Tom is a retired journalist and technology analyst in Silicon Valley. Most recently he was a senior technology analyst for The Linley Group and a senior editor of Microprocessor Report, for which he has written more than 500 articles. (TechInsights acquired The Linley Group and MPR in 2021.) In retirement, he joined the MPR Editorial Board and reviews drafts of upcoming articles. He began working for MPR in 1999 but detoured in 2000–2002 to work as a technical analyst and writer for ARC Cores (later ARC International), a British company that designed and licensed configurable microprocessor cores, peripheral IP, development tools, and software for embedded systems. ARC was later acquired by Synopsys.

Tom began his full-time journalism career in 1977 and began covering technology in 1982. Before MPR, he was a senior editor at Byte Magazine for six years. At Byte, Tom wrote nearly 200 articles about microprocessors, Java, thin-client computing, computer reliability, data compression, broadband communications, and other topics.

Before joining Byte, Tom was the editor of several magazines that covered personal computers and electronic games, such as Compute! and Game Player's. In the 1980s, he was the launch editor of five computer magazines and a technology newsletter. In 1984 he created Nessie, the world's first photography videogame. Tom has been a co-author, contributor, or editor of more than 20 books on subjects as varied as computer programming, the Civil War, and mass murder. He wrote a technology column for various computer magazines continuously for nearly 23 years, which may be a world record.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in journalism from Kent State University in 1977, Tom started his career as a daily newspaper reporter. He was introduced to computers when the newspaper switched from manual typewriters to VDTs in the late 1970s, and he bought his first computer in 1981. His hobbies include photography, guitar, and recreational programming on Macs, PCs, and Linux computers. His personal web site is The Electric Brain.