A Look At Free Reviewer Swag

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."

Re:Does anyone bother with those reviews?

[rootofevil]

EHHHH

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.

"Lagniappes?"

[agentkhaki]

"Lagniappes" is a word I've not come across before. For anyone else who couldn't figure out the meaning via context, or who's looking for a proper definition:

lagniappe (lan yap)

noun

something given as a bonus or extra gift.

ORIGIN Louisiana French, from Spanish la ñapa.

Re:I'm a reviewer...

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Off to a music event this week, everyone who attends the conference gets a free iPod 80GB supplied by Apple. Oh, and it's £80 for the conference.

Re:I'm a reviewer...

[ColdWetDog]

Look at this review [annals.org] (from 2002) from the medical field. I can't find some of the other references in the open literature but basically, even cheapo freebies (my nurses just love the idiot pens with flashing LEDs in them for some weird reason) can influence behavior.

Sadly, we're all bought pretty cheaply. Ohh, shiny!

Re:Does anyone bother with those reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Consumer Reports can have reviews that point out the true merits and demerits is because of their ad-free model. Imagine you've got a reviewer who is sent some swag, but it just blows. He trashes the product, says it's inferior, points out all of the design and technological flaws, and so on. He then submits this to his editor. Trouble is, this particular manufacturer is a major advertiser for the magazine. Now what's the editor to do?

HardOCP

[bazald]

Read the HardOCP review of the iBUYPOWER P4 Custom Build [hardocp.com]. If there is a HardOCP review for something, I trust it more than any other review. They aren't afraid to rate something terribly, and to tell you everything that is wrong with it. They also go through the buying process and refuse any free stuff they are offered.

Re:Does anyone bother with those reviews?

[VolciMaster]

The best source of [business] hardware and software reviews has been InfoWorld: They either a) get samples from every manufacturer to compare head-to-head or (horror or horrors!) they actually *buy* one from each company and then test them.

Re:HardOCP

[Anonymous Coward]

An then, there's the HardOCP review of the KillerNIC, which sort of negates that, no matter how you spin it.