nggalai said:
Hi there,
On a side note, it seems as if Anand is just the most obvious of the major reviewing sites regarding that bit. In "traditional" media, it's the usual thing to publish a review or "article" on a topic and have the "winning" party know beforehand what's in it to secure further ad places. You'd be surprised how many "articles" and "reviews" in print magazines are actually written by the company's marketing department and signed by a magazine's editor. Be especially careful if you see a "free journalist" sign an article . . .
In that respect, Anand seems just ahead of the game. Be prepared to see more such "funny" correspondences in the not too distant future, on the web. It's not as if marketeers were totally stupid or very imaginative.
93,
-Sascha.rb
Exactly. Your comments are absolutely correct. I've been frustrated many times in the past by incomplete and misleading hardware reviews as published in the paper trade press. I expect a lot better from the epress, though, because of the immediacy of the media. I sometimes wonder if I should...
Anand, Tom'sH, and [H] (HardOCP) all started out as sites primarily or exclusively dealing with motherboards, core-logic chipsets, and cpus. Tom's H and [H] also did a lot of overclocking stuff. It's when they started branching out into other areas, such as 3D coverage, that they began to have problems. At least that I saw.
The paper trade press has always been split between its loyalties of keeping its advertisers happy and keeping its reading public interested, because of course they receive income from both sources. But non-subscription based web sites receive no money from subscribers and so must depend primarily on advertising income. These sites all began as "hobbyist-enthusiast" sites and Anand started up while still a teenager (I remember one nVidia spokesperson years ago who, when asked about someting or other Anand had disclosed in a review about its products, said something to the effect of "*snicker*--Who cares what a 16-year-old says"...? Although the remark didn't win the guy any points, there were a lot of people surprised to learn Anand was 16 years old...
)
I much preferred the content of these sites when they were generally enthusiast sites--there was a lot more basic information imparted at that time than there is today. Anand can do and is capable of very good hardware reviews. His only problem of late is one of inconsistency and frequency. I am also sure that he is busy with other areas of life that supercede his web site--he's still a growing lad, don't ya' know--although *certainly* not 16 any longer...
[Ah, if only I could go back to that age knowing what I know now!...
]
Also, much of the focus of these sites has shifted to "news" coverage which often is just the recycling of rumors and innuendo among these sites. I don't know how many times I see web sites list an Inquirer article as a "news" item and have followed the link to discover the story has no attribution and is purely speculation without sources (that are named.) Much of what is termed "news" these days is not.
Anyway, the concept of "big" is more of a matter of individual perception than anything else, as far as a web site is concerned. For me, B3d is "bigger" than [H], TomsH, and Anandtech combined, because it offers something more than any of these other sites do. I also have chatted back and forth with the guys here running B3d in other forums and under other handles in coversations that date back several years--and I respect them as people and have an admiration for their approaches that hasn't grown stale with time. I see in them a degree of consistency and sense of purpose that's just not that apparent elsewhere. That's a very refreshing commodity among hardware Internet sites these days.
The great thing about the Internet is that anybody with the "right stuff" who persists and is consistent can be "big"--and B3d has a lot going for it because most people don't care for fluff pieces on the Internet any moreso than they care to read them in the paper press. The only potential problem I see for web sites as opposed to paper press is the fact that if you want to make a business out of it your primary source of income are the companies whose products you review, most of the time. Some of the things we see, and don't see, at other web sites are the product of this conflict of interest, IMO. Don't see that changing anytime soon.
What if we just start a sticky record of HIV cheatings, starting with the lately really infamous Nvidia 
