Hardware reviews

[xortam]

In general, you should be aware of how a publication gets its revenue and what it's ethics are before you blindly start trusting their reviews. I recall that PC Weekly wouldn't even write up a review unless that vendor spent a minimum of advertising dollars on that publication. So what do you do? Get the widest and most varied opinions that you can from any source and use your own good judgement to make the most informed decision you can. Opinion sources are of course not only publications and web sites but knowledgeable store employees, friends and colleagues, as well as forums such as this. But in the end, "You'se pays your money and takes your chances."

[Greebe]

TP that one of the reason's I sat my little butt down here at the MURC. Constantly reading wonderful reviews of flawed equipement that burned me many times over by the likes of TomsHardwareGourd, AnandsTechnobabble and virtually all major publications. At least here, if members (including myself) post up what works for them (or not), then we all benefit from it... with honest real world appraisals.

Luckily our host, the ANTman, doesn't polish over any of the flaws he finds either and let me tell you M doesn't like that.

That's why I say TUFF to all marketing & sales types(hypes is more like it)! If your product has to be lied about to garner the sales #'s you want, remember this... What we do in life, echo's in eternity!

[JamesA]

Well said, friend.

This forum is one of the best place to get advice on. From quantum physics vs. relativity to mad love/crushes to anything with sillycon.



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JamesA: Just a Dumbass MURCer

[xortam]

We've come to gather and praise the goodness of the MURC for it is all powerful. Can I get a hallelujah from the congregation? <font size=+1>hallelujah!<font>

[Electric Amish]

I've always wanted to do my own reviews, but I've never found the time or energy.

amish

[az]

I value the reviews in c't quite much - if nothing else, they're at least a good opinion to consider, and they DO test things such as image quality, noise of HD's/fans/systems etc.

Though I think asking other people who already have the equipment you want, be it on a forum or in real life, is the best way to get the big picture

AZ

[Taz]

The problem with reviews whether they be for hardware, cars or whatever, is that they only use the product for a short period of time so they may not come across the problems a real user would have. I've got an Abit KT7A RAID as well and when I originally installed it my PC was running Win98 and everything was working fine, if I had written a review at that point it would have got top marks. Latter on I installed Win2k and experienced the well known 686B bug, and now after a lot of effort things have settled down. Writting a review of it now It would not have got the same praise as before due to the problems with the VIA chipset. Doing a group test of KT133A boards would still put it near the top as the problem is shared by all of them but the reader should be made aware that in certain situations they are going to have problems.

Maybe they should do long term tests on the winners of group tests and see after a couple of months whether their oppions have changed

[Jammrock]

If anyone wants me to test hardware, just send it to me. I'll test it and give my unbiased opinion

MURC is a great site. I've tried other forums, but MURC is just right for me. I like the international diversity as well.



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]@/\/\/\/\|Ø\0©|&lt;

Athlon 650
256 MB PC133 CAS3 from Crucial
87 GB storage from WD & IBM
Matrox G400 (it's not dead yet!)
SB Live! the original full retail, still going strong
Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400, the PC speakers that goes BOOM!
Please email me if you would like to contribute to the "Jammrock needs new toys" fund.

[The PIT]

You can do a review on this peice of junk called an Abit kt7 133a if you like. It'll run for days no probs then crash crash. The only thing that has changed is office xp can that be the latest culprit?

[DentyCracker]

Pointless post just trying to get to 1k.
I listen to reviews to get certain information, such as undocumented "features" and bios settings. I never ever listen too hard to tomshardware. anand has useful info, I just ignore most of his conclusions anyway. I find overclockers.com to be very hard on all the boards the buy and test, so i listen to them with more attention than to the aforementioned. Viahardware and ocworkbench aren't bad either. I tend to be somewhat of an early adopter wrt mobos so I usually have bought the mobo before lots of MURCers have done so. If I haven't though you're damn right I'll listen to those who have.

[The PIT]

Hardware reviews

After reading reviews over the years and ended up with Junk (i.e crappy Monitors and the latests a crappy abit kt7 133a) I now wonder whether these are totally pointless.
On Anandtech.com they got a review of the the kt7 133 boards. The Via 686b chip is well known for it's flaw espeically with soundblaster so when he's running a stability test why doesn't he put one of those in. If I had I wonder if the number of crashes would have shot up.
I've seen reviews in magazines where the machines just kept crashing and they still gave them top marks.
I now believe even more you're better joining a forum and see how problems pop up with the peice of hardware that you're interested in. If I'd have gone to viahardware forums I wouldn't have gone for a Abit kt133a

[az]

Denty... so you'll be the one who listen to when buying a new motherboard most of the times

AZ