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On the Integrity of Hardware Review Sites
leathered writes "Charlie Demerjian of The Inquirer has posted an interesting article on the integrity of hardware review sites. Apparently the benefits of running such a site go far beyond advertising revenue with a fair amount of 'sweeteners' from the hardware manufacturers to say the least. All is not lost as Charlie informs us that there are a small number are flying the flag for trustworthy reviews, but the question of which sites we can trust remains." I like Daniel Rutter's (of Dan's Data) policy best.
I don't trust anybody. I'll read multiple reviews and, if available, end-user experiences as well before making a serious buy decision.
:)
But, then again, how do you know I'm not just making this up?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Tom's Hardware
I'm not so worried about the integrity of hardware sites so much as software. But they fall under the same categories. Those that shill and whore themselves out the most get the most goodies and are loved by companies. Those that are hard on product and serious with reviews tend to be ignored. As in, just not taken seriously. The entire press outlet/developer relationship is as corrupt as 1930's Manhattan. Integrity is not a word that should be used anywhere near it. At least hardware sites SEEM to be giving real benchmarks.
schild
editor, f13.net
It seems like I remember Anand buying himself a Porsche for his 16th or 18th birthday, using the payola from his hardware review site.
While his business acumen is to be commended, I can imagine it would be difficult to remain 100% objective under such circumstances.
http://www.anandtech.com
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The [H]ardOCP review made clear that dual core chips were weak for gaming. Any idea which sites he's fingering?
It's nearly impossible to not have a somewhat jaded approach to reviewing hardware it seems.
To be fair, you'd have to send your test product to a slice of the population, not to a few greedy people.
Of course, my 80 year old grandma cares nothing about SLI....
Well, not really but wouldn't it be ironic if they did?
I consider Scott Wasson's Tech Report to be one of the best "independent" review sites around.
On multitasking and multithreaded apps, they will shine like the sun, but how many of these are there? How many times do you encode a movie while typing a document, zipping your C drive, doing some heavy CFD work all while listening to a few MP3s?
Correct me if im wrong but isn't multithreading/multitasking pretty damn important considering all the background tasks/services that are needed just to keep an OS running?
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
After reading the article, I must admit that it does make sense. However, there is a self-preservation outlook that can explain the same phenomena. Hardware review sites want the latest and greatest toys as quickly as possible. If my hardware review site publishes an article that doe not look faovrably upon Company X's latest high end product, how likely is Company X to send me their next greatest product as quickly? Granted, it shouldn't happen this way, but Company X is in business to make a profit. They don't want bad PR and they want as many people to buy their most profitable items as possible. My hardware review site wants to stay in business. It wants to make a profit, and to do so, I have to act in a certain way. I have to ensure that I have a product to sell. It isn't fun and it isn't nice, but that's business.
...most of the reviews I've read did show game performance of the dual core Pentiums. Maybe I just don't read the wicked sites he talks about. Only one review (amazingly enough, I think it was theregister.co.uk) raved about how great it was to encode video while playing Doom3...
The one site I like, though the reviews are few and far between, is Ars.Technica. Only reason, is because they BUY THEIR OWN HARDWARE :)
:)
Anybody have any sites that they feel are bad or good (with respect to this article)? Please list a few reasons too, few examples if you can -- it makes it nice to see if these points are driven home over time by reading the reviews on different sites
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I look for the support forums and known issues for guidance
And what a staple of hardware journalism can we give ourselves the honor of reading? Oh wait, nevermind, another Inq article on a slow news day.
Perhaps there should be a system for all of these sites to verify each other's data. For example, if more than one site benchmarks the same hardware they could combine their scores for a more accurate average? As far as the written portion, it's all opinion so you can never have a truely "valid" review there...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
you heard me, where is my car? almost 7 years of this and i still have not gotten a car.
why couldn't have charlie posted this before the amd editors day so we could talk about it there? damn you charlie, and your little rob too! watch out at e3!
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
These are accusations of bribery and conflict(s) of interest against unspecified hardware review sites. Without naming the organization(s) and specific instances of bribery, with resulting proof, this is just irresponsible hand waving. Journalists are supposed to print facts. It's important to realize the distinction between whether bribery is taking place (possibly so), and whether this article in question backs up the assertion of bribery with documentation and quotable sources on the record. It does not. IMO: This article does NOT deserve this level of publicity, nor did it deserve publication. --M
We (voodoo networks) are in the process of starting up a review site for backend systems for server rooms, closets, etc. The reasons that drove us to do this are simple - it's almost impossible to find objective reviews of non-consumer gear, and when we do find them they are pretty much copies of manufacturers flyers.
The odd thing so far has been the reaction (or lack thereof) from manufacturers. I've lost track of the number of PR reps I've spoken with who asked my how much a listing or review cost. Most where surprised when I told them that serverroomstuff.com won't be charging for reviews - they are objective.
We are planning on accepting advertising, but the plan for that is simple - your ad dollars won't buy you a good review if your product doesn't stand up to it's claims, period.
Without this hardware you have to buy your hardware yourself. Not only is this expensive, but by the time your review is out the ad value of your review of bleeding edge hardware is kaput. Unfortunately, these are the ones that do the most honest and best reviews. Pre-release hardware is often picked out from a large selection to make sure that the review site gets a good "sample". These reviews are also the least profitable for the review sites to do. It's a nasty catch 22.
epinions.com remains a good across-the-board review site, not just for hardware. good detailed specs appear next to user writeups. plus you can make money by writing reviews, which i have done.
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com
We accept no advertising, and buy any products we test on the open market. We are not beholden to any commercial interest.
I'm sorry, some guy who writes reviews, even ostensibly fair ones, in exchange for free product can't stand up to this.
sulli
RTFJ.
But, then again, how do you know I'm not just making this up?
..because you were moded up?
you have the support of your peers, I trust you. what do you want me to buy?
Starsucks
They are getting sent this hardware, for free, and you expect them to be totally objective?
I don't know about you guys, but if I ran a busy hardware review site and had the latest and greatest pouring in monthly, why would I write a bad review about a company who is showering me with 'gifts'?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
"Single threaded gaming performance is, as we mentioned in the first article, no different than the single core Pentium 4 of the same clock speed. And as we know from all of our previous comparisons, the Athlon 64 is the clear choice for single threaded gaming performance." http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2389&p=6
Tristan Yates
are Tech Report and the OCP. It's a comfort to me every time these site get crosswise with the companies whose products they review.
What good is reading multiple reviews if they're all crap? What good are end-user experiences posted on the net, if companies are posting fake reviews, which they are?
News flash- even if they're not getting "payola" (let's call it what it is- bribe money/gear), they're controlled quite effectively by hardware companies because everyone wants to be the first site with a review of Hot Product X to drive hits to their site to earn advertising revenue. Write something bad about a product, and that company will drop you to the bottom of the list.
