Three years or so ago, a friend of mine started a Mac hardware review site. Less than a year later, he was getting more than one new product in the mail from various companies every week. One might make the quick assumption that he was just whoring himself for free hardware.

Not true. He wrote honest reviews (not to mention he was a good writter, which helped), which ment his credibility and popularity went up. He did no advertising but gets a lot of traffic because of this. And companies know this, so they send him this stuff. Sure, he's said "Hey, this product is crap" and that company has had to take a hit. But then a month later that same co will send another product, and if it's good, he'll say so and they'll make sales. He has no advertising on his site, either.

So while being a hardware whore will get you some stuff (Probably crappy stuff too), being honest will help you in the long run because companies know when sites will say anything and most reputable companies avoid them.