About BCCHardware
BCCHardware.com was established in 1999 by Benjamin “Zeus” Heide, and was known originally as BensCustomCases.com . BCCHardware was originally devoted to modifying computer cases and other computer-related products. As the site grew, BCCHardware started to review products, write editorials, as well as post daily news. BCCHardware has posted over 700 reviews to date, as well as many other articles and has provided live onsite coverage from events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and CeBIT in Hanover, Germany.
Late in 2005 the name was changed from BensCustomCases.com to BCCHardware.com , this name change reflected the change that had occurred to the website over the first few years. This reflected the change of focus of the site from case modification, to primarily hardware reviews.
BCCHardware reviews computer hardware, and computer related hardware. We also provide software reviews, and other consumer electronic reviews.
BCCHardware has provided daily news (Monday to Friday) for over 8 years. Every news item is personally reviewed and posted by BCCHardware staff. We screen every submission, and strive to provide high-quality content.
BCCHardware also provides an active forum community that we strive to keep free of Warez/Swearing/Porn/Etc. We strive to keep content that can be viewed my members of all ages. All members must provide a valid e-mail address in order to join, and must adhere to our forums policy.
As the website began to grow, so did the staff. Many of the current staff of BCCHardware began as regular posters in the BCCHardware forum community , and eventually became staff members. The staff of BCCHardware currently includes:
Benjamin “Zeus” Heide – Owner, Analyst, News Editor
Jason “Fujitsu” Schneider – Owner, Analyst, News Editor
Daniel “Nicao” Guenter – Software Reviewer, Site Programmer
Michael "Cottonmouth" Bollinger - Analyst (Retired)
William "HooRaH" Carls - Analyst (Retired)
Regina "Tigger" McDougall - Analyst, Photo Editor
Sean Dillman - News Editor (Retired)
Eldon "Bonerak" Kieper - News Editor (Retired)
John "Onion" Harper - Analyst (Retired)
Eric "IronMan" Johnsen - Analyst (Retired)
The BCCHardware team also includes many other individuals who help out in various areas.
On September 18, 2007 BCCHardware made things more official by becoming a Proprietorship and on September 22, 2007 took on a partner - Jason "Fujitsu" Schneider. BCCHardware is now the joint venture of the owners Benjamin "Zeus" Heide and Jason "Fujitsu" Schneider. We believe that this will greatly enhance the content, quality and consistency of BCCHardware.
All staff of BCCHardware are unpaid. All of our reviewers have full-time jobs and do the reviews in their spare time. We take great pride in providing high-quality reviews and believe in providing quality instead of quantity.
Most of the early products reviewed by BCCHardware were all paid for by the staff of BCCHardware, or were borrowed from friends of BCCHardware, as well as local businesses. BCCHardware later began receiving products from companies in exchange for publishing a review.
BCCHardware accepts no payment from any companies that have their products reviewed, and makes no guarantee to anyone as to the final outcome (product score) of the review. This allows us to provide high-quality non-biased reviews. We take great pride in providing honest opinions in our reviews, and rate our products accordingly. We also work with companies if problems occur during testing, and also help provide feedback for future products.
BCCHardware keeps the majority of products reviewed. We try and keep as many products as possible for a period of time after the review is published in order to help provide support through our forums. If we keep the product we can revisit the product if a problem is reported through our forums, or if any questions arise. Most of the products we review are kept, but some of these products are eventually sold to help cover the costs associated with running the website. Some products are also returned to the providing company if special arrangements have been made. We normally request 4-8 weeks to complete a review, depending on the amount of time required for testing.
BCCHardware is currently hosted by slagd.com (Owned and Operated by Daniel “Nicao” Guenter), we use approximately 80 gigs of bandwidth per month and are rapidly increasing our bandwidth usage every month. BCCHardware receives over 8 million hits per month, and draws ~280,000 unique hits per month.
BCCHardware uses a commercial template that has been greatly modified by Daniel “Nicao” Guenter, our site is run off the Mambo open-source software package, as well as the Joomla interface template. Most of our features and coding have been modified heavily by Daniel “Nicao” Guenter.
We believe the future looks bright for all of us here at BCCHardware and are excited to see what the future brings.