Let's not forget that most of these guys litter their sites with advertisements for the very product they are reviewing, too. Bob's Extreme Hardware isn't going to be very happy if young Johnny says the PC case Bob just stocked is crap- and he's going to tell young Johhny that.
Why is any of this a surprise to any reasonably intelligent individual?
Please help metamoderate.
thats right, BALL! one testicle for the whiner, who can't even NAME any sites or publications! this crap isnt journalism... well, i guess you might call it livejournalism cos like OMG w00t wtf present a completely unsubstantiated case.
I don't trust anybody.
I hope that includes Charlie Demerjian. This jumped out at me:
"here is the truth, if you are going to multitask and do and do anything that tasks both of the CPUs, one of those is going to be a game."
Bullshit. This drives me crazy on hardware sites, this supposition that the only reason anyone could ever want high performance in their PC is to play games.
At home, I use Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash, I run Windows Media Center for SDTV and DVD viewing, I do video encoding using various tools (Windows Media Encoder, Dr. Divx, and others). I often do all these things at the same time on the same PC, with a hacked version of Media Center that lets me log in remotely at the same time another account has the TV going.
I studiously avoid playing games on this system, because I'm asking it to do quite enough already - I've got another system that I play games on. But I would love a dual-core CPU for this thing, as it would help me out a lot.
Graphics professionals, photographers, multimedia content producers and other high-end users are, surprise surprise, a real market, and they spend even more money than gamers do. I don't see why that's so hard to grasp. I read the specific preview of Intel's dual-core CPU's that Charlie's talking about in his comment up there and I actually found it a refreshing change to find some real-world benchmarks that were not strictly based on playing Doom 3.
That said, I'm sure there is payola going on in the industry. But I worry more about the small sites that seem to give positive reviews to every single component they get sent for free than I do about sites that realize non-gamers are a legitimate group of users that require their own set of benchmarks.
well.. the scores don't mean anything. seriously, they don't.
the real problem with these hardware sites is that the writers are often clueless about the actual hardware and what it does - and make sometimes claims that are not even physically possible. trusting such guys to review something that supposedly does something is no good when they lack the knoweledge to make the decision if the product even works as advertised or not. a lot of the 'reviews' are just a "thank you for free hardware" pieces that are basically referates of the products description followed by a thumbs up icon(or whatever the particular site uses for 'editors choice' that every product they review happens to get).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
More accurate than what? The mean? No, wait... doesn't work. I know! More accurate than the ones that aren't very accurate!
Words bad! Numbers good! Except some of the numbers! Thog take average, find good numbers.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
OK, so is it fair to assume that some users posting book reviews are actually either:
/. and post a good review of my book. Or if I was the publisher, I could just as well write bad reviews about my competitor's books.
(a) publisher/authors themselves or
(b) normal slashdot users paid by the publisher to write a good review.
This brings up a lot of questions. How can you trust a review written by a so called user. If I'd ever wrote a book I could easily register at
Instead a better review system (for anything) would be that reviews are done by a small group of site admins or mods and after they are posted users would rate the product and give comments about the product while other users would rate their comments.
Add one vote per IP, no proxy's, set cookies,... to this and you have a pretty much reliable review.
Ok, so you'll get sued and shut out for mentioning the bad sites, if you can't tell us who the bad sites are then at least mention the good sites.
Also this doesn't surprise me at all, any media source as big as review sites will come under PR pressure, all other media has gotten through it, as should online media.
when was the last time you actually bought something because of great reviews... and it totally sucked? most products at their respective price points these days are fairly competitive with each other and if you do even a little bit of research, you should be fairly satisfied with your purchases. i think although many of the reviews are biased in some way or another, crappy products and good produtcs tend to seperate themselves on their own fairly quickly. if a product just straight out sucks, no review can save it.
Where does Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows stand? He's not really hardware, but the guy HAS to be paid.
I mean he said Windows is easier to "use" than Mac OS X. Now if by use he means crash then by god he's right! He also predicted that BuyMusic.com would kill iTMS. These are only a few of the wonderful words of wisdom that come out of his mouth.
Either he's bought or he is completely bat-sh*t nuts. My vote is for both. Anyone know the truth?
His only criticisms of the review are that it was an exclusive (which the article makes clear) and that it doesn't cover gaming (although it is only the first part of the review). He himself admits that gaming is not the point of these chips, so why does he feel that Anandtech should have to focus on gaming is the first part of their article? Indeed, in their second part they do cover gaming and conclude that you should buy an Athlon 64 if you mainly play single-threaded games, a fact that would be obvious to anyone who regularly reads any hardware site.
I can't claim that the hardware review sites are all without bias, but compared to mainstream news, hardware reviews are some of the hardest to bias given the ease of doing standardised, repeatable benchmarks.
Most software and hardware reviews go out of their way to find SOMETHING good about a product. For example, a reviewer might complain about poor drivers but then point out that "new ones are on the way."
If I'm in doubt about something, I'll read reviews from actual people, e.g., at newegg. When someone gets screwed over a product, they aren't going to gloss over the problems. They are going to tell us as bluntly as possible.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Back in '99 or 2000 when I cared about this stuff, I always knew that Tomshardware.com would have fair video card comparisons... after all there was that 500x500 nVidia ad right in the middle of the page!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You're absolutely right. Most people actualy try to avoid intensive multitasking is when running games, so that the game can get maximum performance. What kind of moron is going to encode a video while running HL2?
And anyways, as many of the reviews pointed out, since games aren't well multithreaded the dual core chips will perform identically to equivalently clocked single core chips. So we already know what the performance will be, so why rehash what we already know?
Demerjian is a clown.
viperlair did a good write up on what i like to call hardware review site payola a while back.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
"...a lot of the 'reviews' are just a "thank you for free hardware" pieces..."
;)
Hmm...that's funny. I used to work for a review site and we always had to return the hardware after we reviewed it. Now software, that's a whole other story
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Read all the reviews. Went out of my way to find new hardware tech sites for more reviews. Was my first computer. Decided to do it right from the beginning. So I read all the reviews, and the glowing reviews on the IBM GXP hard drives were enough to convince me to go with them. Bought two. Used second to backup the first drive.
Disaster strikes, times two. First drive fails with the infamous screech of death. Shut system down, try to figure out what to do, read online, buy third drive, plug in, start up, start to backup data from backup drive, lightening strikes twice. Lost years of work previously migrated from older systems.
My experience with trying to RMA the drives (just a few months old) was so bad that I made it my mission to ensure that no other newbies or small business owners or individuals went through what I did. Or do my best trying. So what did I do?
