Trying vs. using, and disclosure in reviews
December 30th, 2006 by Derek
The Signal vs. Noise blog has a good post on how hard it is to review something when you really only have time to try it out. As I work on IHR more and more, I try to give each product I review some time and some real-world usage, rather than just running it through its basic paces and trying to decide if it’s any good.
Still, sometimes we don’t have the time to do a truly thorough job, so we have to give you the impression that our tryout and our experience lead us to. We don’t always find the little annoyances or hidden gems about a product until later—and if we do, we’ll try to post about that here or mention it on the show at some point.
On a related point, there’s been a bit of a controversy recently on the web about some bloggers who received free high-end laptops (so high-end that they’re actually Ferrari models) from Microsoft pre-loaded with Windows Vista. We get free stuff too sometimes, so you should know how that works for us.
IHR is our hobby—our sponsors help pay our expenses, but in the end it costs Paul and me out of our own pockets to run, and that may never change. So being able to try out recording products is one of the benefits of running the show for us. As we’ve mentioned here before in the IHR FAQ, we get products in all sorts of ways: we buy some at full retail, we get some free from manufacturers or distributors, we get a discounted reviewer price, or we borrow some from friends or colleagues. Some we have to send back, some we choose to keep, and some we give away.
We do our best not to have the source, price, or eventual use of a product influence our opinion of it—but sometimes it might. You’re welcome to ask us how we acquired a particular product and we’ll post the answer here. And if you think we should always note specifically where a particular product came from, or if it doesn’t matter to you, leave a comment on this post and let us know.
Entry Filed under: Blog
(AAC audio)
3 Comments Add your own
1. Shane Hendricks&hellip | December 30th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I don’t think bloggers (or podcasters) are the problem. IMHO, Microsoft blew it because they were dishonest. Anyone who submits a product to a blogger or podcaster obviously wants to promote the product, right?
Microsoft claims they just gave away those laptops with Vista to “get feedback”…not for positive press. If that’s the case, why not give the laptops to Vista beta testers?
As far as the stuff you guys get for free, I say more power to you. You’re taking the time to put the podcasts together for us all, so you deserve the spoils in my opinion.
Of course, if you’re going to review a freebie, you should be extra careful to eliminate any positive bias towards the submitter, and everything I’ve seen from IHR has been great in terms of honesty and fairness. I’ve heard you guys tell it like it is, which is great!
I remember the episode where Paul gave Guitar Rig 2 some markdowns due to its CPU-hogging nature, and that was a freebie, right?
2. Derek&hellip | December 30th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
The software was free, but Paul ended up liking it enough that he bought the foot controller anyway. I figure that’s a good endorsement!
Similarly, I had to send back the Shure E3c in-ear monitors (apparently they clean and sterilize them and then use them at tradeshows), but ended up buying a pair of E2c models for my wife, who love love loves them.
3. Hens Zimmerman&hellip | January 2nd, 2007 at 5:34 am
I recently heard Dave Weiner talk about the future of advertising in his morning coffee break podcast. I think this is exactly the kind of thing he’s talking about. The mere fact that you are creating a home recording podcast makes it interesting for us, subscribers, to listen to whatever you care to tell us. By subscribing I am sort of assuming you are “one of us” and would never praise something that really stinks. I’m also assuming you are not identical to me and have different interests, so I only see your reviewing or talking about products as a way for me to get introduced to new products I might otherwise not hear about. Same with my own podcast; I play a LoopMasters cd every episode, but I don’t assume that every listener is interested in creating every genre of music. But it’s a great service to my audience – I think – because through my show they hear about these products. It’s education, not advertising and I think it benefits all. And there’s no better endorsement than you guys liking something so much that you mention it several times. For instance, if I were to buy monitor speakers in the future, I will look at Tannoy as my first choice.
Hens
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed