Eleven years came and went, and subscriptions giveaway!

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Definitely a good time for me to return to some moderation duties. :punk:

Seriously, congrats on the accomplishment.

I have definitely had varying roles of involvement here on Neowin, and I truly appreciate them all.

Thanks to Neowin, I was able to visit my favorite video game developer of all times, Valve.

I was also able to cover CES one year. Got to hang out with some really great guys as well. SkkyPunk, Shane Pitman, and Frank. Was a crazy fun filled couple of days. One of the weirder moments of that trip being when I interviewed Pro Gamer Fatality. Strictly by chance we hung out with him the night before at some crazy sponsored party in some penthouse, it was like a party you see in the movies. And he was a pretty cool guy actually, nothing like what I expected him to be based on all the crap talked about him online.

I was able to go to Seattle, and hang out with Sig from Deadliest Catch on his boat the Northeastern.

I got to go out to Austin Texas, and hang out with most of the staff at the time. Another great time (which I cannot remember any news stories from :laugh: ).

Shortly after the Austin trip, I did my official stint on the news staff, and unsuccessfully started the Gaming News Team. :cry: :D

All of these things I no doubt would have never done otherwise without Neowin.

There have definitely been some ups and downs with me and the site personally. However almost all of the downs have been while I was a moderator, and solely because I really did dedicate alot of hard work at times. I also did some things which I know caused some people to dislike me. But I always felt it was for the better of the community at large. I truly do mean that. I definitely could look back and say I have a few things I would have preferred went down differently, but overall I stand by the fact that every single thing I have done, no matter how unpopular at the time, and no matter how hard it may have been at times because like it or not I am only human and I do wind up getting to know people, was always something I felt would be best for all of the members. With all that said, the ups far outweigh the downs, and the downs were obviously not that bad, as I am back to moderating again.

So even though I am pretty sure I have said so in the past, would just like to say thanks for all of the opportunities and for the respect of the members. It truly has been a pretty large part of my life the past 8 years since I joined, and I no doubt appreciate it all.

[tomwarren Veteran]

Wowzers, 11 years :o congrats!

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

Its been a very fast 11 years. I haven't been a member the whole time but if I add my lurker years to my member years its darn near 11.

[Sikh]

I found neowin via google when I was searching a computer hardware problem that had to do with the realtek drivers not letting DFLW launch properly.

After that, i followed neowin but not as "religiously" as I do today. In the past months I've been busy with my full-time job and business but I have this as my homepage on desktop, laptop and iPhone. Everywhere I go, if I haven't checked neowin in half an hour I always do. I have you guys down as my RSS Feed on iPhones lock screen.

This place is wonderful, the admins, staff and most of the members are awesome people.

Everyone keep up the good work!

P.S. Entry into the drawing. Ive been itching to see this special forum. I can careless about ad free or not, I just want to know what you guys are hiding from us!

[Art3x]

Man, I remember sitting at work reading Neowin and nineteeneleven.org all day. Now I just read Neowin as 1911 has been dead and gone for many years :(

[Kondrath]

Entering!

It's hard to choose a favorite memory, but the one that stands out the most is my first time posting here in 2005. I was very tech illiterate and thought that a bully from school was hacking me. I posted logs from my McAfee which didn't really show anything. lol. I told neowin "He says he has my IP address and he is going to port scan me", etc. Then Neowin is all "Lol, that's like saying 'I have your house address'. He can't do anything.". Somehow the guy ended up registering here and found my thread. We started arguing like idiots, then John S. closed the thread and suggested that I call the police. After feeling like a moron, I decided to stick around here anyway and just read up. I learned so much. Neowin has impacted my life in a pretty big way. I went from thinking "If I press the wrong key on this keyboard, I could give the computer a virus" to building my own computers, being known as the guy to call when there's a PC problem, etc. It's good to be here and I plan on staying.

That "bully" and I are good friends now, too. We both ended up getting into computers and sharing many lol's. We jhated each other back then for no reason. hahah... dumb times!

[Dinggus]

I found Neowin years ago, I think on v4. I was probably in highschool when I found it. I don't go to any other tech website, and it helps me keep up-to-date with new products that are coming out especially while deployed, I like to keep my moral up and visit Neowin to do so.

[Elliot B.]

Been here since the early Unreal Tournament days - good times!

Here's to another 10 years of my being here! :D

[Neztea]

Wow, So much has changed in the last 11 years especially how it has grown as a community. Must of been 15 when I first went onto neowin. Now I'm turning 26 this month. Amazing.

neztea

[Raa]

I remember when I joined, I was a lurker for a short time before that though.

The forums looked better then :p

[qdave]

Its not quite 10 years of neowin for me yet, but it will be next year! helluva long time to be posting in the same forums! Though before registering and finding help with my problems(main reason why probably most started coming here), i was visiting it randomly for several months before. Now it all seems like something from another life.

Anyway it has been good being here. And i loved to see the change happened over the many many years.

