[2] Established in 1988 under the guidance of founding publisher and columnist Michael Kolowich,[3] the magazine was known for its irreverent style and annual "Windows Superguide" and "Notebook Torture Test" features.
The latter feature involved baking, freezing, shaking, dropping, and splashing notebook computers from various manufacturers and then rating the machines based on which ones survived the "torture" and which ones failed.
It also featured columns by editor-in-chief Paul Somerson[4] (formerly of PC Magazine, another Ziff-Davis publication), John C. Dvorak, Gil Schwartz, and, for a time in its first few years, Penn Jillette.
[3] At its founding, the magazine was based in Burlington and Cambridge, Massachusetts, but relocated in 1991 to Foster City, California, near San Francisco.
[4] The magazine changed its editorial focus from technology to Internet business in January 2000 and abandoned its original name shortly thereafter to try to capitalize on interest in the so-called "dot-com" boom of the late 1990s.