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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
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
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.
I look for the support forums and known issues for guidance
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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reading the perview of the pentium D on tom's hardware today it includes plenty of game benches and also some fair justification of why intels lastest offerings are likely to suck until software catches up.
So if you intended to say the article was talking about toms then I'd say you're wrong.
If you were saying toms is a shining light in a sea of intels bitches, I'd say not far off.
Karma: Bad. Calmer, good.
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.
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.
Or one word - 'Usenet'. Always good to check what problems people have been having with a particular pice of hardware.
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.
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."
You mean the media can be bought?!? I feel like I'm taking CRAZY PILLS!!
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
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.
The personal guarantee of an anonymous coward.
Priceless =)
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
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.
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
The criticism is directed at the AnandTech preview, for the most part, because it did not contain any gaming benchmarks. The guy is a fool; the first page of Anand's article points out the rationale behind the benchmarking scheme used.
Think about this rationally for a minute: do you honestly believe it is possible for a 3.2GHz dual-core processor to outperform a 3.8GHz single-core processor in a single threaded benchmark? Me either; it's impossible! But that's exactly what you're doing when you make a performance comparison of the two processors using a benchmarking suite consisting entirely of games. Review sites that make this kind of comparison and draw the conclusion that dual-core is a waste of time have _completely_ missed the point; this is NOT what dual-core processors bring to the table.
The introduction of dual-core to the mainstream is not supposed to compete head-to-head with the best and fastest in GAMES. I mean, who gives a fuck about games? Really! Are gamers the only market out there for PCs? I highly doubt it. The sad fact is, according to most review sites on the 'net, PC performance equates to game performance. The introduction of some very exciting technology (essentially the SMP system I've always dreamed of owning on a single piece of silicon) is met with luke-warm response by the mainstream review sites because it doesn't smoke an FX55 in Half-Life 2...
AnandTech published an article that focused on the multitasking performance of dual-core systems, because... wait for it, people... multitasking performance is what multi-processor systems are designed for. The preview was not bought by Intel or any such bullshit; it wasn't designed to paint the new dual-core processor in the best possible light. The author, unlike the rest of the mainstream review sites it seems, realized, in advance, that the benefit of running a dual-core system lies in the silky-smooth multitasking performance it offers. Anand requested input from the community in an attempt to gauge what the average user's multitasking workload looks like, and put together a suite of benchmarks based on the feedback received from real users. It amazes me that the only article published to date to show me -- in real world terms -- the kind of performance benefit I can expect to achieve from a dual-core system and, more importantly, where that benefit is to be realized, is met with such harsh criticism. It disgusts me that the Inquirer would publish an article that clearly attacks the journalistic integrity of another site, without first doing the research to back up their claims; just two minutes researching the article and the community input used to produce it would have negated any evidence of a buy-out by Intel.
So my question is: who's journalistic integrity is jeopardised now?
(why don't I have an account? Well, I don't post here often enough to bother with one... I hate this fucking site. Eat me.)