[FMH]

One day I sort of became a Microsoft fanboy. My brother got a new PC and it had Windows 7 installed. For me the world ended at XP, and I didn't care about anything other than it. It did what I wanted, and I only did light surfing and check my email occasionally.

I didn't even liked Windows 7 in the beginning! I thought, that when I stuck my Windows to the side, and it expanded to half of the screen, as a really annoying feature! I'm talking about Aero Snap. But eventually I really started loving the entire package, and thus begin my journey in the tech world. :laugh:

I didn't knew of any tech sites so I started going through all the Wikipedia articles related to Microsoft and also Apple. I learned a lot from there.

In one of Microsoft article, Neowin was mentioned as a "Microsoft fan site". So this was the first tech website I visited! I got hooked to it.

I liked reading people's comment, and what they thought about particular news article. So I signed up as FMH, with it being my name's initials.

I actually remember my first comment really clearly. I even remember what was the article about. It was an article about Bing and Google Earth!

And I got really bullyed on my first comment. I was really sad about it for days, actually. (I'm looking at you, kezzzs! :D ) But eventually I got used to this...

No matter how many tech sites I go to, and trust me I go to a lot of sites on daily basis(at least a dozen), Neowin is my favourite. I have done over 3000 comments already, with about 90% of them being made in last six months. As a comparison, on Engadget I have only made one measly comment, and that was only about referring someone to a ZDnet article.

I got to Neowin several times a day, and made some great friends too, over here.

I have really spend a lot of time on Neowin, did a lot of polls and forum posts. And it was a really happy time for me. And thanks to Neowin, my typing speed has improved drastically since I came to your site. :) Before this, I had trouble even finding the keys. I always used to forget there places. I can now type without even looking! :rofl:

I would really like to win this. I have not been here for that long a time, but I'm still young and would intend to be here for much longer.

And thanks to Neowin, I now know exactly what I want to do with my life. Hint: it's something to with tech.

And that's a pretty big deal for me. I fell in love with making UI and UX. I have filled several drawing pads after drawing pads. I know the exact moment that got me hooked to it. Thanks again Neowin in a really big way. I owe you one. (Y)

[bruNo_]

I guess some user at WinMatrix recommended me Neowin as a great site for tech news. It was back in 2005 when I had my first account here. Some years passed and I registered again (lost my account/e-mail, can't remember what happened).

Last year I felt I had to help you guys and subscribe, not necessarily to help, but to demonstrate my feelings for this great community.

Peace,

[fhpuqrgrpgvirzhpujbj]

I stumbled upon Neowin diagnosing an error message a few years ago and I've found the community nice and helpful so I've stuck around. And the news isn't to shabby either :p

Entered!

[statm1]

I was referred to Neowin during the v3.x days. I was just getting into to the whole pre-release windows thing. Found several sites for tech news Neowin, betanews, and a few others that don't exist anymore including JCXP. Neowin is the main site that I've stuck with all this time. Its always been a goto place for news and its only gotten better over the years. The design of the site just keeps getting better with every new version. Pegasus being the best yet.

[Nightz]

I found Neowin when MS was running the Vanishing Point promotion for Vista. You guys helped me win a copy of Vista Ultimate and my first Xbox 360. :)

[szo]

thanks for the great site!

Haven't posted much over the years, but have visited almost every day and hovered over the forums.

Love the community! Here's to many more years to come! :)

[pwnz0r3d]

early 2000 you had all these technology sites and forums flourishing, and i think i joined them all :) neowin stood out though, and still does, so i stuck around. this is one of the few sites i check every day for the latest stuff that's happening out there on the interwebs. neowin has this perfect blend of really informative stuff and totally random crap, all fun to read :)

[SimplySchizo]

I found neowin just like the majority of the folks here back in 01-02 did... Trying to customize windows. :D

[Allan]

I joined, I helped, I got frustrated, told Parker off, was banned. I came back, and I've been trying to help again.... I wouldn't mind a subscription package ... I remember the interesting discussions between Snyper, myself and others in the 'private' members metropolis! *LOL*

[cyoung1616]

It's been a while for some of us and I also have another year here. Been fun.

Cody

[Rappy Veteran]

Over the 9 years that I have been involved in Neowin in some form there has been some awesome moments and some down moments. The down moments were being called Spammer because of the infamous 8m Thread and the 9m Thread and the 10m Thread but it was massive fun and met a few cool peeps there. The Ups have been joining the news team in 2009 and having a few months there and then leaving to pursue pastures new over at a movie website but then came the big news when I was announced as a MVC and felt quite privileged!

80,000 came around and I took a hiatus and well the amount of emails I got to return was crazy so I returned! and on the day I return I become a GMOD and the rest as they say is history!

I hope to stay another 11 years...but lets face it the world ends next year...right! ;)

[Allan]

Rappy is my hero!

[Riggers]

Came here for some advise on a technical issue and found the help absolutely first class. What more can i say other than i ended up using Neowin as a hub.

[Kirkburn]

I lurked here for a while without registering, don't recall exactly what got me to do so (long time ago!), but it was certainly worth it :)