Where Do You Go for Worthwhile Product Reviews?

An anonymous reader asks: "What's the deal with reviews and product comparisons? My boss wants independent comparative reviews of proxy and web servers to use to make/justify his decision. We all know that what the vendors write about their own (and competitive) products, so I tried searching for 3rd party reviews. I can find heaps of articles on the web telling us how great IIS is or how good Microsoft's Proxy server is, but nothing showing a back-to-back comparison of Squid vs. Sun Java Proxy vs. Microsoft Proxy, and the same for Apache and IIS. What's happening here? Where can I find an honest back-to-back product comparison?"

choice

[aerthling]

Choice [choice.com.au] magazine does unbiased, in-depth reviews, comparisons and evaluations, although from what I've seen so far their software reviews are more consumer oriented.

I Get Best Reviews In Forums

[chromozone]

If you go to a related forum you can often post asking about a couple products and often get a reply from someone who used both. Forums can be pretty useful and users can have great expertise. I suspect some manufacturers even let forums do problem solving for them. I got much better advice for a new ASUS mobo from a user in a photography forum then I could get from the ASUS forum. If you go to a forum for webmasters you can get all sorts of advice on servers. I don't trust a lot of published reviews in magazines that take advertising. Recently I was shopping for an LCD monitor and reviews often use wrong specs and don't seem to understand the product very well (they won't even mention if a panel is S-IPS or S-PVA etc). Certain brands seem to get a lot of wiggle room and a look at the ads on the bottom of the page usually shows why. One good site for head-to-head comparisons for monitors is http://www.lesnumeriques.com/duels.php?ty=6&ma1=52 &mo1=149&p1=1606&ma2=36&mo2=105&p2=1041&ph=6 [lesnumeriques.com] .

I know monitors are not what you asked about but I still think forums are best bet. You may be lucky not many reviews exist because I find its a good way to get hung out to fry.

Re:Depends on the product/application/environment.

[lukas84]

Erm, 750GB drives from Newegg are SOHO equipment. I'm sure, if you as a company asked IBM, HP, or whichever your server supplier is for a evaluation pack of one of their SAN appliances, that would've happened in a rather short space of time.

We usually do that for our regular customers (i work for an IBM BP).

Re:Google is your friend...

[oliderid]

There are a lot of "price aggregators" out there.
So you could also add "--order" to your search request (banning it).

Depends on the product/need

[jbarr]

For IT-related stuff, it's Google or your favorite industry-specific newsgroups.

For general "gadget" related items, I typically check out The Gadgeteer [the-gadgeteer.com] first, then Google.

For digital cameras, it's Steve's Digicams [steves-digicams.com] all the way, then Google.

For cars, it's AutoTrend [autotrend.com] or Consumer Reports Autos [consumerreports.org], then Google.

For general household stuff, it's Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org], then Google.

And in pretty much every case, I check Google.

Re:Not everything is in the press

[Anonymous Coward]

NewEgg...for reviews? You're joking, right?
See, all of the reviews on NewEgg are concocted by 'customers', not a 'journalist' or a 'staff reviewer'. With that in mind, most of the user reviews on there fall into one of two categories:
1. fanboys who give 5 stars to a product because it's made by a certain company that can do no wrong in their eyes (This new Athlon64 is awesome! Way better than anything stinky old Intel can make!), or
2. 'impatient' people who post a review on a product that was DOA and give it 1 start and call it 'the worst product ever'; sure receiving a DOA item sucks, but don't give the item a negative review before even installing it.

People suck. Go to Anandtech and read reviews, and look under their news section for 'daily hardware reviews' for hardware reviews from all over the Interweb.

Product research 101

[mabu]

Here are some of my tips to avoid products that suck.

1. If the product is available on Amazon.com, check out its reviews. Also note that sometimes slightly different/older versions of the same product have more reviews. It takes some time to sift through the sycophants and astroturf but it's a great source.

2. Search for negatives. Try google searches on "*product* sucks" or "*product* problems" and other permutations to find peoples' complaints about a product or its company.

3. Look for refurbs.... if you see a lot of refurbished versions of your product in the marketplace, this is a bad sign usually.

4. eBay... search completed auctions to see what the going value and interest is in the product. Also eBay auctions tend to have the most comprehensive array of specs on these products, often more informative than the manufacturer's web site.

5. Avoid all the large web sites with the bogus reviews and meaningless content. If you search on "*product* reviews" you're guaranteed to get a bunch of shill web sites that are worthless.