NAG's Technical Writer?

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Okay so I buy the NAG magazine every month even though their magazine quality has gone straight down the toilet these days. I'm not talking about the quality of the content (I'll get to that later) but the physical quality is getting WORSE every month. It went from a decent spine printed magazine to a magazine that is now stapled together like last month's Huisgenoot! Every month I end up getting a magazine which has pages that are stuck together because they have not been cut properly, pages are printed completely skew (so bad some articles are ruined!) and the pages generally fall out of the magazine. So yeah, NAG...you're quality SUCKS DONKEY BALLS!

Anyways now onto the subject matter of this thread.

Being an IT professional and an enthusiast gamer I always like reading the technical sections of the NAG (and the PC Format more so). Lately the information, opinions and articles written by NAG's technical writer (Mr. Sibeko I believe) have become more and more laughable. For instance, in this month's NAG he has chosen a new monitor for the NAG "Dream Machine"...the Samsung P2770HD.

The Samsung P2770HD is a Television more than it's a PC monitor. It supports a maximum resolution of 1920x1080 and a contrast ratio of 50:000 to 1 (if I'm not mistaken) on a 27" panel. The model that WAS the previous "Dream Machine Monitor" was the Samsung T260 with 1920x1200 with 20:000 to 1 contrast ratio on a 25.5" LCD Panel.

He goes on to review the P2770HD and then goes on to DEFEND and ARGUE that the P2770HD is much better than the T260. :confused:

This left me gobsmacked.

He is insisting that a monitor with a larger viewable area with LESS pixels provides BETTER image quality than a smaller sized panel with MORE pixels. He then decides to replace the monitor and use the P2770HD as the "Dream Machine" monitor.

If NAG's technical writer had any sense of the industry and was a true "tech-head" he should have shunned Samsung from making larger LCD panels with smaller resolutions. So it's a bit odd that LCD manufacturers are now making larges panels with resolutions that ONLY go up to 1080p...and now we have PC/Gaming Magazines punting this move as a "good thing" as well. Was someone paid off to write that review??? Converting PC gamers into console buyers, much?

What an absolute joke. It's not the first time that I've read articles and comments from NAG's technical writer where I've laughed my head off and could only feel sorry for the poor moron that reads his advice and takes it to heart because the info given from that writer has obviously been "steered" in a very dodgy direction.

As a technical writer and someone who needs to reflect the needs of his audience he should start thinking about what gamers want and need and stop "oooh'ing and aaah'ing" at every new thing that's big and shiny. Start looking further than your nose man!

Where is Samsung's 2560x1600 monitors? Why are they giving us larger panels with the same 1920x1080 resolution the whole time? Why the hell are you actually condoning this?? Why have you not been slapped yet?!??

The NAG as a whole seriously going downhill. The only person that does actually write stuff worth reading is Tarryn (and she got crapped on by the Editor in the last issue lol).
 
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lol...

he is a bit of ass hat that's true. over on PH you cannot dare say anything against nvidia lest you get assaulted by him and his fan club.

also the quality of the mag this month is bloody shocking, i paged through it ONCE! and the dang pages started falling out...

yeah awesome move there... cutting costs why? so they can blow more on that rediculous "dream machine" of theirs...
 
Well dude, I'm glad you pointed out that I'm not the only one that thinks he talks out of his @ss. I really don't care what his fanboy club thinks. I'm an IT-Pro and a gamer and I can vouch that he's got absolutely no clue what he's talking about. If the NAG editor had any vision he'd move him to another department in the magazine and get someone who KNOWS what's going on to be the technical editor.

Let's also not forget the STUFF UP he made with the whole "Sound-Card not compatible with the Headphones I picked" issue. He is clearly attempting to fill his personal stockings by writing this garbage.
 
Okay step back and breath, technically the P2770 is a superior model to the T260, firstly it is running on a 16:9 aspect ratio which a lot of games have adopted over the T260 16:10 aspect ratio, this therefore explains the lack of pixels as you call it, you are going from an older less used aspect ratio to a more standardized one, I'm not defending him at all I find NAG has slipped up but with regards to the monitor issue, he might have a point.
Also LCD's have a native resolution, it will cost a lot of money to make an LCD that has the same resolution of a similar sized CRT monitor, so they are probably not fabricating them due to this reason. It's also nice to see a standard resolution set now for both PC's, TV's, consoles etc, in the past you had LCD monitors with odd resolutions where games and movies were often stretched to try fit the screen, with a standard resolution it makes sense for developers.
 
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The "God like" attitude over at NAG put me off them eons ago.

Personally I think its a total waste of money considering the wealth of information you can find online.
 
Lupus said:
Okay step back and breath, technically the P2770 is a superior model to the T260, firstly it is running on a 16:9 aspect ratio which a lot of games have adopted over the T260 16:10 aspect ratio, this therefore explains the lack of pixels as you call it, you are going from an older less used aspect ratio to a more standardized one
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No, OP is 100% correctly....he just phrased it a bit clumsily. For a desktop setups you don't want to sacrifice a lot of PPI for a minor gain on screensize.

Strifehart said:
16:10 = fail
16:9 = win
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Care to elaborate?
 
Grimspoon said:
The "God like" attitude over at NAG put me off them eons ago.

Personally I think its a total waste of money considering the wealth of information you can find online.
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Since getting uncapped I've stopped buying the NAG. No point really except to waste money.

