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Ask Slashdot: What Review Sites Do You Consult For IT Equipment?
JackAcme writes "Searching for product reviews via Google mostly turns up sales sites masquerading as review sites. Consumer reviews on Amazon and other big retailers are suspect since so many manufacturers are paying for positive reviews. Where do Slashdotters turn for reliable, informed reviews of new hardware and software?"
Newegg. Usually has the most honest reviews and manufacture responses if it's because of an RMA or a neg review.
http://hardocp.com/ is a good one for reviews on hardware performance and overclocking for gaming.
Ars for computers, GSM Arena for phones.
"expert sex change"!? I don't think that's the kind of equipment the OP was referring to
Tomshardware.com
Anandtech.com
smallnetbuilder.com
And every now and then one of the others, but those are my three go-to sites.
I tend to figure that (so long as I don't cling to the bleeding edge, where even the honest reviews are of inferior gear for high prices, soon to be replaced by more mature gear at lower price), it tends to matter a lot less. Do PR flacks buy good reviews? Yes, it seems likely. Should they be first against the wall when the revolution comes? Well, probably not first; but I'd gladly make room for them in line. Can they crowd out the mass of reviews once the early-adopting suckers pass and an item becomes subject to mass judgement? If so, that's some serious cash being dropped on buying reviews.
All blathering aside, if you aren't trying to ride the bleeding edge, the stakes are lower and the odds of, at very least, ending up with 'good enough, and crazy cheap' are good.
It's the early adopters who really face a difficult problem, when the goods are at their least mature and most expensive, and the flacks outnumber and control the actual buyers and actual reviewers to the greatest extent. Simply practice a little patience and you can easily avoid the greatest trouble. Leading the bleeding-edge by the nose, by controlling who gets per-release and super-early gear just isn't that difficult, and even if the reviews are real, they reflect mostly early-adopter fanboy optimists. Just sit back, fuck around with whatever tech you already have (take comfort, for it is no doubt greater than that which inaugurated the internet) and wait a month or two. Lower prices, greater clarity, and general sanity await you.
Well, it beats Amateur Sex Change.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Buy it all, figure out what works, return what sucks... that's what return policies are for (and incidentally is what happened to the last Belkin product I purchased, and why I'll never purchase another one).
That, or if you're buying for a business just remember: No one ever got fired for buying IBM, F5 or Cisco. Or HP for servers. ProLiants really do kick ass, although I hear Dells tend to use a little less power for equivalent performance... probably because they skimped on the redundant fans or some other "doesn't seem to matter until you need it" hardware (but that's pure speculation).
Or it's possible Dell equipment runs by feeding on the souls of the poor bastards that have to use it. Anything is possible.
i would give you a thumbs up but i don't know how.
Reviews so in depth your mind explodes!
Ok, so maybe not explodes, but certainly well informed. They go into more detail about electronics than any other review site I have come across. Their reviews are generally as un-biased as they come too.
I honestly trust opinions here more than most other places. Seems to me that most tech sites, though good, are so enthralled with the latest and greatest cool thing that they lose sight of the needs of mere mortals.
Now, my pet peeve isn't with hardware reviews, but with the various App stores. I've pretty much given up trying to judge any app on Google's Play site based on reviews. As often as not they seem to fall into two categories: "Wow! Cool App! Best App Ever!" or "Crap App wouldn't work on my phone."
The former reached a new pinnacle of uselessness when one guy posted "It hasn't finished downloading to my phone yet, but I'm sure this is the coolest thing ever!."
Yeah, most apps only cost a few bucks, but I'd still like to know if the damned things will actually work, without crashing, before I bother downloading it.
Three Squirrels
I figure, perhaps naively, that I can filter the fakes on Amazon. I usually click on the one star bar and start with those.
You can use the reviews on every major site if you know how to read them. It's actually fairly simple; the best reviews are meaningless. Aside from the obvious shill risk, they also don't usually tell you much.
