On 06/04/2011 09:06 AM, scott wrote:
>>> You don't read reviews before buying something?
>>
>> No. But generally I don't buy hardware from Amazon anyway...
>
> You don't need to buy it from amazon, but generally enough people have
> that there will be a good range of reviews from people using it in
> different ways. After reading a couple of pages of comments it usually
> becomes quite obvious if there are problems with the features you are
> interested in.
>
> Also check the "What people buy after looking at this page" section, it
> seems to me like bad reviews certainly affect what people buy.
>
> Is the recorder you have listed on amazon? If it is then I'd definitely
> leave a review highlighting the points you mentioned here - you'll get a
> much bigger audience and actually influence future purchasers. You
> didn't even mention the make/model number here, so how are we meant to
> avoid it :-)

First of all, AFAIK, most people don't bother with reviews. If you want 
to buy some item of electronics, you go to one or maybe a few shops, 
look at what they sell, analyse the features vs price landscape, and 
select the product with the features that are most important to you for 
the best price.

Even if I put something on Amazon, 99.99% of purchasers will never see 
this review, and it will have no influence on their decision at all. And 
even the tiny minority of people who read reviews... there are millions 
of different places where you can post a review. There are reviews 
written in printed and electronic magazines. There are user-submitted 
reviews on Amazon and a bazillion other online stores. I can't post to 
all of them.

Is the recorder listed on Amazon? Yes it is. And according to Amazon, 
the device earned the What Hi-Fi 2009 Best PVR Award. (!) If I were to 
read reviews, What Hi-Fi is probably *the* number one review I would 
look at. And the fact that this device is top-rated would probably lead 
me to buy it.

The actual user reviews all mention an endless succession of bugs, 
glitches and annoyances. But with a top recommendation from the printed 
press, I doubt this will make any impact on sales at all.

Secondly, I think the top-rated status reflects another big problem: 
There isn't anything better on the market. ALL of these devices are 
buggy and fiddly to use. If you read all the reviews, you'd just end up 
buying nothing at all, because none of them work very well.

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