As we near the end of this week, I wanted to publicly make known a little bit of news pertinent to this very website.

Ever since I started this website WAY WAY back in 1997, it has been called "PC Mechanic". That is how everybody knows it. However, our URL is obviously not www.pcmechanic.com. Our URL is www.pcmech.com.

The full story behind this is very simple: I came up with the name "PC Mechanic" out of my head back in 1997. The domain was already owned by somebody else, so I bought this domain name of pcmech.com. I just missed it, too, because it looks like he registered the name at exactly the same time as I started this website. I probably should have just chosen another name in the beginning but, the idiot that I am, I didn’t.

The person who owns the domain name of pcmechanic.com is holding onto it for dear life, and I don’t blame him one iota. I expect that he gets a lot of residual traffic by people typing in his domain name while looking for this website. After all, it is usually expected that the URL for a site match the site’s name, right?

pcmechanic.com used to route to some kind of Kansas-based computer repair company. Today, it is being forwarded to a staffing company. This staffing company continues to own pcmechanic.com as well as the corresponding trademark.

I have decided to circumvent any potential name conflict and re-name this website. I think this will be much easier for everybody involved as we move into the future. It will get rid of any potential domain name confusion. It will also eliminate the possibility for a name conflict with this other company in the future. Even though PCMech has grown way beyond anything that other company has done and I believe we were indeed using the name first publicly, it doesn’t affect the fact that he owns the domain and the name and I do not.

So, PC Mechanic is now officially just PCMech.

Nothing else changes. Most people have been referring to this site as "PCMech" for awhile now anyway. So, in reality, I’m just confirming what others have been doing all along.

But, Let’s Look at This Word "PCMECH"

Just for fun, I was curious what the word "Mech" meant, if anything. Well, according to Wikipedia:

Mecha, also known as meka or mechs, are walking vehicles controlled by a pilot, often appearing in science fiction or other genres involving a fantastic or futuristic element.

Interesting. Remember that vehicle in Star Wars? It goes on to say:

The term "mecha" is derived from the Japanese abbreviation meka (??, meka^?) for the English word "mechanical". In Japanese, "mecha" encompasses all mechanical objects, including cars, guns, computers, and other devices.

Interesting history lesson and at least there is a parallel to computers here.

Nonetheless, I am inventing a new word: PCMech. Get used to it.

It works better for us to make a new word here. "PC Mechanic" is so YESTERDAY. Why? Because not everything is about PCs anymore. The world has changed since this site was originally set up. We’re talking as much about gadgets and the Internet as we are computers today. Besides, the word PC is often thought to mean a computer running Windows – and we all know that Windows is NOT the only OS out there anymore. Linux and OS X are both gaining steam. I know that PC ultimately stands for "personal computer", and ALL of these machines are personal computers. However, the fact remains that most people would look at the word "pc mechanic" and think all we do here is talk about fixing a computer and, quite frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.

So, from here on out, this site is to be known simply as PCMECH. And now you know the thoughts whirling around in my head on why I made this change after 10 years on the Internet.

Go ahead, call me slow. On this one, I deserve it.

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