Welcome to Ars Technica

Lets get some details out on the table.

First, it's Ars Technica -- as in Arts (it's Latin). It's not not A-R-S, not Arse (hehe), but just what is looks like, Ars (pronounced like the letter 'r', with an 's' at the end). Ars Technica, the Art of Technology. We believe that our site rox so hard that we can choose a crazy name like this, and people will still come back.

Second, youre not a consumer, youre a prosumer--coming to this site proves that much. Prosumers arent satisfied with the status quo. When it comes to computing, prosumers want proformance, and they want it at a price that lets em sleep easy at night. When it comes to news, opinions, and technology reviews, prosumers want content that informs, not conforms to industry hoopla or some IT Managers idea of proven technology. And were gonna give it to you.

As you may have already gathered, Ars Technica is not about "Us vs. Them" approaches to enthusiast computing. Ars is about power users and the tools they want. Any site that talks about "power user this" or "power user that" without giving credence to OSes like BeOS, Linux, Win NT, etc., is just blowin' smoke (in our not-so-humble opinions).

If you came here looking for religion, you're going to be disappointed.

Ars Technica serves up the best multi-OS, PC hardware, and tech coverage possible while remembering what we're all about: having fun, being productive, and being as informative and as accurate as possible. We're confident that we can provide you with the tools and info you need to have a truly kickin' PC experience without sending you off to spend 2 weeks to try and get your modem to work.

We are dangerous!

We're full of opinions, and it's not uncommon for an Ars staff meeting to end in a old-style WWF match. We devour the latest processor news. We drool over benchmarks. You might even catch us cleaning the dust out from the inside of our cases and polishing our un-removed ISA covers. (You know all the PCI slots are used up.) But we don't all agree with one another, and we can't stand sites out there that follow the party line without being reasonable. Bottom line" we're power users, and you are, too.

Of course, not all power users are alike. Not every power user out there wants to play Quake 2 twenty hours a day. Not every power user wants to compile a kernel. Not every power user wants to spend five hours a day reading about the latest industry developments when they could be using their computer. And this is where Ars Technica leaps over the rest of the PC hardware and enthusiast sites out on the 'net. See, if you want to stay on top of the industry:

You dont need to know everything, you only need to know whats important.

And were going to drag it out from the trenches, tidy it up, and wrap it up in a tasty package that can only come from a bunch o computer hacks whove been there, done that. You see, we at Ars Technica can talk about PC hardware because we get our hands on it every day. We know what issues are important to power users because we are power users. The writers that make up our staff are certified PC hardware specialists, systems administrators, engineers, network topologists, and software developers. We're not English majors who've decided to pretend we know something (though we do have an English major in the bunch ;). We're not short-sighted tech writers, either.

Did we mention we're unassailable computing enthusiasts?

Yeah, we sometimes disappoint readers who are looking for closed-minded commentary and "us-vs-them" fanaticism. We have to apologize. Our love for the PC is gonna lead us into bad, bad things like NT, Linux and BeOS content under the same roof. Please don't report us!

Bookmark our site and drop in every once and a while. Heck, sign up for our awesome TechSpam [ http://www.ars-technica.com/wankerdesk/newsletter.html ], and receive the most important TechNews delivered right to your own electronic mailbox. We wont disappoint you.

For more information, and to get a glimpse at the reasons why this site is the best PC hardware and enthusiast's site on the Internet, check out some of our sub-categories up on the left. If you still want to know more of what we're about, read on here [ http://www.arstechnica.com/guide/credo.html ].

-Caesar [ caesar@ars-technica.com ] and the rest of the Ars Technica uber-users.