It became apparent in the weeks and months that followed that IBM GXP drives were so bad that they were failing by the hundreds at hosting providers, that many others were having such problems that many stories and threads were started on some hardware tech sites, and that even a class action lawsuit was started over them.
So I started contacting hardware tech sites that were still glowing about the GXP drives, and asked them to revise their review or remove the review. Some didn't answer (CNet). One or two less famous sites actually removed a review, or added a disclaimer, maybe because I wrote or because there was simply too much bad press to ignore. Some other sites were using the drives in their computers for testing other hardware. And listing the GXP drives when describing what hardware they used to test. I saw this as an endorsement, so I asked them to stop using the GXP drives, explaining my position and providing links about the stories on the hard drives. Some site owners ignored me *cough* Tom's Hardware *cough* and continued using the drives even after repeated email requests that they don't, one actually emailed back that those were the drives he bought and couldn't afford to replace them, and others soon after stopped using the drives and switched to others as far as I could tell. Some sites (one that I recall, forget the name, haven't heard about it since then) actually featured the GXP drives on the top left of their front page, as a great drive (banner link to a review page), many months after the bad news on the drives came out and after the class action lawsuit announcement made it on slashdot (and after the news on the hosting provider losing hundreds of the drives). That site didn't even bother answering my emails about how wrong it was for them to push the drive in light of all the problems about the drives that everyone was shouting about.
That little episode was enlightening as to who I could trust with advice on purchasing decisions and who to avoid. Now, some 4 years later? Who can really be trusted for accurate reviews? Buyer beware, and spread the risk. Especially on hard drives, use raid, backup to optical media and buy more than one brand of drive and buy drives from more than one source. And then cross your fingers and pray.
I just meant that numbers are the only thing that can be "validated." Opinions are numerous and can not be validated, and no...the majority is NOT always right.
;)
*This wasn't really directed at the parent b/c I think he probably gets it
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
this supposition that the only reason anyone could ever want high performance in their PC is to play games.
Agreed.
I don't play computer games, I don't even *own* any. None of my systems have ever had a game installed on them (yes, this includes solitare). All of my systems are used for work, and non-work related research. Yet, over half of my systems are dual-cpu. I multi-task, a lot. I often have graphics filters chewing away, or CDs burning, while I'm doing something else. On my servers, I want to know that if I need to compile something, archive something or do some other processor-intensive task, that there's enough processor power left to continue with the server's normal tasks.
I read reviews, but they account for less than 20% of the weight I give to my purchasing decisions. The only reviews I will pay close attention to are the *bad* reviews. They're so rare that one has to believe the product must have been truly hideous.
I just think it's funny that a guy who calls attention to his game collection in his sig is whining about people assuming he only uses his computer for gaming.
Graphics professionals are indeed a market, but professionals of any stripe generally use the hardware their company procures for them for that profession (I know I do). The gaming machine is the one you build yourself from parts. The gaming bias of the review sites makes a lot of sense in that respect.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Your concept of a 'meta review' site accepts the null hypothesis that an unbiased review is possible.
It's all good, until you mix in the people...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Having written a few reviews for www.overclockers.com myself, I have looked into this and found a few things, while reading other reviews.
Reviews tend to fall into a few catagories.
Bribed: The supplier has give something to the review as incentive for a good review. This is the supplier doing the dirty deed, the reviewer just goes along with it because they are profiting.
Greedy: The reviewer hands out praise and awards like candy, to keep the goods flowing. The reviewer is just keeps pumping out favourable reviews, to keep getting products for the review to play with or sell. This is the reviewer doing the dirty deed and the supplier just goes along with it, because its good PR.
Incompetance: Some reviewers just suck. They simply dont know how to get the numbers right, or their testing done properly. I just call them idiots.
Lastly and most rare, is the competant, unbiased reviewer. They know what they are doing and dont pull any BS.
I find www.overclockers.com and www.procooling.com to be good, www.xtremeresources.com and www.anandtech.com are also pretty good.
HardOCP is ok.
www.madshrimps.de and Toms Hardware both suck.
I read a lot of review sites...which usually has a forum attached to it. I try to read as much as I can on a given product plus the forum replies plus other places on the net.
Through all the data that I read, my brain forms an opinion and I weed out the bullshit and the hyperbole to find the heart of the matter. It usually works most of the time too.
Your bullshit detector has to be in good shape and you have to know how to weed out the crap before you get down to the nitty-gritty.
But if you're naive about the net and you go online maybe once a month...then you're a raw piece of meat in a pool full of sharks.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Looking for Home theatre speakers? (I was) 160 people voting 4.5 out of 5 is better than 3 people giving a perfect 5. Looking for a cellphone? (I was) 0 noka6820sucks.com type websites is better than a half-dozen MotoV600Bites.com Buying a Camera? The user opinions that sound like they've used it should count more than the ones that said 'I bought 'competing product' because this camera didn't have blue LEDs A particular revew site's integrity will stand out against the rest of the other reviews. Beware when Gamersite X is giving a game a 98% when everybody else is giving it a 45%.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I don't understand that comment at all. I mean, everything is multitasked under Mac OS X. Each thread is scheduled and run separately on the first CPU available. And threads are executing all the time, from checking mail to doing disk I/O to whatever. Your computer is never just sitting there totally, 100% idle, unless you're in single-user mode, I guess. No matter what you're doing, adding another CPU will always cut down on context switches and shorten the run queue.
Is it really that different under Windows?
...is to find a components and systems supplier you like, and see what they build their systems from. Admittadely, you're more likely to get stable components than blisteringly fast/overclockable, but that's fine for me. So far I've had very good experiences with pretty much duplicating the systems I've seen offered for sale (generally changing only a few components to versions I prefer).
Consumer Reports writes goods reviews, but the ratings are usually misleading and biased towards certain manufacturers.
A Toyota/Honda review will be like "Interior uncomfortable & cheap, car priced 25% over rivals, underpowered & rides rough. Score:9/10"
A Nissan/Ford/Mercedes review will be like "Acceptable ride, good exterior design, comforable interior, spirited engine. Score:4/10"
I've found their appliance ratings very fair though.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Three years or so ago, a friend of mine started a Mac hardware review site. Less than a year later, he was getting more than one new product in the mail from various companies every week. One might make the quick assumption that he was just whoring himself for free hardware.
Not true. He wrote honest reviews (not to mention he was a good writter, which helped), which ment his credibility and popularity went up. He did no advertising but gets a lot of traffic because of this. And companies know this, so they send him this stuff. Sure, he's said "Hey, this product is crap" and that company has had to take a hit. But then a month later that same co will send another product, and if it's good, he'll say so and they'll make sales. He has no advertising on his site, either.
