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Tom Reviews 13 LCD Displays
n3r0.m4dski11z noted that Tom's Hardware has a review of 13 LCD Displays
for anyone who has been thinking about making the leap from the CRT to that
fancy shmantsy LCD stuff thats all the rage with the kids these days.
As usual, they do a pretty good job explaining the issues. In this
case comparing CRT and LCD technology, as well as covering a ton of
screens.
When a new story is posted at Tom's, it gets front page status here. Shouldn't there be a "daily updates at well known hardware sites" category for those of us who go to those sites anyways? I just don't see what the point behind Slashdot getting cluttered with a "posting notification" for Tom's, Sharky, Anandtech, etc.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
So you wouldn't buy from one of the LCD market/value leaders because they didn't cater to Tom's crew? As far as your feelings on Tom's, I don't know if you'd find industry wide agreement: I personally have seen some bizarro conclusions, and some personal biases and agendas (i.e. like issues like this where he or his crew didn't get a sample in a timely manner and it turns into a personal agenda against whichever company he doesn't like that week). I have little respect for any reviews that rely upon the goodwill of companies either: If Tom's is all that successful that they deserve such props then they should head down to the latest computer store and pick up the monitors (so they're testing actual retail samples rather than picks of the litter), selling them at auction or whatever afterwards to recoup most of the cost. Otherwise they end up in this "love/hate" relationship with OEMs and it seriously affects every review: there is always a colour of bias.
Maybe I'm naive, but I'd say two very relevant qualities of an LCD display, hell any display, are size and resolution.
As far as I can tell, few to none of the "Test Tests" pages provide this information.
The "Conclusion" is actually just a summary of monitor properties with no rankings or opinions gathered presumably from a "review" process. Even then, the summary doesn't include size or resolution.
On the first page, there's no description why these values are not relevant nor significant for the review. Instead, there's three paragraphs regarding why Samsung-France is big and mean for not sending a unit to "review". Not only does that seem like last-page material, it seems unprofessional to even print.
Going back the introductory pages, I did find some references to "only of limited interest for a 15" monitor", and a few other references to "768 pixels". So, after correlating and cross-referencing text from a number of pages in the review, I can make the guess that all the monitors have 15" diagonal with max resolution 1024x768.
Considering the quality of both the review process and the journalism, Samsung was right to not send them a monitor. And, I'm right to resume my practice of never visiting Toms Hardware.
In this case, it is a short-term, long-term thing. By relying on vendor test models, Tom's is entering a dance that it cannot win with its outsider posturing.
So Sansung decides it does not want to be part of a review. So Tom's posts a very unprofessional rant about it. Do you think Samsung is ever going to send Tom review units again?
Now, on the short-term, it makes Samsung look bad. A popular and generally respected Web guide runs a review of products and you are not in it. Tom gets a some baby sucker-punches in. Maybe Samsung loses a couple of sales. Maybe enough to even be a fractional blip on their radar (but not likely). Tom wins short-term.
However, the other participants see this. Eventually, some other big player decides it doesn't want to deal with someone that unprofessional, and refuses to send units. Now Tom has a big hole in its coverage, and its readership will fall off because of it.
If you are going to play the independent news card, you can't be beholden to companies for review units.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37