The First Time Ever...

[AGTDenton]

I'd vote for Club386 having a Forum.

We have to appreciate what they've achieved in less than 6 months. Can't have been easy to setup another site, company etc... at the drop of a hat. I've been impressed with the quantity & quality they're coming out with. Hopefully a Forum within another few months.

[Jonj1611]

The news stories gave people something to speak about but its actually really a small core of people that have been chatting on the forum for quite a while now. Every now and again someone new joins but really its the same people and nothing wrong with that.

Missing out on the news in tech is a real shame, I wish the reigns had been handed over to one of the people already doing articles or something hammered out but that obviously didn't happen and its nice to see when a "normal" member posts a news story. There are plenty of other forums and tech news sites etc.

But this one is safe, relatively spam free (yes we really do delete spam posts almost every day) and you know many of the people here. Enjoy it, come to chat and to ask questions and there will always be someone knowledgable standing by to answer.

[Rob_B]

I'd vote for Club386 having a Forum.

We have to appreciate what they've achieved in less than 6 months. Can't have been easy to setup another site, company etc... at the drop of a hat. I've been impressed with the quantity & quality they're coming out with. Hopefully a Forum within another few months.

Certainly needed, with no way to discuss articles I visit, read, then I'm off pretty quickly. Doesn't give you the sense of community (obviously) and so I imagine is harder to get the repeat readership

[spacein_vader]

This is the 2nd online community I feel like I'm part of that's slowly dying - the other being the spin-off forums from PCZone - Dear Wandy, which must have ended over 10 years ago now. It was never as active as Hexus in it's heyday, but felt very much like a small community of gamers all UK based. I guess I'll be heading to OCUK's forums eventually, but will be checking in here untilt the lights are turned off I suspect!

Thanks for the headsup on club386, hadn't even head of it! Shame there's no forum at present.

I used to frequent Dear Wandy! Loved PC Zone too. I'm on the fontgeek forum which is refugees from Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and the rest of the Reedpop owned sites that all had their forums closed in favour of Discord. Its game focused rather than general tech though.

There's always the Linus Tech Tips forum but that is huge and understandably very North American centric.

Any other UK forums other than OCUK worth considering?

[Saracen999]

Certainly needed, with no way to discuss articles I visit, read, then I'm off pretty quickly. Doesn't give you the sense of community (obviously) and so I imagine is harder to get the repeat readership

I would agree that it's needed but, I'm old school. I'm not a fan of, or indeed user of social media, unless you include HEXUS, which isn't what I would class as social media. The chances of me ever using the old giants, like FB or Twitter, effectively zero. As for the plethora of more modern variants that 'kids' seem to migrate to every time us old farts learn about a new service, I can't be bothered to even look, let alone sign up.

So, for Club365, while I might browse a bit, no forum = no participation from me.

I would guess, however, that I'm not exactly their target demographic.

As for them starting a forum for Club365, I honestly don't know, and certainly have zero info that isn't public knowledge. My concern is that while starting and setting up a forum isn't exactly difficult, and doesn't take long, tweaking and tuning one typically does, and running it on an ongoing basis is no small task. I'd guess the Club365 team are fully engaged in developing that operation, with a focus on social media, and that a forum is seen as too much work with too little available resource, at least, for now. In other words, a low priority. And the longer it goes without one, the less chance of it ever happening. That said, they could have been working feverishly on it ever since the HEXUS review operation shut down, and be releasing it to the public tomorrow. Or not.

I hope we do get one, but I'm not holding my breath.



EDIT - in fact, the fact that I can't even remember the name of the place shows how often I use it. Club386, I mean.

[Saracen999]

...

Any other UK forums other than OCUK worth considering?

There used to be TPR (Team Phoenix Rising) which was a breakaway of OCUK by those disgruntled with management's attitude. They were a fun bunch of guys. But I haven't been there for quite a while, if indeed it is still running. It may even have migrated back to OCUK after OCUK was sold and changed management.

Anyone know if they are still going?

[cptwhite_uk]

I used to frequent Dear Wandy! Loved PC Zone too. I'm on the fontgeek forum which is refugees from Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and the rest of the Reedpop owned sites that all had their forums closed in favour of Discord. Its game focused rather than general tech though.

There's always the Linus Tech Tips forum but that is huge and understandably very North American centric.

Any other UK forums other than OCUK worth considering?

I still have a bunch of the old regulars on Steam - DocAndyH, Sobtanian, al4omega, bsoltan, VoodooSheep. Not played anyting with them for a while though.

[Output]

To me the forum was always the primary reason for visiting.

The tech news was of course important and I'd click the link to read it from its forum thread, but more important to me is/was seeing the article-responding opinions of the Hexites - my fellow enthusiasts - on that tech news (EDIT: Oh, and the Scan Free Delivery was a great bonus.).

As well as the various non-tech but interesting nevertheless threads that also cropped up at times.

With Club386 being the spiritual successor to HEXUS, if they set up their own forum it would seem to be the obvious location to migrate to (particularly as there's no way of knowing how long the HEXUS Forums will actually last now that the main site has ended).

Without one however, my time on there is limited as I can't really do anything but just pop in and out of there for the articles (other that showing support via Patreon of course, which I'm already doing).

Either way, I plan to stick around here as long as possible.

[[GSV]Trig]

I was on OCUK before Hexus tbh, then took a break from Hexus and came back after, well however long it was..

I agree that 386 should have a forum though, you can comment on the articles they publish on FB, but its not the same as having a direct thread link on the bottom of a review like they had here...

[DanceswithUnix]

I'd vote for Club386 having a Forum.

We have to appreciate what they've achieved in less than 6 months. Can't have been easy to setup another site, company etc... at the drop of a hat. I've been impressed with the quantity & quality they're coming out with. Hopefully a Forum within another few months.

They have put together a decent site pretty fast, and I do take a peek in occasionally. But I must admit I consider the 386 a dark time in computing (only marginally better than the 286 that made me want to spoon my eyes out rather than continue writing code) so the title is a bit of a trigger for me rather than the intended warm nostalgia feeling I'm sure they intended.

Now, if it had been club68k ...

[Jonj1611]

They have put together a decent site pretty fast, and I do take a peek in occasionally. But I must admit I consider the 386 a dark time in computing (only marginally better than the 286 that made me want to spoon my eyes out rather than continue writing code) so the title is a bit of a trigger for me rather than the intended warm nostalgia feeling I'm sure they intended.

Now, if it had been club68k ...

Think yourself lucky. I was doing raytracing on a 286 processor with povray! It haunts me to this day

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can all post some benchmark figures in the Fallout 4 thread!

[Jonj1611]

If I could run Fallout 4 I certainly would do

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If I could run Fallout 4 I certainly would do

A few of the chaps over on OcUK forums have run some benchmarks on the equivalent thread over there and its quite interesting so far:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/th...ults.18946938/

Only me and KompuKare have run bunchmarks on the Hexus version!

[Jonj1611]

I will check it out, last post I made on OC was from 2016 I think!

[[GSV]Trig]

Well I don't have Fallout 4, so that's my excuse..