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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.
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?
I consider Scott Wasson's Tech Report to be one of the best "independent" review sites around.
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.
"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
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.
...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).
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?
Buy your own hardware at retail, using obfuscated identifying information.
Carry NO 3rd-party advertising of any kind.
Disallow manufacturers from using your name, excerpts from reviews, or any other acknowledgment that you exist in THEIR advertising.
Of course, that means your revenue model is going to have to change, either to a subscription site; privately funded, capped, and transparent donations; or through selling stuff (books?) of some kind.
Tom's Hardware was the primary reason I stopped reading his site... er....
Let me clarify, A long time ago, during the BH6 heydays, I used to read Tom's Hardware almost religiously. I scarfed down every article with near fever, trying to stay on top of the latest hardware reviews. Then I got stupid and started dating, so I ignored Ol' Tom for a few years. When my other half and I broke up, I started digging into the hardware scene again, so I went back to Tom's to get up to speed.
A few articles into it, I realized the, "feel," of the articles changed. There didn't seem to be as much useful, practical, information in them anymore. They didn't have any interesting opinions on the hardware being reviewed. In fact, I don't think I found an article that was harshly negative in any way. Nor did I find any articles with useful grit-in-your-teeth information. Initially, I thought the, "neutralism," being presented in the articles were because of the close tolerances of the hardware being reviewed. I mean overclocking a 333MHz CPU to 450MHz had greater net results than overclocking the more modern CPU's now. But I put my faith in Tom, because it's supposed to be the best. After all, his site does say:
So who was I to argue with that?
I just can't put my finger on what, exactly, Tom is missing. As near as I can figure, Tom's Hardware reviews read too much like brochures. It's just enough to try and get a person interested. But whatever it is, it's enough to prevent me from utilizing his site for anything more than keeping track of the latest hardware. Nowadays, if I want real hard and honest opinions, I just hop on over to my favorite forum/BBS/IRC/whatever and sort through the flamefests to get a feel for a particular piece of hardwares viability.
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.
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.