GCN improves testing
In the very first GCN, in December 1982, a Page 1 story's headline read: 'The Impact of Microcomputers on Information Processing Management.' Under that cryptic head, the article stated that because so many people in large organi-zations, such as government agencies, were requesting PCs, managers were starting to study what effect those machines might have.
In the very first GCN, in December 1982, a Page 1 story's headline read: 'The Impact of Microcomputers on Information Processing Management.' Under that cryptic head, the article stated that because so many people in large organi-zations, such as government agencies, were requesting PCs, managers were starting to study what effect those machines might have.Management scrutiny, the article noted, came as vendors were researching 16-bit and 32-bit microcomputer architectures that eventually could do significantly more work than the 4-bit and 8-bit microcomputers then prevalent.GCN's launch coincided with the beginning of the PC revolution, and we've been following and reporting on it and other major computing trends ever since. Integral to our coverage for the past dozen or so years have been reviews of PCs and the myriad products that surround them. Our goal was and is to help government managers make informed buying decisions.I'm happy to tell you about a significant new capability in GCN's mission of providing the best-read and most useful reviews available to government readers.Our Silver Spring, Md., lab will now be using performance benchmarks from ZD Benchmark Operation of Morrisville, N.C. ZDBOp is a subsidiary of Ziff-Davis Inc., an international publisher of computer magazines and newspapers for corporate and home readers. Technical staffs at thousands of companies and government agencies consider the ZD benchmarks the most accurate and reliable tools for measuring hardware performance.In an unprecedented agreement, GCN will be the first publication outside of the Ziff-Davis publications to use the ZDBop benchmarks'in print and on our Web site at www.gcn.com. Our team of reviewers will use the benchmarks to rate the performance of desktop and portable PCs, servers, video and graphics accelerators, browsers and Java engines.For readers, this all means GCN will maintain its leadership in publishing the most relevant reviews of the latest products. Look for the first review using ZDBOp benchmarks in the July 12 issue.
Thomas R. Temin
Editorial Director
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