PC Magazine Labs got its start on a beat-up metal desk where we used to disassemble every new piece of hardware that showed up at PC Magazine, if only to see which of the latest and greatest chips and components the manufacturers were using. We did our first network hardware testing in a glorified closet until enlightened Ziff-Davis management gave us the budget to build the first of seven iterations of the labs, complete with dedicated test-bed machines and an energetic staff of experts. Head-to-head reviews became the hallmark of PC Magazine, and they changed the PC industry.

Those resources allowed us to test products like Windows aggressively. We installed Windows 3.0 on at least a dozen machines in PC Magazine Labs and quickly found that we could crash it in a variety of ways. We relayed our findings to Microsoft, who doubted that it was as bad as we claimed. They agreed, however, to send an engineer to the labs. Our welcoming present was half a dozen machines on one bench, each frozen in a different way.

We started the diagnostic program Dr. Watson to show our troubleshooter what had happened. Our findings, along with those of others, helped shape Windows 3.1, which was stable enough (being generous here) to hold the fort until Windows 95 came along. We really weren't sure whether it was more stable or whether we'd just become inured to rebooting. But we knew that DOS apps weren't coming back and that future testing would be in the Windows environment.

In 1993, with input from Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and several software vendors, we developed the Winstone benchmark-test series to evaluate hardware performance. It was also a rigorous workout for software compatibility as the interplay of applications, drivers, and OSs became more complex. With Windows 95, the code base moved to 32 bits, but the OS still had to run all the 16-bit apps that everyone already owned. Sixteen-bit DOS still lurked beneath Win 95, making it prone to memory leaks. Windows NT and OS/2 touted their stability, but people were reluctant to give up their 16-bit apps and DOS utilities and paid a terrible price in crashes and lost work.

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So PC Magazine Labs embarked on a huge project—6,000 hours of testing, running over 5,000 performance tests and over 1,000 compatibility tests—to determine the robustness of 32-bit Windows versus the 16/32-bit hybrid. The tests included intentionally buggy 16- and 32-bit programs, and as you might have guessed, it was no contest. Executive editor Ben Gottesman, then technical director, says, "It was exhaustive and exhausting. It was one of the largest product tests ever done." Ben still treasures a cartoon done by former PC Magazine Labs staffer Jay Munro depicting the staff performing various acts of mayhem as Ben asks for "just one more test."

"Sixteen-bit applications became a bad memory," says technical director Rich Fisco. "It was time to shift our focus again to hardware compatibility, this time in the guise of Windows 98's Plug and Play, which pundits quickly named Plug and Pray. The idea of peripherals that would install their own drivers was, and still is, seductive—and somewhat elusive.

With the advent of Windows XP, PC Magazine Labs is able to put most reliability and stability issues behind us and concentrate on networking, functionality, usability, and the pain of upgrading from Windows 98. "As Vista enters its beta phase," says Gottesman, "we'll be living with it as our day-to-day OS, taking notes, trying all our applications and peripherals, so that when it's finally released, you'll have an authoritative, hands-on report of its capabilities." Bring it on.

Bill Machrone is a contributing editor of PC Magazine and former editor-in-chief of PC Magazine Labs.