A Look At Free Reviewer Swag 144
chicl3t writes "It used to be that the lagniappes that came along with hardware for review were things like USB drives — makes sense, one 128MB drive for a 100MB presentation. But...iPod nanos? As in more than one? That's another story entirely. It's damn nice swag, of course, but at what point is it too much? A DailyTech writer talks about his experiences with swag."
I heartily agree (Score:5, Funny)
Sour grapes? (Score:2)
Sounds like somebody's pissed that they didn't get their share of the pie.
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Does anyone bother with those reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reputable source I've found for reviews is Consumer Reports. Other than that, the pickings are slim.
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Consumer reports not so much. Use them if you must. Ive found them to be a little too harsh on suff ive bought thats turned out to be fantastic.
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But the real lesson to be learned here is buyer beware.
If you buy into a reviewer's opinion, make sure you can afford it.
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Consumer Reports can be a bit odd at times, they've marked down things heavily things that are somewhat minor in my opinion. Sometimes they don't make allowances for the target market, such as marking down a sports car for it's rough ride when that's a sacrifice that needs to be made in order to get better performance.
Even though they don't get their review samples, I've heard of one way that their no-ad system can b
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Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've owned a Jeep Wrangler for a decade, and certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone with 2 kids as a replacement for their Honda Accord. It DOES have a rough ride, it lacks amenities, it has no storage space, etc etc. If you don't really want a convertible 4x4 that it easy to tinker with, there's no reason to buy one. Yet every year Jeep groups get up in arms over Consumer Reports giving it a low score because it has a lot of negatives that Jeep owners tend not to care about.
If you're buying a sports car, you might not care about trunk space or back seat leg room, but that doesn't mean Consumer Reports should just ignore those factors in their review. if you want a review from the point of view of a sports car writer, buy a sports car magazine.
Consumer reports does a great job, I think the people who complain about it just don't understand what job Consumer Reports is doing.
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Re:Does anyone bother with those reviews? (Score:5, Funny)
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I would imagine that if you regularly moved someone with a wheelchair, that you would consider that when you take a look at the vehicle. Seems kind of, I don't know, important, for that type of person. Yet the vast majority of people will not need to stow a wheelchair in the truck of their Mitsubishi. Worth a mention, but not worth bringing down the score of a vehicle.
The ability to store a wheelchair just
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Thats why i dont trust journalists/media owners (Score:1)
Journalists They would seem to rate a product based upon the giveaways. If the product supplier didn't like the review they got then threaten to not to advertise.
5/5 amazing
HardOCP (Score:3, Informative)
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It's nice to hear you might actually be able to trust anandtech. They have always see
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pfft....yawwwnnnn (Score:2)
And how 'bout those Rockies??!! Are they choke central, or what?
Do theypreload it with ads? (Score:2)
That's only a $150 device. $79 refurbished. Do they load it up with ads?
For us non-english speakers (Score:5, Insightful)
On another note, isn't this comparable to the free gifts that pharmacutical companies give doctors on their conferences. It is just that this doesn't have the obvious connection to peoples health and well being and perhaps is a bit smaller in scope. A bit far fetched perhaps but the same principle or what?
Re:For us non-english speakers (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. It is. One of the interesting things coming out of some recent research [annals.org] is that even cheap trinkets (pens with blinky lights, post-it notes, etc.) subtly influence prescribing behavior. The drug companies know it. They've studied it extensively and will continue to do this sort of advertising as long as humanely possible. Unfortunately, as a species, we're pretty easy to influence, even if we think we know better and are above it all.
(Goes back to reading Slashdot).
Re:For us non-english speakers (Score:5, Interesting)
But to illustrate how bad the advert/bribery has gotten in medicine: http://doctormental.blogspot.com/2004/11/doctors-and-drug-companies.html [blogspot.com]
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Re:For us non-english speakers (Score:5, Interesting)
Its still a big risk... now I know how much easier it is to get an asthmatic to take advair than cheaper albuterol plus QVAR. So I am probably more likely to rx in the future because of that knowledge. But that is a moral choice I pay for my patient.
Other than that, I don't eat a cookie, take a plastic pancreas, or write with a Viagra pen. I don't even like to look at the time on a Tequin clock.
Nick
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Of course that price for QVAR is in a health care system that is not as terminally fucked as the US system where we pay a lot more and get a lot less. But at least you can still order it on
QVAR PS (Score:2)
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English is my first language and I consider myself to be relatively well-spoken; I still didn't know what a lagniappe was.
Aikon-
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Very old SciFi books, but entertaining 16 years ago.
