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?"

Re:Google is your friend...

[Aladrin]

While I don't use ", problems" on my search, this is basically exactly how I judge products now. I search for the "productx review" on Google, then I open all the links with reviews. I read a few good user reviews, a couple paid reviews, and then I read a TON of bad reviews. If nobody can find anything bad to say about the product, then I know I've found the one I want. If anyone can find bad things to say, I weigh those failings against what I want the product for and whether it will affect me.

Example: I recently decided I needed a toaster oven. Instead of rushing down to kmart and buying just any old oven, I went online and started doing reviews. Everyone I have told this to basically called me crazy. ("You searched for reviews for a TOASTER OVEN!?") I found that Euro Pro makes an amazing $80 (Macy's) oven. I then looked it up at local stores and found that KMart carries that brand. Unfortunately, the 'best' model was on sale that week for only $5 more than the cheapest Euro Pro, and they were sold out of it and the middle one, too. ($35, $40 and $50 normal prices.) I bought the cheap one anyhow, because I didn't feel like waiting. (KMart doesn't bother to restock things they put on sale because they'll have to honor their rainchecks.)

It's an amazing toaster oven. I absolutely love it.

I've used this technique for years. The only downside to it is that you tend to start thinking negatively first, and many products that had you hyped, you will end up not buying them. Kind of a downer. (But at least you didn't waste your money, which is more of a downer.)

I think if many people started using this method, either product quality would get a lot better, or there'd be a hell of a lot of astroturfing.

Re:The right way in corporate America

[clickclickdrone]

Alas, this seems to be the norm amongst the US reviewing magazines. I've worked on and off in the UK arena and have heard some truly scary tales about how the US market works i.e. the PR company provides the copy, the advertising dept drives the editorial dept and so on. That would get seriously frowned upon here. Indeed, I know one editor whose ad dept wouldn't talk to him because he got so stroppy with them when they suggested he couldn't hammer a product whose manufacturer had just taken out a full page ad.

review aggregator

[HeyBob!]

I just found this site yesterday: http://www.hardwareranking.com/ [hardwareranking.com] while looking for reviews of Syncmaster 244T
It seems to pull in reviews from many different sources.

Find out first if PHB has a preference

[RPGonAS400]

I was new at a job about 9 years ago and I had to find a new printer for printing certain bar codes. It had to accept a specific language. My boss was a former IBMer and liked IBM equipment and told me that. I spent literally a week coming up with my recommendation. My findings came up up with 3 that would work. Genicom, IBM, and Printronix. The IBM one was ruled out notwithstanding my bosses preference and I recommended the Genicom and gave my reasons. As soon as I did that, he told me he wanted the Printronix all along (we were replacing an older worn out Printronix) and made me order that. The Genicom sales rep had already dropped $4000 to match the $12000 Printronix price. I ordered the Printronix and felt like I had wasted a week.

In the end it was worth it, however, since the Printronix company never sent us the $12k bill and we got the printer for free. I still wish I had asked PHB right after I ruled out IBM.