, obviously. We’ve also made significant strides in opening up our archives, enhancing navigation and updating features such the search function and article feedback. You can now post comments on the article page directly (cutting out the need to pay a visit to the forums or email the author, both of which you may still do) if you have - or sign up for - an account on the site. If you’re already a Tom’s Hardware forum user then your existing username and login will now allow you to use all of these new features. There’s also a new UK & Ireland-specific section of the forum which you can use to discuss articles and issues specific to our corner of the globe... And, we know, probably point out bugs to us... The joys of taking nearly 11 years of content and putting it into a new site. We’ll be working at this in the coming days and weeks.

We have also managed to get rid of our very inflexible server system that saw readers in the UK and Ireland being unable to access Tom’s Hardware Guide USA. Now we have a far more intuitive system that allows you to freely move between the sites. Of course all of the applicable content produced by our American cousins will continue to appear on Tom’s Hardware UK & Ireland, mostly with localised prices and market conditions reflected in the articles. But the choice is yours as to what you read. Sorry for the inflexibility in the past, we hope that all of this will make up for it.

The launch of this new site design marks much, much more than simply an exercise in web development. As some of you may already know, TG Publishing (the parent company of Tom’s Hardware Guide) merged with the French company Best of Media a relatively short time ago.

For Tom’s Hardware Guide UK & Ireland this has seen a major investment of resources which is beginning to reflect on the content which you are reading every day. We are striving towards providing more of the in-depth technical content that Tom’s Hardware Guide is famous for ; and we are also moving towards giving comprehensive coverage on topics such as Gaming and Consumer Electronics.

In the coming months we will be separating the traditional hardcore bits-n-chips Tom’s Hardware content from the consumer electronics and gaming content that, while relevant to you our audience, has been cluttering things up a bit.

Tom’s Hardware can, on certain days, look a bit like Tom’s Everything Guide ; and so we will be launching Tom’s Guide and Tom’s Games to address the consumer and gaming ends of things, while Tom’s Hardware itself will continue to focus on the hardcore bits-n-chips business. You’ll find your overclocking projects on Tom’s Hardware, your HDTV Buyers Guide on Tom’s Guide and your game reviews (naturally enough) on Tom’s Games.

We’re going to be refocusing our Tom’s Hardware team on the Hardware and take away all of this distracting CE and gaming stuff that has been floating around. Tom’s Hardware will be a more focused site and a more focused editorial operation for the switch ; and we will help to make Tom’s a better web destination by offering you Tom’s Guide and Tom’s Games in their own focused packages.

Over the coming months you will see more content and better content which you will be better able to access and enjoy through our new site. I am extremely confident that with each passing week you will get more and more out of your visits to the site.

I also hope that you will continue to provide us with your feedback and comments on the site and the content so that we may try and fulfil the demands that you make of us over time.

Yours sincerely,

Aaron McKenna, Managing Editor