So while being a hardware whore will get you some stuff (Probably crappy stuff too), being honest will help you in the long run because companies know when sites will say anything and most reputable companies avoid them.
Never trust an account that doesn't list problems.
Never trust a rant that doesn't list plusses.
If you can only get one or the other, read both and do some synthesis.
If you blindly trust ANYTHING you read, you're a moron, pure and simple. I have a journalism degree and I can't bear reading my community newspaper, so obviously chock full of glossed press releases.
Oh, and didn't you hear about movie studios that use fake movie reviewers? Or the Whitehouse with the fake reporter with softball questions? or the corporate and government pre-fab video news releases that get broadcast on TV as real news items, often re-voiced by a local journo?
Come on kids! A good PR person WRITES the story in a compelling way, good enough for a journo to re-hack it gently and fill the pages/keep the needle moving on the VU.
Journalism is about selling ads, not spreading truth.
You mean the media can be bought?!? I feel like I'm taking CRAZY PILLS!!
I think someone is a little angry about a company policy which forbids signing NDA's and resulted in him not getting a shiny new dual core cpu handout, resulting in decrying review sites who do agree to this as lacking moral fiber. From the reviews I've seen linked here, I don't think the few bad apples he's referring to have been on slashdot. Though if you want someone to write PR and call it a review, I'm sure they exist, and are utilized to get reviews. Its no different than movies reviews quoted on the box of a movie.
Indeed, you did not understand one single character of the post you replied to. So why did you even bother?
When I went to Dan's homepage and clicked on one of the reviews, my antivirus program has informed me that there was a malware Javascript virus that tried to be executed. That certainly means that I am not going to his website ever again.
As for the main article, I am surprised how badly it is written. Poor language use and overall structure.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
You are simply a minority - many surveys have been compiled and almost all find a very high percentages of PC users play games regularly (somewhere in the 80% region usually). Whether that be MS Hearts.. or Doom.. So the suggestion that games should be tested is quite valid, since thats what a high majority of PC users do. It would be odd _not_ to include games in _performance_ testing too - since games are most often the at the leading edge of PC performance boundaries.
.. that would buy you 40+ games.. hence the reason why again you are in a minority of users not a majority. Remember these are performance tests too.. and most other applications have amuch slower turnover and release rate.. and thus rarely catering for 'bleeding edge' hardware.. usually catering for stability and wider platform usage (broad range of performing machines.)
It matter little that you spend more money - your products are also much more expensive. 3DSMax for example 4K +
Depends on where you get your "end-user experiences" from. There are many marketing companies that sell "internet marketing plans" to their customers, complete with fake-or-sponsored "fansites" (particularly true in the video gaming industry, I heard), positive posts about products in random forums / newsgroups, etc...
I personally believe Apple used this tactic here on slashdot. Some time ago (I'd say 2003-2004), lots and lots and lots of posters started raving about how the Powerbook was teh l33t machine, how OS X rocked, how they had bought a Mac or were about to do so, how it was rock solid, etc... While most of these posts are probably authentic (I am myself the happy owner of a powerbook), the sudden avalanche of rave reviews just seemed too awkward, particularly on a website whose readership comprises mostly of linux users and X86 tinkerers.
It would be interesting to run some stats on Slashdot posts: number of times the term "Powerbook" is used in discussions for instance, range of originating IPs, number of posters, etc...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
The first time I noticed a company that made it very clear in their writting that they where bought out was Ziff-Davis. There where reviews that contained sentences which where identical to the advertizment placed in the same magazine. And it is very telling when a product has been shown to perform poorly in accomplishing any of it's marketted features gets a review of "we would have liked to seen more." Of course you would have liked to seen more! Why not just come straight out and say the product sucked donkey !$#@.
Well, I got the chance to talk to someone who had worked for Z-D about this once. The excuse he game me was that ZD is over-rated on it's influce of the industry. According to him, the people that buy ZD are the same people that pick out the product that comes in the shinniest box at Best Buy.
A new jumpsuit. That fish patterned thing is horrible.
Not an early adopter are ya?
Wouldn't it stand to reason that you get brand new hardware from all of the companies that you review? So if all the competitors are giving you free hardware, what's the incentive to give one a better review than another?
www.joshferguson.org
Free reviews. No such thing. Someone has got to pay. If you aren't paying for a subscription to Consumer reports or other "independent, you paid for it service", than advertising, free gadgets, and first scoop Rights, will gladly fund your opinion for you.
He's just writing to his audience -- mostly gamers.
That's what good writers do, y'know.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of review sites...
Just my two cents..
jason
-----------------
Managed Hosting
http://www.blackmesh.com
Managed Hosting
And it is not just the hardware sites that are guilty, the entire body of supposed computer journalist are questionable in my book. From Dvorak and his (now incoherent) ramblings to Bob Cringeley and his imaginary industry insider information to Cnet an their long history of "pay for play" reviews, the whole business is a mess. Even consumer opinion sites are questionable as we now know many sites remove unfavorable reviews for certain products (how many bad reviews have you ever read at Newegg??) or allow authors and publishers to hide behind user names (Amazon).
How many sites and print rags came out and called the Mac mini what it really is (a slow and slightly over-priced home computer)? Hardly any were honest, and most sites ran with the "fast enough for most task" excuse, but these are the same sites/magazines/newspapers who shred the Celeron for only being "fast enough for most task" when in most cases the current crop of Celeron Ds are faster at those basic task than the G4. Is this not clearly bias? If it's not being paid for then it is, at the very least, a type of advocacy that does not belong in tech journalism.
The same comparison can be made when Linux distros are reviewed, Windows vs. Linux articles, etc... As long as web reports and tech journalist in general dabble in "Anything But Microsoft" advocacy the industry will continue to ignore them, and in many cases rightfully so. The only way web journalism will be taken seriously is if it embraces a higher standard.
On a side note - I assume also, then, that there is a way to hack XP Pro to let you have someone physically in front of the computer logged in, and someone else remote desktoped in?
Where would I find out how to do this?
Inconceivable!
...and you can't spell "you're"!
Perhaps there should be a system for all of these sites to verify each other's data. For example, if more than one site benchmarks the same hardware they could combine their scores for a more accurate average?
Average it out? Still sounds open to abuse to me.
More interestingly, this sounds oddly reminiscent of the Computer Science (as opposed to IT) involved in creating distributed systems; if n of m sites give crooked scores, how can we be sure of getting accurate scores? What is the largest value of n where we can still be sure of getting accurate scores? Can we use the data from more than one review to accurately determine which sites are crooked?
Of course, reviews and scores don't really work with discrete values; which then makes it feel like some statistics (and a degree of uncertainty) might be involved in the solution as well.
