Your Opinion on "paid reviews"

This maybe ok but some basic rules have to be in place. I could see how a simple flat fee as acceptable way of compensation for time invested. The fee should just be barely be enough to cover the time spent to analyze the hardware. No matter what hardware or from what vendor the fee should remain the same. I would also suggest that the hardware be returned to the vendor after the review. This way the person spending their time to analyze the hardware can make a living and does not have any other incentives to write a bias review.

If the reviewer keeps the hardware after the review is up thats a form of a bribe anyways. Fees that are higher than the time worth to analyze the hardware and writing the review can also be considered a bonus (ie bribe). Avoiding the above is at least the first steps to run a fee based review site and remain objective.

The key to running an unbiased site is to make sure it is indifferent to vendor pressures. The site should not care if they get a sample or if they get passed up. Best case scenario is that they get a review and get a small fee to cover their work nothing more and nothing less. This is just my view on the very limited scope of the problem there are many more issues that overlap this but thats a whole other debate.