I have a handful of reviews coming down the pipe, so I figure it is best to first give some disclaimers in regards to the way I will be handling reviews. There seems to be a fairly common practice in the Tech industry of giving favorable reviews in exchange for money or free review models. Hey, I'm not knocking the people that do this. We all need money to pay bills and gadgets to play with, right? That's not the way I will be operating here at the Coop, though.
I'm pretty hard-headed, some say to a fault, about sticking to my philosophical point-of-view when it comes to issues of fairness and justice. Part of this is that I simply refuse to be bought. One does not easily win my favor or approval (especially in regards to products), and attempts at winning me over through gifts or money only solidify my refusal to bestow either favor or approval.
So, rest assured that you will never read a review here that is anything other than my opinion. I take my opinions seriously, as they exhibit who I am to a great degree, and I will not hold back whatever praise or enmity I have for a product regardless of the circumstances that brought it into my possession. As I said, we can all use a little extra money to help pay off those credit cards. I can only assume that my sheer brilliance as a critic will become readily apparent after a few of my reviews, so if a company saw this and offered to pay me cash or goods to do a review of their product, I'd certainly entertain the notion. I would be upfront with them, though, that my review would clearly state that I'd been paid to do the review, and that I would not be shy about verbally assaulting said product, no matter how much I had been paid, if I find it to be lacking. Fair enough, right?
Another aspect to my reviews is that I really only intend, at this point, to cover things that I have first-hand knowledge and experience of that have not already been reviewed to death by others. If I do review something that has been reviewed a lot, there are only two circumstances under which I'd cover it anyway.
The first is if there is some aspect of the item in question that I feel has not been adequately commented upon by those others. Having a philosophical and theological way of analyzing things, I often observe things that others simply do not care about. For instance, there are mountains of reviews of Mac OS X, but how many of those observe the way Apple works from a "big picture" perspective in their design and expect the user to think rather than memorize when getting familiar with using the OS? This is the type of thing I may write about despite all the other reviews.
I definitely want to cover items I have that are slightly more obscure, though. It is hard to find reviews of some of the things you can purchase at geeks.com and places like that, so I plan to fill that void where applicable.
The second situation is if an item was a gift to me. I often receive gadgets or entertainment as gifts for Christmas. I plan to honor the people who gave them by taking the time to give back to the community through a review of the product. Again, I will not hold back in my criticism if the product is a failure, so people who give me gifts just have to know not to take my reviews personally, for better or worse.
One other important detail is that I will usually put up a link to the place I purchased the item from. In instances where I have an affiliate account, I will use the affiliate link. Please do not think from this that my reviews are just meant to be a way to fish for affiliate money. I only sign up for affiliate accounts at places that I actually buy from and like. So, I have an affiliate account at Meritline because I like their service. If I review something I buy from there, I will definitely use an affiliate link since I do not hesitate to recommend them to others. On the other hand, I wouldn't sign up for an affiliate account at TigerDirect if I was broke and eating scraps off park benches, so if you see a link to them, know that I begrudgingly bought from there because I could not find what I needed anywhere else. I certainly would not go sign up for an account just so I could try to make money off the fact that I am posting a link to their product. Again, only in cases where I like a place enough to recommend them will I be using affiliate links.
I think that sums up my approach to reviewing. I am a harsh critic of a product when it fails, but I will have undying loyalty to a company that makes good products and I will recommend them every chance I get. That's just who I am. I could sell anyone something that I myself am pleased with, but couldn't sell a bad product to someone even if it was the only job I could find. Then there is my famous blacklist, which you may have noticed a hint of in my mention of TigerDirect. Consistently do the consumer wrong, or do them wrong one really bad time, and there's almost no escaping the depths of my disdain.
Having bored you now with all my disclaimers, let me move on to some actual reviews.
Peace,
Todd
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