But statistics is nowhere near as interesting as theoretical computer science, and I'm crap at both, so that scuppers that idea...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
They weight reliability and depreciation quite high in their rankings, and the reality is that the guy who buys a Toyota/Honda will, on average, have far fewer problems and will recoup a lot of his initial expense than the guy with a Ford for instance.
In any case their top ranked small car for a while has been the Ford Focus. Is it possible that you were a little jaded that they didn't pick your pet car/minivan as the best?
I run a test facility, and there's a good chance you're read my reviews in major print and online sources. Never has anyone offered me a stack of $100s, or anything close. I'd be on my butt or in a serious scandal if I did take the $$.
That said, I know that benchmarks are like statistics, and they're easily tinkered with to produce unrealistic results. We take great pains to never either 1) tinker with defaults or 2) tweak benchmarks. We let the cards and results fall where they will. To do tinker with them is just old-fashioned wrong. No one benchmark or five benchmarks truly describes hardware. But we flat refuse to use games as a benchmark for production hardware.
Maybe some sites get bribed. Hasn't happened to us. It might, and if it does, I'm happy to eternally boycott the vendor for as long as I write. Vendors can buy me dinner if they'd like, but I'm equally happy to give my observations about their stuff regardless if they do or not. And so, I don't get invited out that much-- except by the comparison winners.
As other posters have said-- read as many different opinions of a product as you can. Don't settle on anything with just one review, unless you're sure of the bias of the testers. We all have them. If they're your bias, run with it. If not, understand their context so that you can learn from what they do. Very damn few of them lie, and most of them get paid rocks for a tough job.
If Dan Rutter were vastly, independently wealthy, he might also have the "he buys on open market policy," and that might be a good thing.
... at least partially. Not that there's anything wrong with enjoying Bose speakers' sound. My tin ear lets me do just that! But compared to high-end (not necessarily all that expensive) speakers, I know the Bose generally sound far less realistic. They're still cool tech, and I like my Bose-alike Cambridge Soundworks / Kloss Model 88 radio which is similar in operation.
However, I have two problems with C.S. reviews:
1) (Not their fault, just reality), they can't review everything. Sites like Dan's data (a personal favorite, though there are obviously jillions of home-brewed hardware review and gadgetry sites) *also* can't review everything, but they tell me about fringy products, unusual products, things which aren't even on the general market in the U.S. (but might be accessable through eBay, etc.).
Consumer Reports, perfectly fine for that they are and do, concentrates on "normal" products; in a few fields they really do seem to test as much of the range as I'm familiar with (I don't know if they review outrageous things, like high-end, low-production sports cars, but I assume not, based on their buying policy), but computer hardware *of interest to me* is often outside the mainstream interest. I could be wrong, but (like expensive sports cars) I doubt that they've reviewed Kinesis ergonomic keyboards, for instance. Maybe that example's wrong in particular, but a google search on "ergonomic input devices" will find a lot of things that C.S. for entirely practical reasons has not reviewed.
2) C.R. reports vary greatly in quality (this does not make them better than typical computer hardware review sites -- those *also* vary greatly in quality). I like their comparison charts for, say, looking at a matrix of digital cameras in order to say "So, which of these has high enough (for me) resolution, large enough (for me) zoom, and takes AA batteries?" But the actual ratings, as others have pointed out, sometimes don't seem to match either their own findings, or to line up with widespread and contrary opinions. (Easy example there is audio equipment, where they rate products based on extremely superficial specs; I've got a tin ear, so I'm the wrong person with whom to argue about all the specifics, but this is one case where I think the anti-Bose snobbery of certain audiophiles is entirely justified.*)
So, C.R. has it's place, and fine -- I just don't think their fabled "objectivity" means their reviews are unimpeachable. Morally, perhaps, just not in accuracy / conclusion.
timothy
* Well
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Sorry, Tom's started out as a hobby/enthusiast many years (7+) ago but no longer holds much integrity. Look at all the ads and their reviews are guilty of some of the shenanigans listed in the article like including obscure games to give better numbers, etc. I don't trust any of the sites anymore.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Did you read the original? That's exactly what he said. That makes him a clown?
If you actually BUY the product you are reviewing, you're subject to the same likelihood of manufacturing defects, poor workmanship or shipping/transporting accidents as anyone else who buys it -- so you can work that into your review to give an overall impression of what a REAL consumer will face if they buy the product.
If you're testing a product that was specially given to you by the manufacturer, they want as favorable a review as possible, so your product may have been specially checked for defects, or have extra durability built in, and it will likely arrive insured by special courier or some other express guaranteed delivery -- not representative of the average customer experience at all.
IMHO, Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) is THE authority when it comes to honest, reliable and unbiased reviews.
Simple I wait a bit before buying the "NEW" stuff. There is not much sense in my mind to buy something that just comes out. There are usually bugs of some sorts and updates that are needed in order to use it. Plus as the article states I don't trust sites that get the new stuff before it is released to the public-there is already a vested interest. I wait 3-6 months and see what other people and friends have to say.
This is a bit easier since I only buy new hardware every 3-4 years, so I buy my hardware to last that long.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I'm jaded by their worship of the Honda Accord & Toyota Corolla, which are IMHO the most overrated cars on earth.
I don't really fit a car demographic... I drive a Cadillac & a Honda and have been really pleased with both.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
It has none.
This is the same site that called a Microsoft representitive the "spokesvole".
The article complains that Anandtech (it's obvious for anyone who read the review in question) doesn't use any gaming benchmarks.
Well, take a closer look.. the article is called Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part I: First Encounter
very conveniently, (and completely expected, as well..) Anand posted the second part today, which included the gaming benchmarks we all expect.
Way to troll Inquirer writer, way to troll..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
There's a DLL out there that you replace that basically allows two users to use the system - one on the console session and one via RD.
;-)
I've just found it: termsrv.dll
Google will give you light, my child
Craig.
booradley> I'd like to perform a one act play I call, "Creative screwed me like a bitch" :: later ::
booradley> Buy me! I'm ever so sexy
booradley> ok. come home with me and we'll play among the stars
booradley> tee hee! I love you, boo!
booradley> I love you too, audigy
booradley>
booradley> there, you're all installed. how do you feel?
neshura> down in front!
booradley> audigy> LET JESUS FUCK YOU! VRAAAGH!
* audience gasps.
booradley> * audigy is putting noise across your PCI channels
booradley> hard drive> Mein leben!
booradley> * hard drive has died
booradley> audigy> Blaaah! blaaaugh! your mother sucks cocks in hell! graaagh!
booradley> modem> aaieee
booradley> *modem has died
booradley> and the new modem I got connects at 32k tops
Shendal> By far, that's the best one-act IRC play I've read this season. Do I smell a Tony award?
