🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:31:40 +0100, Andy Mabbett
<andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:

>Following my recent request for information on a CD-R drive, people were
>quite scathing of PC Pro.
>
>Which are the best sites magazines for such reviews?

IME there isn't one, more's the pity. One of my favourite if sad
pastimes is finding Best Buys in one mag's review that are completely
slated in others. It's commoner than you  may think. Even the reviews
in the better mags (within which I'd include PCPro) can fail dismally,
especially in their selection of Best Buy, Editor's Choice etc. There
are many problems, amongst the commonest being:

- Failure to include enough models. That 'comprehensive review'
all-too-often consists of only a few mainstream models, padded with
unfamiliar brands that were presumably being pushed by PR
acquaintances and, with whatever excuse, not including other
best-selling models.

- Failure to base the review recommendations on up-to-date street
prices, but using makers' list prices which can vary considerably in
how much they're discounted before appearing as street prices or
alternatively what turn out to be very porr guestimates of street
price;

- Focusing the recommendations or criticisms on aspects that may not
be at all relevant to everyday use by most users;

- A desperate need to rank the models and to rate them as good or bad,
when in all honesty the majority of them would be a perfectly good
choice and perform indistinguishably for most users - monitors and
display cards being good current examples;

I can imagine that the editors are well aware of their review
shortcomings, but don't feel it's worthwhile or simply can't allocate
the necessary resources to remedy the situation.

Forced to pick just one mag I'd go for PC Magazine, which does have a
long-term reputation for thorough bench testing, but even here the
results are not always reliable.

As for websites, the only ones I've found to be really worthwhile are
www.storagereview.com plus http://www.xbitlabs.com/storage/ (Russian
AIUI), both of which as you might guess are to do with hard drives,
CDROMS etc. Even here, while the technical quality of the reviews is
good, the coverage of models is limited. Some of the other well-known
sites such as Tom's or Anand's can be surprisingly superficial and
sometimes plain wrong outside their core expertise of CPUs and
motherboards.

John Dann