I write this article ope et consilio, with your feedback and guidance. So, before you read any further, those of you expecting a burst of tables and charts and benchmarks should probably stop right now, and avoid yourself the pain of having to write emails that tell me how I wasted your time when you were looking for "facts", and "information", although I prefer to see the reading of Second Hand Smoke as a sort of errores Ulixis, an odyssey filled with pretentious Latin turns of phrase, and jejune opinion. Be that as it may, this is more about what you think as much as what I think, and not necessarily based on any empirical discovery on my part. That's why the site is called Tom's Hardware Guide, and not Omid's Meandering Musings. Tom does the clever stuff.

Glad we could get that sorted out.

On with the show!

There was a barrage of email, and all of it was very polite, and good. Even in dissent. Frankly the worst I heard was some dualie site that referred to me as a lackey of Tom. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the exact meaning of the word lackey I offer Webster's take on it:

Lackey - noun - a male servant of low rank, or a servile follower, and even, toady.

I have four words for those snide dualies:

Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae.