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Hardware Reviews Online
A reader writes "The Tech Report has an article up discussing a new hardware site. What makes this one special? Well, to paraphrase Die Hard, Ziff-Davis has the "How to build a hardware site" playbook, and they're running it step by step. According to sources cited in the article, this is an ominous development for the future of objective hardware reviews online."
Thanks for pointing out this huge news, this should really be on the cover of the New York Times tomorrow. The fact that it won't proves that the government is run by an evil Microsoft conspiracy.
Ziff-Davis started a hardware site?? And the site is worth reading?? HOW DARE THEY!! This is unfair, someone call the DOJ. Just think about all the poor independant hardware reviewers who will be put out of business. Tom Papst will have to go on welfare and you'll probably see Anand out giving blow jobs on the street tomorrow. Everyone should email their congressman and demand that Ziff-Davis be split into three companies right away before they become the next Microsoft.
... of the "enthusiast" hardware sites' HTML 'skillz'. You know, the 8-deep nested tables filled with 1-pixel transparent GIFs, rounded corners on sidebar titles (a la Slashdot), and the whole slow-loading mess surrounded by one big-ass <TABLE>, all kept from our eager eyes by the slow-ass banner ad server.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I took a look at the Extreme Tech site, and was left a bit confused. How am I supposed to vote in an online poll if I can't vote for CowboyNeal?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This is just paranoia. I work for a large publishing company, CMP Media. I am a technical writer on staff for Network Computing. We are a pretty good-sized publishing company. Do you people REALLY think that because we have been sucessful we cannot be objective. Does Slashdot's association with VALINUX tilt their coverage? I don't think so. It is the same for print publications.
In my job I have zero contact with our sales area. There is a deliberate separation between sales and editorial. We in editorial like it that way. You would be amazed at how much editorial control we writers really have. There is no "corporate censor" or anything else like that. We have never altered or prevented an article from running in the publication in the interest of advertising. Period.
Small independent hardware sites are actually more vulnerable to advertising and "free gift" pressures. Don't get me wrong, I love most of the indy sites. I have been reading Toms Hardware, AnandTech, and Ars for years. But most of these sites have been started out of the goodness of someone's heart, not out of the deepness of their pocketbook. If my publishing company loses an advertising account, I don't even know about it. If any indy loses advertising, it hits him right in the pocket book.
I will admit that there are some dodgy publications out there. There are some dodgy indy sites too. Those of us who do this kind of technical writing for a large corporation are honest. When I write, I write for our reader. Please understand that the majority of technology journalists, big or small, are honest guys, doing their best. The paranoia shown by some here is simply unjustified.
Steven J. Schuchart Jr.
But the average user or corporate drone will as easily swollow the tripe that the tech firms' marketing people spew as a "fake" independent hardware site. If they really care, they ask a techie, who will tell them what is good and what isn't.
Hardware sites don't exist in a vacuum. The ones I refer to, I not only trust because of the quality of their content, but because of a long term trust they have built up by providing accurate information. If a new site has a lot info flies in the face of my experience, or the experience of people I know, or a widely held consensus among both hardware sites and other computer geeks on the internet, it will lose reputation, and I will likely never trust it again.
As for people who don't have the wide range of experience I and others do, try to do internet research on their own, yet are unable to tell the difference between glitter and content... Fuck 'em. They should learn to read through bullshit,
or ask someone for help.
An interesting tangent: It would be fun and interesting to study trust relationships on the internet. In the "traditional media", credibility is a function of money. The barriers to entry are high--it isn't cheap to run a newspaper or a TV station--and people assume that anyone putting that kind of money into something is credible. On the interent, anyone can put up a website with glitz and glamour, and it seems that credibility must be earned over time. This probably contributed to the failure of many dot coms that tried to go for the "big internet debut" approach.
\editoral : They must be hurting for cash, their magazines suck for the most part because they are all adds and microsoft praise -- and their internet site is ... stupid ... infact they really haven't been good since, they fired Penn Jillete in like 1995!
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Big media outfits are congenitally incapable of doing anything in a small way, which means that although sites like ExtremeTech are sure to make a lot more money than sites like, say, mine (Dan's Data), they're going to have to spend a lot more for every dollar they make, and may not manage to break even. Not that I've seen their business plan, or anything. It just seems to be the way to bet.
This could be a good moment for me to plug my own piece on the subject, which was a column I wrote for AustralianIT.com.au (a Murdoch property; big media organisations don't come much bigger than News Limited...), after they told me that I and a large percentage of the rest of the Australian News Interactive staff were getting the sack. For some reason, they didn't want to publish it, so I published it myself :-).