----
That's from bash.org. It's pretty much how it goes. I ask friends that have more disposable income and they tell me about products they've blown money on. heh. It's another reason that I chose Sirius over XM for my satellite radio - finding an objective review online was a waste of time because everyone was just spewing the same marketing drivel or Google results were flooded with e-stores. I just spent some time and talked to people I knew about both products and went from there.
The Internet is becoming increasingly *useless* for information that doesn't come straight out of some marketing droid.
peers? HA! No one on slashdot qualifies as a peer. Didn't you know that everyone here is a kabillion times smarter than everyone else here?
Well, after procrastinating for a long time, I finally decided to rip my CD collection onto a computer. I built a new Linux box largely for the purpose with two 160GB drives set up as raid-1, and began the process of ripping some 2000 cds into oggs. I really wish I had spent a little more for a dual processor machine, because the processor load of ripping and encoding really drags down desktop responsiveness to a molasses level. I've messed around with renice to no avail. The added cost of a dual processor machine would have been trivial compared to the original cost of all the CDs in the first place.
Please post your good/bad/ugly (badly written but probably not corrupt) website opinions here.
I have been following hardware reviews since about 1995, have written a few myself, and am fairly knowledgeable on the inner-workings of hardware and of English, so I have become fairly critical of reviews. Here's my brief list:
The good (Quality, non-biased, well-written reviews with reproduceable results and non-marketfluff technical explanations):
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
PR is a neat invention. Just the idea of making it someone's responsibility and livelihood to ensure that products and company get presented in the media in a desired way and with desired frequency is brilliant. Those people are really good at it, the result is that currently technical journalism without corporate PR is hard to imagine.
Sure, thats why the Ford Focus was rated above the VW Jetta! The only reason this year it wasn't recommended was because of side crash test ratings.
Perhaps you should read the mag before slamming it.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
No. Wrong.
When a computer is largely idle, most of the processes are BLOCKED. By definition, if the processor is not at 100% usage, there is time (hint: most of the time) where the OS literally has NO process/thread/schedulable-whatever to put on the CPU, and just spins the CPU in some sort of low-power state.
If I'm spending most of my time with no process running, the ready queues will be empty. And who will care about context switches if there's nothing better to do anyways?
Multi-whatever is only an advantage (there are exceptions... not many) when the system's loaded enough to use the additional processing power.
Assuming an IQ of zero, that math works just fine.
I don't have any games either, I have a Matrox G550 that I got because it was cheap for dual-outputs, and it has a reputation for reliability. For those who don't know about its 3D performance, let's just say "it doesn't have a fan" and leave it at that.
However, the TFA has a point -- the selective application of benchmarks can make a chip look better or worse. Even if there aren't any games tested, gamers will look at the review and say "look how awesome that is!". They might not be right, but they do it anyway.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I used to work for a company that did training in digital video technology. I was a trainer, sent around the country to train people on Final Cut Pro. I was also a producer on several tutorial CD Roms, and did product reviews on the company website.
We also did marketing CDs for several equipment manufacturers, although our name never appeared in any credits. That part of the business was hush hush. We weren't to disclose those relationships.
We got lots of free equipment from these manufacturers, and others that wanted to be reviewed. We were specifically told to push certain products at the seminars and classes, and to give good reviews to "our" manufacturers products. We were also supposed to push product on the web site's forums, when people asked for advice. We never returned anything. In fact, the boss would give product to us employees as bonuses. I just checked the website, and they're still doing the same thing.
I openly questioned the ethics of this, and this and other factors led the boss to conclude that I wasn't a "team player", so I was let go. Honestly, I was glad, because there was a lot of other bullshit at that company as well. For a while, though, I was able to rationalize this because the products we were pushing were good products (for example, Canon DV cameras or Miller tripods). Still, when something is wrong, you know it's wrong, no matter how you try to justify it. If it wasn't wrong, why did we have to hide our business relationship with Canon?
Since this is pretty much par for the course, I think that if a magazine or web site really wanted to present unbiased, ethical reviews, they should state somewhere that they return the equipment, that their editorial is separate from advertising, and also disclose if the product manufacturer is an advertiser.
Of course, there still could be abuses, but when someone puts a policy in writing, it's a little harder to wiggle around basic ethics.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I left 3dgameman about 5 years ago because of this. At the time, he never had a bad review. Out of ALL of his video and written reviews, all products were 'kickass'.
I'm not sure if he continued that route, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least. Especially with his flashing Shockwave banners, and the countless product posters placed rather non-descretely behind him during his video reviews.
I mean how many times can you hear, "This CPU fan stopped working and completely melted my brand new AMD64 chip(courtesy of AMD via past review). However it did drop my temps .2C while it was functioning. If you don't mind the 15dB increase, then this product is for you! Kickass!", before you want to blow your/his brains out?
check out this site, and yeah the other reply is right you need to replace the termsrv.dll with the provided one from build 2055. Plus a registry edit and switch on Fast User Switching, and one policy edit. Only problem I have seen is you can't have the same user logged on concurrently. Oh well, but it works.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The Inquirer is the greatest IT web site in the world, no question about that. But they rarely if ever do any reviews themselves. They just tell you trends and like to reviews done by other sites.
It is so rare that I find a review on a hardware web site that does not stink of bribery and/or incompetence, in fact, that I wrote down the URL for the one case that I noticed: http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=556
I salute journalists who value integrity higher than bribery. I'm not sure I could do that, if I were in their place. You have to feed the family, right? At least, here in Germany, we have c't, which is one of the last bastions of integrity in PC print journalism, and even they have their down sides.
It might not be multi-threaded all that well, since it was not designed that way, but they've managed to work in into the mix.
These fucking reviews of the Pentium D and shit all need to actually be using Half-life 2 in their reviews. Same thing if they were reviewing Opterons or Xeons or Athlon MP's. Half-life 2 takes around 2.4ghz (with sound), of some kind of AMD64 processor, to max out a Geforce 6800 Ultra. It certainly gives my two Opterons a run for their money on the Canal levels.
uh.
My money.
I tested and wrote for a trade publication that did hardware and software reviews for three years. During that time, I learned the following:
Why be bleeding edge when leading edge is less of a risk with a limted IT budget?
Kiss-butt reporters get the interview opportunities, those with the real questions don't get invited.
But we flat refuse to use games as a benchmark for production hardware.
Some games make very good benchmarks for certain types of hardware, particularly in a head to head comparison. Video cards are a good example. Also, if your target market is gamers who obsess about frame rates, then games are a very good means of benchmarking. In most cases, games can give a very good head to head comparison of the overall picture of a system as they tend to be CPU, Video, and memory intensive.
But I personally get most of my reviews from Penny-Arcade. While they do whore themselves out to certain corporations, they're generally honest about it, plus they're successful enough that they can save themselves for companies they really like; ie, Blizzard.