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It's how most of us in the industry do estimates on IT projects.
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My mother works in a semi-small doctors office. They have 4 docs one is cardio the other neuro, and two might be a more general practitioner doc. Dont know the specifics. About 12 more support staff as well.
They have Pharm Reps (Drug Reps) they came in atleast twice per week. They give little presentations on new drugs, but also new tools, devices.
Every time they come, they dont bring just pens, note pads and posters.
No, no no....
They cat
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I always thought those free pens and pads were cool and harmless. Then I found about a pharm company sponsored ski trip, that has some glitches in the travel plans. When they surgeons came back, they refused to prescribe any of the companies antibiotics for one
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Critical thinking has its rewards (Score:5, Funny)
This is a fine example of critical thinking being rewarded. In their heart of hearts, Corporations only want people to understand the benefits of their products. And writers... well we all know how hard it is to grind out paragraphs for which someone wants to pay. If writers have to EBay their lagniappes for food and rent money, are you going to oppress them with your sanctimonious principles, you cruel prescriptive bastards?
Besides, the reviewers are not receiving bribes. They are lagniappes. If I were a politician, I would be open to receiving lagniappes. It sounds like something you get at a fine soirée, like canapés and other words with French accents in them.
Message texted from pew #7 in my church using a Blackberry from a review I did earlier this year.
Re:Critical thinking has its rewards (Score:5, Funny)
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Yep, of course it's all the evil corporations fault for wanting us to buy their products. That's why I usually wait for awhile until a good number of actual user reviews get published. And you can usually find them in forums after googling around for the product number a bit. Amazon is also very helpful in reading user reviews. I bought the N800
Swag removal for free (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Swag removal for free (Score:5, Funny)
There's just one thing to say about this... (Score:2)
-F
"Lagniappes?" (Score:5, Informative)
lagniappe (lan yap)
noun
something given as a bonus or extra gift.
ORIGIN Louisiana French, from Spanish la ñapa.
Re:"Lagniappes?" (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I've got it, you don't have a right mouse button. My bad.
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1) Two fingers on trackpad
2) click
3) select "Look up in Dictionary"
4) ???
5) Profit!
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you need to go to one of those presentations where they hand out mice for free...
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You don't even need to highlight the word. Just hit Control + Command + D, and the definition of whatever is under the cursor appears in a panel underneath it. If you hold on to Control + Command, you can move the mouse around and get the definition of everything the cursor touches. I use it all the time.
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On the other hand, I frequently feel frustrated when I want to use that feature while reading text in my native language, so I guess that even native speakers ma
/. effect (Score:2)
I wonder if the
It appears from the comments that most folks don't use dictionary.com as their first reference point for words that they don't know, and use either Google or wikipedia. Interesting.
Using dictionary.com (Score:1)
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No idea on IE, but Konqueror has a similar feature to Firefox. I can double click the word, right click, and get a small menu with the options "Search for '%s' with Google" and a "Search for '%s' with >" option that brings up a list of all the search engines I've added. The "Search for '%s' with Google" uses the default search engine, it just happens to be Google in my case.
Shelby Foote -- Re:"Lagniappes?" (Score:2)
Nano for Swag? Ha! That's nothing! (Score:3, Funny)
At another convention, I got a guitar tuner, and a really nice long sleeve Moog Synthesizer T shirt. ANY old dump can crank out cheap short sleeve shirts - you know you're getting a better deal when they dish out heavier quality long sleeve T shirts. That's much better swag. I am a swag seeker. I have original Napster Golf Shirts. I have Macromedia mouse pads, I have all kinds of this crap in my garage. I even have a heavy duty cotton button down collared Fontographer shirt. Really nice shirt, and a prized possession. I have a long sleeve "ready Set go" shirt, too.
But iPod nano? BWAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Don't make me laugh. That it such junior league material - intro stuff like my shirts and mousepads. When they give away the giant 160 gig iPod, then we're talkin' quality swag....
RS
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Considering that Palm never released something called Palm IV, you either got a Chinese knockoff PDA or something non-existent. I think I'd take the Nano.
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np: Prefuse 73 - Smoking Red ft. John Stanier (Preparations)
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RS
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"Swag" is a euphemism for "bribe" (Score:5, Interesting)
> talks about his experiences with swag.
If you are a reviewer nothing is too much. If you are a consumer anything at all is a bribe.
