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.

Comments

The Inquirer paid /. to run this article.

[mcguyver]

Well, not really but wouldn't it be ironic if they did?

Huh?

[Quixote]

In this world, if we can't trust TrustedReviews.com , then who can we trust??

// didn't RTFA :-)
//// no interest in trustedreviews.com either, just thought the name was funny
////// sosumi

Re:Huh?

[sulli]

Trusted Computing?

Re:Trust? On the net?

[ShaniaTwain]

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?

Re:Trust? On the net?

[Shambhu]

For example, if more than one site benchmarks the same hardware they could combine their scores for a more accurate average?

More accurate than what? The mean? No, wait... doesn't work. I know! More accurate than the ones that aren't very accurate!

As far as the written portion, it's all opinion so you can never have a truely "valid" review there...

Words bad! Numbers good! Except some of the numbers! Thog take average, find good numbers.

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)

Re:Let's list them then folks...

[SuperBanana]

Only reason, is because they BUY THEIR OWN HARDWARE :)

Given that Ars Technica probably then would like to sell what they've bought, there's still conflict of interest. If you buy a $2k system and say "ugh, it's junk", you're not going to have much luck selling it, are you?

If they sell the stuff before the review is published, fine...

Re:Trust? On the net?

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you want me to buy?

A new jumpsuit. That fish patterned thing is horrible.

Re:Trust? On the net?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of review sites...

Re:Two Words

[Bill Privatus]

If true, that is one of the most damning links I've ever viewed.

I've had limited-skills techs working for me in the past - usually it's the "software testers" - who refer to disk as "memory", but to see it at a hardware review site is just incredible .

There's simply no other explanation than corruption. The site's not being phished. It might be a DNS poisoning attack, but I doubt it.

It may be a case where an "editorial board" saw a check and passed, unedited, unexamined even, a piece of dreck so obviously unworthy of publishing that the child who authored it - or the marketroid - would have received failing grade in Computer Science 101.

And, as if you could not guess, there is no byline. No name. No title, no email address.

This is the nuclear bomb for Tom's Hardware. Nothing less. It makes me sad - they have been around forever, and now they're dead to me.

I was a Tom's fan for years - I bought my BP6 (dual celerons), then my VP6 (dual P-III), based on Tom's say-so (along with a few others I trusted) - but no more :-(

Don't mod me up, mod the parent up - between 500,000 and 1,000,000 visitors to that horrible web page will cause Tom's to pull it, and for those multitudes to never again darken "Tom's Door".

Any opinions are mine alone, not those of the honest, ethical software/hardware/services multinational company for which I labor so assiduously.