No, the best reviews are the lowest reviews, possibly the "middle of the road" reviews too. Read those. Those often will have real data that you can use ( failed after a week, has annoying click, doesn't work with x, ect.. ).
There's a bit more to it than that, but that should get you rolling. As you read more reviews, you get a feel for the idiots, shills and other wasted reviews.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
But it is not a public site. You need to know the IPv6 address in order to see the home page.
I like notebookcheck.net for laptop reviews.
But now I just stick to Amazon.com, NewEgg.com and the like to see the reviews. Once Tom's Hardware traded hands way back when it followed the rest of the industry of just regurgitating vendor claims and I quit reading it, maybe I should check it out and see if it's improved.
If you consider your stuff "IT Equipment" then the last group you want suggestions from is the million monkeys that make up the Internet.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm a network architect so I tend to check out more enterprise related sites such as Network Computing, Network World, and Infoworld. That being said, most vendors are willing to send you a demo unit to play with and most software vendors have VM copies of their demo software. Also, don't underestimate the advice of other professionals in your field. If you don't have any contacts, there are usually local professional groups that you can join.
Generally I just post a search for the item name and the string "problem with" and scan the list for clangers. Not so much a way to find, but a way to avoid.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"Hey guys, where should I be spending my marketing resource dollars?"
Be aware of even reputable web sites for hardware reviews because they'll keep recommending the newest and fastest hardware since speed is easily quantifiable and testable but will completely ignore the difficult to quantify things like reliability, customer support, warranty service, etc.
One example that's relevant to recent Slashdot stories is how all the top review web sites raved about OCZ for years and the speed and low price and only paid a little attention to the huge failure rates, terrible customer service, and overall dissatisfaction of the users of the products.
How many years of reading about amazing OCZ Vertex 1, 2, 3, 4 reviews and high recommendations and now we see that OCZ is nearly bankrupt due to the crap they were selling and the review sites were helping them all along just to be on their preferred reviewer lists so that they could get pre-release hardware to test with buggy firmware and crappy chips.
techreport.com is probably my #1 review site. They don't have a huge volume of reviews compared to some of the bigger sites like Tom's but I find them to be much more thorough and unbiased.
Full disclosure up front: I currently write for ExtremeTech and Hot Hardware. In the past I've written for Ars Technica (2007 - 2009) and briefly Tech Report (2H 2005). Before that, I wrote for a now-defunct site going back to 2001.
Obviously I could be biased and plug the sites I write for. I write for them for a reason, after all. But since no one is going to buy me telling you to read my own work, here's where I go, personally:
For in-depth, excellent analysis (in alphabetical order)
Anandtech (Anandtech.com)
Ars Technica (Arstechnica.com)
Tech Report (techreport.com)
For ultra low-level analysis:
Real World Tech (www.realworldtech.com)
Agner Fog's CPU blog (www.agner.org)
Lost Circuits (www.lostcircuits.com)
All three of these resources update only occasionally. But the information is second to none.
For spot-checking or specific issues:
TechSpot.com does great CPU/GPU scaling articles. LaptopMag or NotebookCheck are great for their particular areas. CPU-World has good general database information, VR-Zone often has interesting scoops, as does wccftech -- if you're willing to filter out a lot of rumor / speculation from the latter. Tom's Hardware has useful dynamic databases for product performance. So does Anandtech.
Don't be afraid to read a review on a site you haven't heard of, or with a layout from 1999. While established names and high-quality writers tend to go together, they are neither exclusively matched nor guaranteed. A good reviewer will document issues, give a thorough discussion of the topic, and won't come off sounding like a marketing employee.
store.apple.com
There really aren't any sites that do reviews of Enterprise class hardware. At best you'll find reviews of SMB hardware like what StorageReview does, but that's really about it. The other problem is the reliance on synthetic benchmarks. We've run into a few cases where hardware has performed as expected while doing test runs, but then found bugs and issues when put in a POC lab environment.