On the topic of NAG's technical writer who's name I think is Neo Sibeko has often made faulty statements like his suggestions for the hardware advice section. I do agree with him on a lot of his articles though, he doesn't always write hogwash. :/
 
We can't expect the NAG writers to be perfect, after all, a lot of it is opinions and people's opinions are different. That's why you check your sources widely before buying anything. And compared to a lot of writers out there on the net and other magazines, I still think NAG are doing a good job, even if they have changed quite a lot.
 
Yeah falling out pages see my other threats about it. Also pages trough it once this time was not even in bed reading it just sitting here in a chair paging trough it.

Stopped reading those a while ago rather do my info gathering online.

@ Isengard since we don't have uncapped its the cheapest way of getting game vids to see whats new and up coming.
 
Just want to point out that Neo Sibeko is the 2nd best overclocker in SA and one of the most experience so he does actually know what he is talking about. Don't read the NAG so can't comment on that but he is not just some random who got hired.
Also I can understand the comment on the P2770 The PPI on the T260 is almost too high especially when you consider that the T240 only has a resolution of 1680x1050. Just me 2c
 
tanka said:
Just want to point out that Neo Sibeko is the 2nd best overclocker in SA and one of the most experience so he does actually know what he is talking about. Don't read the NAG so can't comment on that but he is not just some random who got hired.
Also I can understand the comment on the P2770 The PPI on the T260 is almost too high especially when you consider that the T240 only has a resolution of 1680x1050. Just me 2c
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Being an overclocker and being fully capable of being a magazine's technical editor is a World of difference. Also saying he's one of our country's top overclockers is like trying to tell me the guys in bafana bafana are the best soccer players in our country...they still suck.

You don't have to be an IT professional to be an overclocker either. Overclocking is tinkering with a motherboard, ram and CPU....it's ONE subject that he may or may not be good at, but, a technical editor needs WAY more knowledge on a LOT of other topics in the industry...so his overclocking achievements mean jack-shit when it comes to being a technical writer. PERIOD.

The facts are on the table. It was a larger monitor with LESS pixels than the previous one. That makes the image quality LESS. That means it's WORSE than the previous model.

You cannot argue with facts in the "technical" World. That is something Mr. Sibeko is trying to do and all it's doing for him is to show that he simply has no clue. Maybe if NAG had an "overclocking" section he could write for that section...

but calling him a "technical editor" for an entire magazine is just plain daft, what NAG seems to be these days anyways.

Thank GOODNESS you need actual knowledge when writing for the PC Format.
 
Crzwaco said:
Yeah falling out pages see my other threats about it. Also pages trough it once this time was not even in bed reading it just sitting here in a chair paging trough it.

Stopped reading those a while ago rather do my info gathering online.

@ Isengard since we don't have uncapped its the cheapest way of getting game vids to see whats new and up coming.
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I get that and that's why I kept buying the NAG until now, but it seems kinda pointless to still be buying it now. I will still buy one every now and then though, just to keep with tradition. :)
 
I no longer buy NAG, the reason being, their magazine quality and size has been constantly deteriorating. Since I saw the "school book" styled magazine at the start of this year, I no longer find it to be worth the high price.
 
Grimspoon said:
The "God like" attitude over at NAG put me off them eons ago.

Personally I think its a total waste of money considering the wealth of information you can find online.
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Agreed. I use to love it and then about in 2002 it went downhill. How can you be a tech writer and be a fan boy?
 
Now hold on a sec... The P2770h IS a bigger monitor with a lower pixel density so admittedly it suffers on that front. But a 55" r50k 3D LED TV has the same screen resolution with obviously a massively lowered PPI - it still doesn't make the picture quality WORSE than the T260's because there are other factors to consider, e.g. the greater screen size more than compensates for the minor drop in PPI. The P2770h beats the T260 in the best value for money front.
 
jasong said:
Now hold on a sec... The P2770h IS a bigger monitor with a lower pixel density so admittedly it suffers on that front. But a 55" r50k 3D LED TV has the same screen resolution with obviously a massively lowered PPI - it still doesn't make the picture quality WORSE than the T260's because there are other factors to consider, e.g. the greater screen size more than compensates for the minor drop in PPI. The P2770h beats the T260 in the best value for money front.
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It would have been a different story if he praised it for being "value for money", but that's not what he did. He went on about this monitor as if this is absolutely the BEST monitor you can get for your PC in South Africa at the moment. After all, that's what the NAG "Dream Machine" is supposed to be about - the BEST stuff you can get. The second you start bringing "value for money" into the equation it ruins the entire point of a so-called "dream machine" and they should then proceed to replace the CPU and Motherboard with an AMD version rather - if MONEY has suddenly become an issue with a "DREAM" machine.

Yeah...that P2770HD is a bigger monitor, but if he knew what he was talking about (and that's asking a lot) and size was what he was after, he should have set his sights on a 30" 2550x1600 capable LCD....which of course is almost impossible to get in the country so naturally the T260 was an "okay" fit. The fact that he replaced a higher spec'ed PC monitor with, what is basically a TELEVISION just tells me one thing...he's lost the plot!

And to those people saying that 16:9 is WIN and 16:10 is FAIL...it's not about that. This component is a COMPUTER component. 16:9 is okay if you're a console fanboy and don't know of better.

When it comes to PC components, it's about the BEST. Not about what some supplier gives you under the table. You CANNOT go out and say a 27" LCD monitor with a LOW resolution of 1920x1080 is the best you can get for your "Dream Machine".

You simply can't do it.
 
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