And nothing beats reviews from people you know IRL, or actually playing with the hardware yourself. Personally, I'm pimping the ATI HDTV Wonder these days. I've previously flammed it, but the most recent set of drivers they've released fixed the problems I was having with it, and I love it now. The only other TV card I've tried is the bottom of the line analog card from Hauppage, which even with a great signal had some picture issues.
bance.net
Ah... I had googled this before - before SP2, and hadn't found anything. Little did I know that what Microsoft R&D giveth, Microsoft Legal taketh away (it was in prerelease builds of SP2, but was taken out for the final release because the EULA is written such that you're only allowed to have one user on your system at a time anyway).
Inconceivable!
Is hardocp corrupt like what the article was talking about? I'd really like to know...because as far as I have been able to tell they're big on integrity..but who knows. Thanks.
Drugs have taught an entire generation of American children the metric system.
If I am a manufacturer and want a good review, I'll shop it around to a dozen pet sites. Or two dozen. Or whatever it takes to get a good rating. I'll steer clear of the brutally honest sites (get burned once and that's it -- no going back to them.)
In general, we humans give trust pretty easily, but most of us also can drop that trust at the plonk of a hat. If Foo's Hardware Review recommends the Omega Video Card as "the card to terminate all cards", and I buy one and it's crap, well, so much for my trust in Foo. The same logic will extend to Meta's Hardware Review Review. If I get burned by Meta, well, screw them too.
I think the best way to make something like this work is on the old NoCeM principle of "how much do I trust these other readers of these reviews?" Yes, the sum of the meta reviewers. As long as I can opt out of, say Jon Katz' opinion because I think he's been bought out, I'll be fairly happy with the results.
John
Musicians commonly self-build as well, and stuff that is good for gaming is often total crap for us. For example, if you want a musician to laugh at you long and loud you might want to suggest they buy anything made by Creative :)
Music software is typically as strenuous on hardware as the most challenging of games, 3D hardware aside (but it makes up for that by requiring similarly priced audio hardware, and many musicians use multiple-monitor setups to get more mixer channels on screen).
Then again, consumers in the markets you mentioned are probably more interested in PowerMac G5's... IMHO.
I haven't seen any dual-processor PC's of similar price point with the power/slickness of the recent Mac systems... (I'm a recent convert, although I HATED macs for about 10 years, back in the age of the imac. *shudder*)
I don't really trust reviews I read. Mostly because the metrics used for assessing the hardware are generally not clearly understood by the reviewers (or at least not from what is written), or by consumers. The biggest problem in comparing things is coming up with a really good evaluation function.
As for user reviews... they're usually edited, moderated or moved around by vendors to highlight positive reviews. At least that's my impression with the tigerdirect.ca reviews, and a few other online stores.
My review method is usually to wait for a product to be on the market for 6 months, and then do a thorough search on the web for "product X problems". By looking for configuration problems, bugs, lockups, warranty problems and so on, I can usually spot things that are truly flawed. The rest I base on price.
"Honda Accord & Toyota Corolla"
They like the Accord / Corolla for a reason: they are solid vehicles that keep their resale value.
The Corolla, for example, sets 30 city / 38 highway MPG, is an IIHS "Best Pick" for safety, and is overall a very nice basic car. It's also around $14,000 decently equipped.
CU cares about what *I* care about in a vehicle - reliablity, fuel economy, safety, and price.
Oh, and they are also quite keen on the Ford Focus.
I run a review site http://www.justechn.com/. I have to admit that I got into it at first because I wanted the free stuff. But in order to get companies to send me stuff I had to prove to them that I could write a fairly decent review. So I started by reviewing stuff I already had around the house. I am not the best reviewer and I sometimes miss things. This is not my primary source of income so I only have a limited amount of time to spend on the reviews (hence I don't have a ton of reviews).
I find that I am concerned about my reputation more than I am about pleasing the company. I want to continue this hobby and if I get a bad reputation then no one will visit my site and I will not get any more products to review. I am a fairly positive person so I try and reflect that in my reviews but if I find something that I don't like I definitely point it out. I also have a forum and a topic for each review so people can make comments about the review. I welcome the feedback and would love to know how I can improve my reviews. If someone has had a completely different experience with a product that I reviewed I welcome there comments.
JusTech'n - Where Technology comes home
I think you're misunderstanding what the OP asked.
There's no question that a single non-threaded application won't benefit one whit from multicore/CPU machines. There's also no question that a multithreaded app, when they exist, do benefit.
However, pretty much no one these days runs a single non-threaded app, due to the very nature of the OS they're running on. Windows/Linux/anything runs dozens of background processes regardless of what you're doing - and THIS is what could potentially benefit from more than one CPU core. The very nature of a multi-tasking OS is parallelizable.
So, for those like myself who run several busy apps at once, there's a benefit. For those that only run one app, and close it before opening another, there's still a benefit. Those running a game under DOS, well no, there's no benefit.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
when you live in a glass (or silicone) house don't throw bricks. is this news? it doesn't take much intelligence to see that hardware manufacturers really, really, drag their feet when it comes to r n d. in tfa it's mentioned that clock and bus speeds are slower than single chips. this is an example of how the industry rips people off. you can bet that in a few months the chipsets will come through with a "miraculous" new design that is really a fix to shitty engineering in the first place. there is so much spin on hardware it's unbelievable, and also hard to see. don't believe me? go pick up a pc mag from 1990, and look at "90 MHZ BREAKTHROUGH!" in bold letters and then try and read the tech drivel without laughing. this has been going on for ages. Of course it's a really big scam, and never buy the latest thing out etc. etc. i don't think theinquirer.net and Charlie are fooling anyone with their 64 bit sponsored rant.
Hahah.. Anand posted this rebuttal in his latest blog:
$26
My dad came to this country with something like $26 in his pocket; $26 and a scholarship to UMASS. I didn't know about that until I was around 14, our family went to another family's house for dinner and it came up in after dinner conversation. I was honestly floored - all of the sudden everything in life made sense to me, I was given the drive that I needed to go anywhere and do anything in life. My dad took essentially nothing and raised a family out of it; we all helped, but one man's ability to do that is what I truly define as successful. We weren't rich, but he (along with the help of my mom) made sure that we could live in comfort as a family. My dad is what sparked my drive; he's the reason that if I get a product to review on Friday, and the review has to go up on Monday, I bust my ass all weekend to make sure it gets done. He instilled in me a true understanding of what hard work is really about, and that's a major cornerstone of who I am today.