The Register's piece on ExtremeTech says the new site has a staff of 30. If that's accurate, then they've got themselves a big fat tab to cover just for salaries, let alone all of the multiplicitous overheads that big media organisations can't avoid.
Dan's Data, on the other hand, has a staff of one and premises which also contain my bed (I know it's behind all of those motherboard boxes, somewhere). I'll betcha ten bucks I'll still be reviewing Flash memory gadgets, CPU coolers, really expensive video cameras and LED flashlights when ExtremeTech's, um, refocussed its core paradigm into, er, a more reprinting-Ziff-stuff-we-can-get-for-free, uh, dynamic.
Let's face it..the indy HW sites rely upon vendors providing them with samples of their goods to play with, benchmark, and generally drool over (as geeks tend to do with any new hardware). Sometimes, yes, you do see examples of an indy site getting pressured by a big name vendor to do a good review (was Nvidia the latest culprit? Can't remember...), but by and large, they are no better than a large network like CNet or ZDNet
:)
:)
The simple fact of the matter is that the best so-called "indy" sites have an incestous and recursive relationship with the vendors, which goes like this:
1) review cool hardware, get lots of readers
2) get lots of readers, get more cool hardware for free to review
3) get lots of banner revenue
4) goto (2)
I still find the best way to evaluate new hardware is to:
1) wait at least 4 weeks before making your purchase
2) read the "indy" sites
3) check the newsgroups and see what the pioneers with the arrows in their backs have to say
4) weed out the idiots on the newsgroups who couldn't get new hardware to work to save their lives
5) start looking for the best prices
6) never buy any hardware until the second driver revision.
www.overclockers.com also has the here. In it they talk about how this will effect "homegrown" computer websites. They also compare computer magazines to computer websites.
A review site that might not be as objective and unbiased as /.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
OK, how stupid do you have to be to go out trust hardware reviews you get on a website that on the next page offers to sell you that hardware?
/. reader would confuse AnandTech with Extreme Tech.
The disturbing thing is there are an inordinate number of users who would do just that. See how convenient the web is? I can learn about the best hardware and buy it on the same page! Oh, Boy! Wait a minute, this would never fly outside the online world. Go to a computer store and ask the sales 'consultant' what to buy, then he hands it to you and you fork over the green. There's an idea. Oh, and while you're at it, you might as well bend over and grab your ankles.
Think for a moment how rediculous the above is, to the enthusiast comunity. No one would fall for this. It's merely the evolution of advertising. These new sites aren't geared tward technically astute people (read Geeks). They're grared tward the slightly more knowlegable general user, he who thinks he is aware of events within the industry and developments in technology. This is a logical progression. C|Net content was always geared tward the entry level user, the lowest common denominator. Their aquisition of ZDNet allows them to cater to a slightly (vary slightly) more sophistocated crowd, and now the introduction of these enthusiast-site look-alikes is simply a means to capture former ZDNet readers who fancy themselves morer astute than to continue teading ZD publications, probably anticipating their being dumbed down (even further) by CNet editors.
Just as television advertising has become more sophistocated over the past two decades, online marketing has become infinately more sophistovated in the past half decade. The issue online though, is users will 'graduate' from one calibre of publication to another vary quickly and to keep users in the CNet network of content sites, they aquired ZDNet as the next logical progression and are now pushing another class of site to fit in between ZDNet and the true techie sites like Toms Hardware and AnandTech.
CNet is out to expand their audience. They'll try to a more technically astute readership over time, but online publication is a reputation game. They'll pick up a few users here and there, but no self respecting
--CTH
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You know, I would compare this to the competition between Wal-mart and small mom-and-pop retailers. Mom and Pop sure are swell, and you like how friendly they are to you, but still, that *mart sure has low prices and a wide selection. They are providing a service that you distrust, because they're a big corporation, but goshdarn if they don't do a good job of it. So you, and everyone else in town, switches, and mom and pop close. They are victims of capitalism...they couldn't compete with a big company, because the big company benefited the consumer. Still, if people are willing to serve their communities, they may support the local store, which will, admittedly make smaller profits. For those of you with AOL CDs instead of brains, (they must go somewhere) ZDnet planning to behave just like Walmart. They will try to *oh no* provide better service then the enthusiast run hardware sites. If they can manage, then I don't understand the beef. Tough shit Sharky. On the other hand, if they don't succeed (which I suspect will be the case) then they shall fall victim to corporate darwinism, and suffer an agonizing death by wall-street. However, if they succeed, like C-Net, then Everyboddy but Sharky and Tom win. CNet may not have the best reviews, but the mini hardware BBSs and price comparers are pretty damn useful. So what if they're a corporation, they help me.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.