It depends on what I'm looking for. One excellent place is the support forum for your favorite Linux or BSD distro. I'll go to the OpenSuSE or CentOS forum, for example, and ask: "has anyone tried this with a Dell Poweredge?" I get some really good responses from people who use my software, on similar hardware.
I Google, too, but I did have to learn to recognized the obvious junk sites. Far more useful to me are the user reviews at the Websites that sell the equipment. It's really not that hard to sort out the useless reviews from the good ones.
By the way, you people who reflexively dump on Slashdot all the time ... I don't know who you're trying to impress with your smug sense of superiority. I have also picked up plenty of good tips here, some of which have saved my bacon and made me look good. :)
Once again, you have to overlook the cruft and the off topic rants -- same as in any other public forum -- but there are some nuggets buried in here. Slashdot has a very eclectic mix of geeks and other professionals with a wide range of experience.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Kind of depends on the "hardware" we're talking about. For workstations and servers and I just order stuff from Dell without worrying about reviews. I know and trust their specs and support (business support is great). For individual components, like GPU's, I generally stick to tomshardware.com if for no other reason than they seem to be consistently thorough.
In fact, I'd say I almost never bother with reviews at all, for business stuff, because the ones that have reviews (laptops, desktops, etc) are fairly disposable.
I have a large back catalog of 1990's Computer Shopper.
I haven't seen StorageReview mentioned. These guys were the first I'd seen who seemed to have a real clue about storage eg. they concentrated on latency rather than sequential transfer back in the day - latency is a much more interesting metric for most use cases. I don't follow their reviews as religiously as I used to, but they are the first guys I turn to when something new happens in storage technology.
You can't even be sure reputable sites won't be gamed, and fall for it. And not just astroturfing either. Been a while since I've seen the old switcheroo, but that's still done. Manufacturers aren't above lying on occasion.
You think you're getting a great product, but what you didn't know was that the manufacturer totally revised it and cheapened quality everywhere. I'm thinking especially of the venerable Linksys WRT54G wireless router. Revision 4 was a great router with a great reputation. When I bought one, unknown to me was that Linksys had just rolled out revision 5 with totally changed insides. They replaced Linux with VXWorks, and cut the RAM in half. It was total crap, and it was so different it should have been given a different model number. As it was, you couldn't tell which revision was in the box until you'd opened it. After struggling with it for a day, I took it back, it was that bad. Couldn't even reliably ping through it. Later, Linksys put the good one back on the shelves under a slightly different model number, the WRT54GL.
There was also a stunt TEAC (think it was them) once pulled with a CD burner. The version they sent out for review was not the version that got put on the shelves, though it had the same model number and specs. They deliberately deceived the reviewers, and gave them a much higher quality version than consumers got. Not surprisingly, it received rave reviews. But it wasn't long before the deception was uncovered.
Whole classes of hardware are pretty junky. For instance, many consumer grade routers fail early because they are so marginally designed they easily overheat and burn out. DVD burners are another troublesome piece of hardware. On both of those on several occasions, I've had to try several brands and models before I found one that would just work adequately. Ink jet printers are of course infamous for being not only high maintenance and expensive to operate, but programmed to give the users FUD as if they weren't troublesome enough without that. There have been many low end economy hardware ideas that were just too cheap, not worth taking home. Pretty much any Intel CPU designated as SX had such reduced performance that they weren't worth the savings over the DX version. Integrated graphics that co-opt some of the main memory became quite notorious for awful performance. Recently, Intel has finally made some decent integrated graphics chipsets, but they have 10 plus years of bad reputation to overcome. Then there was the junk known as the Winmodem.
Even if all that's avoided, can still be caught by systemic defects. Remember the Capacitor Plague? Many devices made in the early 2000s-- motherboards, graphic cards, monitors, even power supplies-- were built with flawed capacitors that failed in under 5 years. Manufacturers were saved from big trouble on that front by the typical rapid obsolescence of technology, though they didn't escape entirely. The poor review site simply has no means of catching a problem like that.