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I'm a reviewer... (Score:5, Insightful)
But be that as it may, surely giving out gifts of any size is only a problem if it actually influences reviewers. And on that count I see no grounds for concern at all. I think anyone who works in this industry quickly develops a healthily cynical regard for manufacturers, and if we feel like a company's being unusually nice to us our immediate instinct is to wonder why, and to look at their product with extra suspicion. The magazine market's just too competitive for reviewers to get away with endorsing lousy products: readers aren't stupid, and I think most of us love our jobs far too much to sell out our reputations for a few hundred pounds' worth of free stuff.
(That's how it seems to be with print journalism, anyway. Web reviewers... well, I can't speak for them.)
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Re:I'm a reviewer... (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly, we're all bought pretty cheaply. Ohh, shiny!
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FWIW, I get to keep nearly all software and probably 70% of hardware but it's never influenced me - indeed, several items have got slammed when I reviewed them but they still supply
Back in the day... (Score:1)
I remember NVIDIA sending five GeForce 4 cards when they were vapourware to the public so we could overclock them to smithereens. Of which, two died and the other two made up machines from other review equipment that was kept.
review freebies (Score:3, Insightful)
old-style (Score:2)
Careful what others see you carrying... (Score:1)
I fail to see what the problem is (Score:2)
Bit thaqt annoyed me about the article was the notion that journalists are paid enough, witho
Buy the reviewed items (Score:3, Insightful)
That is the only real way to seriously review a product. Buy a real version of it from a real retailer who had no idea who you are. That is how consumer watchdogs do it, they want to avoid any potential that the producer tries to influence the results.
We all seen the stories about reviewers being send special versions, geared to do really well in the used benchmarks.
Do it like the pros do it. Seperate yourselve completly from the people whose product you are reviewing.
Offcourse, that means the public has to start A paying the reviewers B wait till the product has already been released before the review can be done. Not going to happen, I am afraid.
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Good swag=good review (Score:2, Interesting)
Bah. My best swag (Score:2)
The Simulink control graph is cute though.
Swag is just the tip of the iceberg. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll bet the people in charge of certain magazines or blogs have enormous incentive to put the products of their sponsor companies in a positive light - or at least in a non-negative light.
At the same time you have to wonder if they'll spin the product of a competitor to their sponsor's product in a negative light.
For instance, I remember back in the day, Microsoft products would get reviewed much more favourably than WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 or any other competitor based on subjective criteria such as "ease-of-use". Of course, Microsoft was the heaviest advertiser in magazines such as PC Magazine, and you wonder if their executives talked and made an agreement of money for good reviews.
At CNet, many of their reviewers have written books about Microsoft products, gathering information from people close to Microsoft - how they can maintain an unbiased opinion on any review with a Microsoft gadget is beyond me.
There are many blogs where the PS3 gets bashed over anything, from calling it a George Foreman grill, to bashing Sony's "evilness", to it's lack of backwards compatibility to it's price. However, the XBox 360, a product by Microsoft, doesn't get bashed nearly as much over it's failure rate, Microsoft's "evilness", overcharging for non-standard components and online play, it's non-backwards compatibility, and so on... - not surprisingly, Microsoft does a lot more advertising on these sites than Sony.
My point is, bribes go much further in the tech review/news industry than swag...
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Like this is new??? (Score:3, Interesting)
It didn't effect my reviews or commentary. I still slammed the companies I got freebies from.
Hello? Ethics? (Score:2)
Its easy to overlook the odd thumbdrive.
That sort of bullshit is what separates casual bloggers from real journalists and reviewers. If you pretend to be a journalist and have any professional ethics at all, you don't accept freebies from the people you're covering and reviewing. Period. Not a thumb drive, not a T-shirt, not a voucher for lunch at McD's, nothing, zilch, nada. Real news organizations fire the asses of reporters who accept freebies. If bloggers want to be taken seriously, and claim the same privileges and legal protections that "r
Swag, sure, but "super"? (Score:2)
This year, they're giving out PSPs.
I originally thought this was ridiculous, before I booked my $1000 flight, $100 hotel, and rented a $100 car to go to a pointless 3 hour meeting at one of MY customers.
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Re:Great News! (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was more active in the Xbox scene I would receive hardware (modchips) to review. Never sent any of them back, but usually that's because they didn't work so well when I was done with them. Only had one vendor ask for it back, specifically to do Failure Analysis. They asked if I wanted a replacement and I turned them down. To be fair though I first tested the things as a normal user would use them, then as an extreme modder may use them, then as an idiot would use them (plugged in backwards). That usually did them in (though one did my box in instead...). I suppose plugging in an SLI PCIe backwards would be difficult.
-nB
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Allow me to introduce my friends "tin snips" and "hot glue gun".
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Confused? (Score:2)
Go to an academic conference (Score:1)
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