A Little Rant
Things
weren't always like this....
I
recall having conversations with people who were commited to the work that our
community was doing a few years ago. We were lucky to find PR people who understood
how hard we worked for our small sites and gave us products at the drop of an
e-mail. I can place the change in the industry to one guilty party: the popular
media. One day our "hobby" sites were discovered by the likes of Popular Mechanics,
Popular Science, and CBS Morning News. What invalidated their work on covering
our community is that they not only focused on what we do, but the fact that a
few of our members were making enough money to buy expensive German cars or seaside
homes. I can count these mega-successes on one hand. Anand was on the scene from
its inception and I congratulate him on his enormous success. Tom gave up his
work as a physician to pursue his hobby and is also wildly successful - although
I think that the content of late is slower then his old pace and he is much less
involved with the day to day operations of Tom's Hardware. Anyone remember what
Sharky Extreme was before Alex Ross sold it? What followed this shoddy news reporting
was a flood of people who saw fame and fortune trying to mimic the work of successful
reviewers.
So where
is the industry going?.?.
There
are some obvious trends in the industry. With the economic downturn of the last
year many companies that were marginally surviving are now out of business or
have been absorbed by larger corporations. That means that advertising budgets
in many cases are now non-existent or much smaller. Similarily we have seen many
smaller sites dissolve. In many situations I think this is a very good thing.
I do not think there is much room for sites that simply try to bash a product
or place another under the spotlight with beatiful music playing. Let's face it,
there aren't enough objective reviews anymore. We strive to always be objective
and often we catch heat from manufacturers for it. You see, noone likes to see
criticism laid on their product, whether it be deserved or not. What these manufacturers
noticed was how certain sites could "move" a review and then subsequently offer
advertising. I won't point fingers at who I think is doing this as I hope that
our readers understand that we try to be objective in all matters - even things
that you may not know get under our skin. Often this means that these sites will
get a product days, weeks, or even sometimes months in advance of us. So we keep
our mouths shut and "happily" continue working with the products that we do get.
Have we ever cut a review unit to pieces? Certainly. If I am not happy with a
product I don't want you to waste your money buying it. We report all defects
we find to see if the manufacturers' have a BIOS, software, or hardware update
fix. I also don't want to support companies who are producing inferior products.
I'd rather congratulate the R&D work that happens in companies who strive to produce
good reliable products than those who strive to create flashy products that fall
short of all their claims. As readers I don't expect you to know that we have
turned down many an advertising deal for products that we didn't want our name
associated with. This is a ruthless industry when profits dictate the survivability
of sites rather than the quality of their work. I point to StorageReview.com for
anyone who doesn't believe that.
Very
recently I found a problem with one of Soltek's motherboards. I reported it -
and at first they were a little skeptical of my results but sent a replacement
unit anyway. Then they found other users having the same problems a couple of
weeks later. All defective boards were replaced and the product was pulled until
the fix could be applied across the entire manufacturing line. You didn't hear
about this unless you visit very industry specific bulletin boards but Soltek
admitted there was a problem and took a lot of steps to resolve it. Now, the boards
we have received recently haven't given us a bit of trouble and Soltek values
the opinions we send them. Why mention this? This is what the hardware industry
was about at one time. We worked with good manufacturers to help them improve
their products and to produce products that we as consumers wanted. Companies
that didn't prioritize quality or reliability weren't helped by our community
and now most of them are gone from the business world.