As a rule, mechanical devices simply aren't going to be as reliable no matter what's done to improve their quality. Even when manufacturers aren't trying to pull something, mechanical will never be as good as solid state.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
4chan /g/
I guess there's some irony is wondering how many of the sites being recommended here are being posted by shills for those sites.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Is there any problem with this brand/model of somestuff ?
This is much more important than any performance review.
Last time I bought a printer, I almost went for a 5 star review model and I changed my mind after looking for problem reports about this model.
I decided to buy an other brand, a model for which there was much fewer problems, yet a good amount of positive feedbacks.
Usually reviews are based on a few days test of new products, maybe sent by the maker itself. They don't report anything that happen after a few weeks or months.
My advice:
1- read any review for technical characteristics ( amongst the top 10 search of "review" + brand / model )
2- thoroughly search "problem" + brand / model in discussions and feedbacks
Methodology is all that matters, those 3 were the best I found by far. StorageReview is not really applicable anymore - my SSD reviews are at TR and AT now.
If I'm interested in a particular part I'll google a HEAP more places - but those are the definitive ones for me. Dislike HardOCP for their awful, terrible benchmark graphs they introduced 5 or so years back and the owner can be an ass to people too.
The day google seemed to demote experts-exchange.com was one of the best days on the internet.
If you need gadget electronics, none of them! If you need PC, laptop for home, some listed above but still be careful. If you need enterprise hardware, get an eval unit from the manufacturer and test it yourself for what you need then read reviews of their customer service and support. Nothing beats first-hand product experience and your own judgement when it comes to high ticket items. Also, ask people that are support persons for your organization's IT department. We/They unwittingly test products in the crucible of the workplace and can tell you what is crap, what manufacturers to avoid and what retailers have better prices.
Apparently Soulskillet is taking posting lessons from Timothy by not posting an Ask Slashdot story to the Ask Slashdot section. Hey Soulskillet! They put those sections there and allow readers to filter by section for a reason. Quit being a fucking tool and post the stories properly. In other words, do your job.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
For PC components/misc: www.anandtech.com;
For tablets: all of above and also www.engadget.com, www.techcrunch.com, popular newspapers;
For laptops: www.notebookreview.com, www.notebookcheck.net for amazingly up2date CPU/GPU benchmark lists;
For professional software: anywhere but developer-affiliated websites
That's what the ever useful share link is for. Click to post to facebook, then like you're own post. Every comment is obviously worthy of sharing with all of your non technical friends on facebook, so you should just whip up a greasemonkey script to share everything to facebook, so everyone there can enjoy the informative and delightful intercourse.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I'm an invite-only special EggXpert reviewer for Newegg. They send me stuff for free and let me keep it if I thoroughly test and benchmark it and then post an honest review. A lot of times it's really good gear but once we got a not so great item and all 10 of us tore it a new ass on the review. Newegg demands that we not always post positive reviews just to make the vendors happy. They chose to participate in the review generation program with no guarantee that it would be good. It's just to get reviews at all so someone buys their product over others. So I'd go to newegg for more honest reviews. I very rarely see a suspect one even from the public.
I wish there were more sites that doing Linux benchmarks than Phoronix.
Or if not, I wish more sites would benchmark workloads that are more than some synthetics, office/browser use, transcoding and games.
What about the things software developers have to deal with day-to-day? Application/web server performance? IDE performance? Compiler performance? Database performance? LibreOffice performance? Interpreter/VM performance for different languages? Latency/performance of variuous desktop environments, GNOME, KDE, XFCE? Performance of various servers- FTP, email, Samba etc.?
Phoronix does some of that, but nowhere near enough.
--Coder
"expert sex change"!? I don't think that's the kind of equipment the OP was referring to
Isn't that the sister site to penisland?
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Anandtech, Ars, and Tom's
I find Toms not all that useful, usually not as technical, and sometimes dubiously biased. Never visited smallnetbuilder. There used to be a ton of reputable sites, however I see less now. I admit I will use Ted's charts however as they are easy and quick way to look at a more comprehensive list of components. I look at it as more of a general rule as opposed to specific testing.
