Disclaimer

1. General information only

Everything published on pcmaw.com is general information. It is written carefully, tested where testing is possible, and offered in good faith — but it is not tailored to your specific hardware, software, network, business or circumstances, and it cannot be.

You are responsible for deciding whether any guidance here applies to your situation, and for the consequences of acting on it. When the stakes are high — irreplaceable data, production systems, anything involving money or safety — get advice that is specific to you.

2. Accuracy, testing and the shelf life of technical advice

We test what we can and label what we cannot. Even so, three limits apply to everything on this site:

• Results are specific to a configuration. A benchmark reflects particular hardware, firmware, driver and software versions, in a particular thermal environment, on a particular date. Change any of those and the number changes.
• Technical information dates quickly. A driver update, a firmware revision or an operating system patch can invalidate advice that was correct when published. Check the publication date at the top of every article.
• We make mistakes. Ten years of publishing has produced a number of corrections, and it will produce more. Section 11 explains how we handle them.

We make no warranty that Content is complete, current, accurate or fit for any purpose. See section 14 of the Terms of Use for the formal position.

3. Hardware modification and warranty risk

Articles describe procedures including disassembly, thermal paste replacement, firmware updates, memory profile configuration and overclocking. These carry real risks that we cannot eliminate with better writing:

• Voiding your warranty. Many manufacturers treat opening a device, or applying an overclocking profile, as grounds to refuse a claim. Check before you start, not afterwards.
• Permanent damage. Electrostatic discharge, excessive voltage, sustained heat and mechanical force destroy components. Some failures are immediate; some appear months later.
• Interrupted firmware updates. A power loss during a firmware write can render a device unbootable and unrecoverable without specialist equipment.
• Instability that looks like something else. An unstable memory profile can corrupt files silently for weeks before anything visibly fails.
• Electrical and fire risk. Power supplies store dangerous charge after disconnection. We do not publish procedures that require opening one, and neither should you.

If you are not confident, stop and find somebody who is. Our repair service exists partly because this work is genuinely easy to get wrong.

4. Data loss and backups

Several procedures we describe — reinstalling an operating system, repartitioning, migrating a site, changing a storage configuration, updating firmware — can result in complete data loss. Sometimes that is the expected outcome; sometimes it is a failure mode.

Before following any such procedure, take a verified backup. “Verified” means you have restored at least one file from it and opened it successfully. A backup you have never tested is a hypothesis, not a safety net.

We accept no responsibility for data loss, however caused, including where our instructions contained an error.

5. Security guidance is not a guarantee

Our security articles describe measures that reduce risk. None of them eliminates it. Following every recommendation we publish will leave you meaningfully safer and still capable of being compromised, because:

• new vulnerabilities are discovered in software that was secure yesterday;
• a determined attacker with sufficient resources can defeat consumer-grade defences;
• the most common successful attacks target people rather than systems;
• a device you do not control — a supplier’s, an employer’s, a friend’s — can be the entry point.

Treat security as risk reduction and assume that prevention will eventually fail. That is why the home network guide spends as much space on backups and incident response as on prevention.

6. Not professional advice

Nothing on this site constitutes legal, financial, tax, insurance, medical or regulatory advice. Where an article touches on such matters — data protection obligations, consumer rights, warranty law, the cost of an upgrade — it reflects our general understanding and is not a substitute for a qualified professional who knows your circumstances and your jurisdiction.

Our template policies and checklists are starting points for a conversation with a professional, not substitutes for one.

7. Affiliate links and commercial relationships

Some articles contain affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Our commitments:

• Any article containing affiliate links says so clearly at the top.
• Affiliate links never influence what we recommend, how we rank options, or what a review concludes.
• We regularly recommend products we earn nothing from, and regularly advise readers not to buy something we would earn a commission on.
• Affiliate income is currently under 4% of our revenue, and we have no interest in that number growing.

8. Sponsored content and review samples

Sponsored articles are labelled at the top of the page and in every listing. Sponsors do not see drafts, do not approve copy and cannot influence a verdict; they receive a publication date and a factual accuracy check limited to statements about their own product.

Where a manufacturer supplies a review sample, the article says so. Samples are returned after testing or, where the manufacturer declines to take them back, donated to a local repair café and logged publicly. The majority of what we test is bought at retail.

We do not remove or rewrite published articles at a sponsor’s request. The full policy is on the about page and in section 11 of the Terms of Use.

9. External links

We link to external sites we consider useful at the time of writing. We do not control them, do not review them on an ongoing basis, and do not endorse their content, products or practices by linking to them. Links may break, change owner or become unsafe. Judge any external site on its own merits.

10. Use of AI tools in our workflow

In the interest of transparency, here is exactly how we use machine-learning tools:

• We do: clean up interview transcripts, check spelling and grammar, summarise long technical documents as a research aid, and generate first-draft alternative text for images (always reviewed by a person).
• We do not: generate articles, generate any part of an article that is published without a named editor rewriting it, produce benchmark figures, fabricate quotes, or create images presented as photographs of real products.

Every published sentence has been written or rewritten by the named author. Every number comes from a measurement. If we ever change this policy, we will say so here and in the newsletter.

11. Corrections policy

We correct errors rather than quietly editing them away.

1. Typographical and formatting errors are fixed silently.
2. Factual errors that do not change a conclusion are fixed and noted in a dated correction at the foot of the article.
3. Errors that change a conclusion are fixed, noted at the foot of the article, flagged near the relevant passage, and reported in the next newsletter.
4. Articles that are wholly superseded are marked as outdated at the top, with a link to the current guidance. We do not delete them.

Report an error to [email protected] or through the contact form. We acknowledge within one working day. If you tell us we are wrong and you are right, we will say so publicly.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, PC MAW Media, its officers, employees and contributors accept no liability for any loss or damage — including damage to hardware, loss of data, loss of profit, business interruption or security compromise — arising from your use of, or reliance on, anything published on this site.

Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded. The formal limits are set out in section 15 of the Terms of Use.

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How to reach us about this document

Questions, complaints and requests relating to this policy should go to our legal contact rather than the general inbox, so they are logged and tracked properly:

• Email: [email protected]
• Post: PC MAW Media, 44 Kestrel Lane, Suite 12, Syracuse, NY 13202, United States
• Response time: five working days for acknowledgement, thirty days for substantive resolution

You can also use the contact form and select the closest topic. Related documents: Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Cookie Policy, Disclaimer and DMCA Notice.