My mom gave me an understanding of how to do something with myself and an understanding of ethics. She showed me what truly caring about something really meant, about what being selfless meant and gave me the foundation that allowed me to develop my own perspectives on the world. She didn't teach me right from wrong, she taught me how to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And I'll never forget that which she's taught me to this day. It wasn't until college that I really understood what she had done for me; she dropped out of college to take care of me, to raise me. She gave up her dreams of being a doctor, to live her new dream of having a son. She cared for me more than anyone ever could, and seeing and understanding that also helped shaped who I am today.
I started AnandTech almost exactly 8 years ago: April 26, 1997. I was a freshman in high school, 14 at the time, and completely into this stuff. I started AnandTech not as a business, but as something that I thought would be cool to do. I started it humble, and to this day I will never forget my beginnings. There's no room for big egos in writing, I hate reading it and I'm sure you all do too.
I started the website with nothing, it was a free site on Geocities and I had no hardware other than the scraps of my system. But I worked hard these past 8 years, AnandTech grew from nothing to where it is today - with over 6 million monthly unique readers. I've had one basic principle when it comes to how to deal with those readers, and it goes something like this:
Regardless of how many people come to the site, I look at it as each person coming to me with their money in hand, wanting to know what to purchase. Let's say the average hardware upgrade costs $150, that's 6 million people x $150. I don't have to let you know that that's an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. To trade the trust that you all are placing in me and my staff for any amount of anything, is just unfathomable. While I'm sure there are folks that do it, I am not one of them.
At the same time, if we didn't value your trust so highly, we'd be gone in an instant. AnandTech readers make their buying decisions based, in part, on our articles. If we gave some bad advice that resulted in a poor purchase, do you think we're going to keep those readers for long? Nope, common sense right?
Next let's talk about this myth of articles and exclusivity. To a journalist, an exclusive on an article is a huge deal, because it means that you'll get all the attention about this one topic. Yet another reason why I hate journalists, they are far too short sighted. One thing I learned very early on (and you'll notice this in the work I do) is that being first to break a story gives you a large influx of short term traffic, but does nothing for you long term. You can have all the exclusives in the world, but if your content is crap then they mean nothing. At the same time, you can be 3 weeks late to review something, but if it's the most thorou
I've looked into submitting a few of my products for review however I am always skeptical having a Layer 3 switch reviewed and right beside the review for my product being an ad for Cisco or 3COM.
I would prefer finding a site that does not take money from my competitors. IE. a Consumer Reports.
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
In a forum posting, I bitched about how the Ars.Technica folks had put up a combination of hardware that was nearly guaranteed to fail for what they recommended. The reply doesn't give much hope that they've improved.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_humour
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
Maybe when you first joined, these days it's a bunch of kids who don't know their elbows from their assholes. But they'll tell you why it's fault of the US, RIAA, MPAA, USPTO, DMCA, and FCC that they don't.
- When I went to Dan's homepage and clicked on one of the reviews, my antivirus program has informed me that there was a malware Javascript virus that tried to be executed. That certainly means that I am not going to his website ever again.
The website has its quirks, and the javascript problem you had is probably because of the following:In other words ... advertising code. If Dan trusts these burstnet guys enough, to link to their ad javascripts, then I'm sure it's safe. Otherwise, you can always use Adblock (you are using Firefox/Mozilla, aren't you? :)
Give Dan's Data another try. He writes honest, down to earth, reviews. I've yet to come across another review site on the internet, that tells it as straight as what Dan does.
I just read through most of their current auto reviews, and I can't say that I agree with you.
I'm guessing that you were looking at small sedans? The Toyota Corolla and Honda Accord are highly rated by them, yes -- but when I was looking around at other auto review sources, both were very highly rated pretty much universally.
IIRC, Toyota had some SUVs that got some pretty low scores.
And you didn't mention reliability. CR seems to give quite a few points based on reliability compared to, say, a car enthusiast review site (which might consider exterior and power more highly than CR -- if your tastes lie in this area, you might want to ignore the final CR score or use a different review site).
To what mode?
Why Vegan? No other food choice has a farther-reaching and more profoundly positive impact on all of life on Earth.
...is that they seem to have been written by adolescent goobers (of all ages) who failed high school English. This article is a shining example.
Even the fairly popular TomsHardware plays dirty. I don't know if they take money for good press (but it seemed to be pretty well implied), but they regularly hand out Blue Sky previews, and their recent 6800gt roundup compared models of the card with overclocked chips, which I haven't seen on the market ANYWHERE. Its borderline fraud, given that the difference between what you're buying and what you think they reviewed is a few letters on the model number.
Not to mention the humongous ads on every page saying "Two is better, buy NVIDIA!" I'm sure that's a great way to establish yourself as a credible reviewer, having one of the biggest draws for reviews advertise on your site. No wonder the old editor quit; whores get paid much better than editors and at least they're upfront about it all.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
another form of crappy websites is sites that are just normal guys "reviewing" products they bought with their own money - more often than not they 'surprisingly' give the thumbs up.. nobody wants to admit that they made a stupid buying choice.
but the real problem is just that the reviewers are incompetent fools who don't even know if it is possible for the product to do what it promises(magic stickers and the like) and then make up some diagrams about totally made up physics that's simply false.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...the best way I've found is this:
Read 2-3 benchmark reviews - if they're equal, probably good. If not, someone is skewing the results. Ignore the commentary, mostly "This board is 2.3% slower, it sucks!" sort of thing usually.
Ignore positive user reviews. There's so many fakes, "This is so c00l" idiots and other vermin that it is useless. Particularly if some sites have lots of user reviews, others few. Astroturf marketing in progress.
Read negative user reviews. Ignore the silly "I haven't bought it, but it is crap" or "It SUXXX!" reviews. Look for descriptions of weak points. Was this conveniently not mentioned in the reviews? Note that lying by omission is quite common.
If those are key features for you, look to another product. In the end, I've always ended up with a good product where, if it has flaws, the flaws aren't the kind that bother me (much). That's more important than a purely "objective" choice anyway.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What changed in your mind that it was a bad practice? If they truly were GOOD products, whats the problem?
The only reason I can think of if theres an even better AND cheaper alternative??
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As an administrator on ReviewFinder, I can tell by the number of reviews of mouse pads and cpu fans that it takes more than just a launched hardware site to get the high-end free stuff. Most of the sites reviewing $500 video cards either bought it themselves, have to send it back soon, or are insanely popular.
I actual just got done building my self a dual xeon system for audio production. And i had a really hard time getting reviews and user experiences for audio workstations or audio benchmarks. And yes there are lots of audio apps out there that are multi/dual threaded. It would just be nice to get an over all performance stats for products. Not just game focused. And it seems thats what everyone cares about nowadays. Are there anyone actually doing anything productive with their multi thousand dollar computers?
But about professionals using company owned equipment. you got to start somewhere, you cant just get into 3D modeling without starting somewhere. And usually thats not from a company buying it for you.