My professional home from 1990 through 1996 was Windows Magazine. I am proud to have been the first CMP employee asked to join the staff. E. Drake Lundell, then the publisher, invited me to come over from InformationWEEK to help transition the publication and its staff. Mike and Dan (Silicon Beach) founded it in Carpinteria, Calif. CMP bought it and moved it to Manhasset, Long Island, New York.

We worked many long, hard hours in those first six months. I mark that period as the start of my stress-induced weight gain of recent years. But I made friendships that will last a lifetime.

There are too many people to mention, and I might leave someone out, so I'll just mention one colleague: Jim Forbes. I am proud to say I collected the bounty for recruiting Jim to the staff of Windows. He left earlier this year for IDG, where he runs the Demo conferences. My role in hiring Jim is the single best hire I've ever been associated with.

Although I left the magazine for my shot at TV, and then for the Internet, I still respected the magazine even as it began its death spiral — a spiral which ended with the closure of the magazine on July 1.

This is not the time or place to dissect what went wrong, and whether Windows could have been saved. In any case, it is too late now, and while it will live on as a web site, most of the staff is leaving. Thus is one of the finest collections of technical journalism talent it has ever been my privilege to be associated with scattered to the four winds. Farewell, Windows Magazine