I would second Anandtech. They have stood the test of time. Whenever I see an article from them I give it added weight.
I would add HardOCP as one of my goto sites. While it is heavily slanted in the overclocking crowd, they do a wide range of reviews outside of that as well, and I find that the official reviews are more technical and insightful than most. Also they have a VERY good community that is knowledgeable and technically inclined (and usually helpful).
If only they'd do the same for BigResource...
I have already commented on a bunch. However I would add this:
User reviews, obviously depend on the qualifications of the person making the comment. It also depends on the person reading it knowing enough to tell if the poster is full of BS or not. However you can get a general idea, and it will sometimes give you common known issues.
As for "general" sites:
Tomshardware: I have had mixed results from. Some of it seems like industry fluff, other times it is useful. About the only thing I use consistently there are the CPU/GPU charts when trying to compare a large number of items to give a "general" idea. Then using specific at other sites to refine it.
Anandtech: Solid, and has been for years. Quality stuff.
Ars Technica: Solid also for years, though I tend to use less for whatever reason.
[H]ardOCP: Probably my favorite and most trusted. Has a OC slant, but has other stuff as well. Good community.
HotHardware, X-Bit labs, Legion hardware are all pretty trusted sites I have used a lot in the past.
Hardware Canucks is not only a great site in its own right, but also offers a bit of Canadian perspective which is nice at times.
All that said, it depends on the component one is looking for reviews on. Each site will have strengths or weaknesses. Some of the more general sites are exactly that. In some cases, components being review simply are not done all that often by the general review sites and you have to find a specific site that does that best. In some instances there is no specific site.
Laptop graphics which I know very little is one example. Things like Monitors I usually don't see too much coverage.
The best example I can think of (though it is a bit better now a days) was PSU. NO ONE did PSU reviews, particularly like 5-6 years ago. One of the biggest problems with PSU were the fact that A) Brands would lie through their teeth horribly on their specs, and B) there are only a handful of actual companies that make these things that are then re-branded six ways from Sunday. Testing these things are not quite as sexy as CPU or GPU benchmarks. Anyway at one point the ONLY place that I found legitimate useful reviews was a sticky forum (on [H]ardOCP) that was maintained by a user than took it on himself to do the testing, though he didn't have his own tech site, nor was employed by one (so far as I know). I forget his user name, but he was once upon a time as far as I am concerned THE guru as far as PSU were concerned. It was really THE place for real information on PSU. This was before the whole 80Plus thing came out, which later articles (forget which site) showed a few holes in that branding process even now.
Anyway I guess what I am saying is outside the mainstream components, you may have to go "off road" a bit to find the answers you are looking for.
My go-to sites are those which go beyond the benchmark and get real-world data beyond a 3-minute number crunch.
HardOCP had their custom heatsink with the thermo-probe for more reliable temperature measurement.
Techreport has been phenomenal over the years in this. They built a custom PSU tester to test the loads of any or all of the rails at once. Then they had their "inside the second" articles diving in to frame latency, which led to better Radeon drivers. More recently, and still running, is their SSD deep-cycle test, which is already showing blocks beginning to fail on SSDs.
The innovation factor and time taken to really dive in are things I don't see elsewhere.
No, you are thinking of johnwaynebobbit.com
I typically ask friends who own that product, or have used it in the past. If I can't find anyone else, I'll check CNET. Most of their user reviews have been pretty spot on.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
As someone who used to contribute quite a bit to experts-exchange (and have the T-shirts to prove it) and stopped doing it when they wanted me to pay for the privilege, I cannot endorse them.
review sites will be filled with shills, astroturfers, dogs and idiots, this is the internet after all, I talk to real people who's opinion I trust... and even then take it with a grain of salt and cross reference with other's opinions then make up my own mind from the available evidence. if I went for review sites I would probably own an Iphone and a surface tablet by now. yuck.