How did you find Neowin?

[+samw61 Subscriber²]

Oh man, I have never seen this thread before, but I think my first exposure to Neowin was via Desktop Sidebar in 2004, which included several news feeds in it's News Panel via RSS, including Neowin, Slashdot, and many others! I just had a squiz on WayBack, and it all came flooding back. A test release of MSN Messenger 7?! Holy crap, that stuff was like crack to me as a teenager! *Nudge*

https://web.archive.org/web/20041001041507/http://neowin.net/

[Tobunni]

Link from Computeractive magazine

 

[ShadowNet]

Just stumbled across this site again. 

Delighted to see it's still going. I have vague memories of speaking to the founder in an Irish Bar in the Netherlands in the early 2000's. He was a delightful chap with a real passion for gadgets!

Nice to see it's still going strong.

[Agara Olu]

I found it though advertisement

[reveries]

I believe it was on the IRC forums. I could be wrong though

[OOGPRSR]

By reading a technology blog that reported about win 11 up grades because I'm really new to it 

[Nick Oscar]

I am just searching for active forums like 15 years ago. Im tired of bots on social media.

[TheTraveler]

A Pacific NW resident for a majority of my eons of existance. Known to rearrange 1's and 0's starting many years ago. Lived and workef in several countries around our world. Almost ended up in a former East Berlin prison for a few years, accused of trying to smuggle a woman to freedom in West Berlin (1967).

My wonderful significant partner also had experience living outside of of the PNW in her young years. Her father was a US spy stationed for a while in Moscow. He also came close to potential incarceration. He and family were able to escape.

Spent a few years as an investigatine news reporter with a former Auburn radio station.

Enjoying life in our relatively new home, in which we are continuing our significant updates. My past home remodeling experience is coming in handy alongside her experience with the finishing aspects to coordinate the new, refreshing home for us and our two dogs.

More later...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mY9nO]

Hi! Years coming to Neowin- I thought I’d registered many moons ago! 
Now I’m a proper member

Thanks for being here! 

[Schabang]

Having trouble and searching for solutions, did not find that but found a post of someone having the same problem.
Registered so we could share the sorrow and hopfully even share the solution some day.

[amiraziznezhad]

Google 🙂

[brainsuck]

Back when this site started Win 2000 days 

[NicolaiBogutski]

I searched Forums on google , was lead to a reddit list and with 0 research made an account.

 

Nicolai Nick Bogutski

[oCYBERDOGo]

Back in my Windows XP days. When I was heavily into computing and everything related to technology. I found Neowin!  Neowin was at that time one of my favorite go-to places for everything technology related. I had not been active on the site because I had forgotten my logon credentials. I had signed up with an email account that has long since been dead for at least 15 years or more. It was only recently that I had tried and to my surprise. I was able to logon. I've seen so many changes to the site. Now I plan on visiting every day. It's good to be back!

[Groovedude]

Windows XP Beta days........  need i say more. what a time. 

[oCYBERDOGo]

What a time it was then to be sure! I too remember Beta Testing Windows XP at that time. Prior to that I was running Windows NT or Windows 98. Beta Tested Windows Vista (Longhorn) and Windows 7 too! I'm dating myself here, but I remember first using DOS 2.0 way back in the day LOL. So much change, exciting times and the promise of how technology would change world. I was young and very optimistic then. I'm still cautiously optimistic that we will ultimately use these new technologies for the good of mankind. Right now, I'm waiting to see what will happen.

Edited August 18, 2025 by NeoFyle

[johncarter12]

I found this as a reference from one of the member. 
 

 

[DHOC_TAZH]

Google search.

Was looking up a story that was about Linux, not Microsoft, which I thought Neowin was strictly about. Happened about a year ago, I think. Didn't sign up for an account until today.

[Gromvar]

Big fan of Windows XP at the time of launch, and discovered this site around that time. 

[gargantua]

Found a URL for neowin on Reddit from a Google search. Jumping ship from Discord and Reddit. Wanted a forum that could give me the "small-town" vibes of simpler times, and this seems to be the place.

[Soul-Of-Chrysamere]

Same as the dude above me: found a link on an old Reddit thread. I'm old enough to have spent my teen years lurking around forums during my teens and early twenties, and I've been wanting to discover a forum community or two that's still managing to stay active in today's online world.

[+Spark99 Subscriber²]

I was coming here a lot to get information on Microsoft Whistler and Longhorn betas so I decided to officially join on Christmas Eve 2001 and it has been my homepage now for almost 25 years!

[kintamanate]

It's...been a long time since I joined. It was around the time of MSN Messenger. I was a Neowin lurker for a few months IIRC. I was trying to find information on Windows and stumbled on the news site/forum, maybe through Google, Yahoo or Excite searches. I liked reading the technology news articles. I think I spent the weekend reading most of the articles going back to when the site opened lol. I just liked the writing style and the topics.

At the time, I remember something happened to MSN Messenger and it wiped out my whole contact/friend list of the application. It happened to more than just me though, it seemed global. I searched online for a solution but didn't find one. So I dug into the Windows registry (I had done that for other applications to tinker) and found the contact information stored there for the application. I decoded it and submitted my findings to Neowin and joined the forum at the same time. I think I took a screenshot of Neobond's thanks. I will search for it and if I find it before the new years, I will post it.

I haven't been much on these forums in a while but I am truly happy my profile hasn't been deleted. Many thanks to whomever is/was in charge of that. 

 

Edited December 13, 2025 by kintamanate
Fix typos

[gargantua]

On 05/12/2025 at 16:18, Spark99 said:

I was coming here a lot to get information on Microsoft Whistler and Longhorn betas so I decided to officially join on Christmas Eve 2001 and it has been my homepage now for almost 25 years!

I was born 8 months before you joined Neowin

[Glacier]

I was simply browsing some topics about Windows 7 and OSDev, and I stumbled upon this site, so I decided to sign up since why not, could be of real good use.