Honest reviews..publishing them ain’t so easy as it looks!!

When my Asus a8n-e sli deluxe edition motherboard died with 1 month’s warranty period to spare I read a review of Asus P5Q-Deluxe. One of the guys who reviewed the board (for the forums- won’t say which one and who but I’ve given enough clue for few to figure it out instantly and for others to run a search) used the word “challenging” for the bios.

What really happened?It was challenging alright, but not remotely in a good way.

I bought e7200 with 2 gigs of g skills 800mhz cl5 and P5Q Deluxe, end result was that the friggin board that troubles running it on stock even with all the values being put to manual. I bought the board somewhere in october and it was only in January of next year that the updated bios was stable enough for stock ram timings. One of the bios which was released between these 2 months had a weird issue of resetting the bios settings on its own (on stock and overclocked) everytime you start the system. I don’t know about you guys but what the writer meant to say was “Its as challenging as a newbie rounding up a very pissed off bull”. But if you really think about it, such reviewers could have put in simple language with no hidden meaning so why don’ they do it? Yeah- they have to keep people happy as much as they could.

Everyone knows about gamespot.com? Cool, maybe few/most remember about Kane and Lynch incident where Jeff Gerstmann was fired for giving 6 (fair as per gamespot’s ranking system goes) for that game?

Same goes for the hardware scene. As far as what I’ve seen there seem to be 2 types of PR folks- one who will give you a good product to review and will not pressure to write biased review- heck even tell you to change couple of words in the review unless its over-exaggerated or inaccurate. The second type is what Nvidia has, PR uncles and aunties tell review sites to “bend” some words here and there favouring them, or else they will blacklist them and no review samples for those blacklisted reviewers/review sites/magazines. YIKES!!!

Wait so are we talking about Charlie boy? No this is not about Semi-accurate going head to head with Nvidia PR (If you check one of the nvidia PR’s past tweets, one of them said to another that Charlie is going to be so proven wrong and his credibility will be destroyed once fermi will be released and appreciated by the public before fermi was released)

No- its not about nvidia making BBQ grills >_>. On a serious note, its about hardware secrets who was blacklisted by Nvidia because (in layman’s terms) hardware secrets didn’t want to join Nvidia’s “Kiss my ass” club and use “exotic” words to explain their problems as a “bug” or an alternate way to make a toast in emergency situations. Gabriel Torres puts up his blog post here and with respects I quote his words.

So apparently NVIDIA’s philosophy is “is you don’t say what we want you to say, we won’t support you anymore”. It is amazing how some manufacturers try to control what the media publish about them and try to brainwash journalists. Unfortunately there are some publications that accept this sort of thing. We will always be on the side of unbiased journalism. If a manufacturer restricts us from what we can or cannot talk, we prefer not to work with this manufacturer anymore. The press must be free.

Yes!! It must be free, even if you are small or a big review site/publishing house. If you see, few review sites for music, art, movies (especially movies), games, products, cars, etc. have their own share of trouble who bump into big/important companies that have their own “Kiss my ass club”. This must stop- people ain’t idiots. If the mass gets a very good idea that a website is  misguiding their readers and putting an advertisement in a form of an ad, they will look somewhere else. “Reviewers” should not and never be another fancy name for “advertisers”- like “escorts” or “exotic dancers” being another name for prostitutes or strippers. Then again, reviewers should should not be fanboys or atleast reflect that.

I am not too sure if this happens in India but don’t be surprised if someone does. Its rather sad that it happens anywhere in the world. People keep faith in such reviews and spend money with their eyes closed (well not literally, atleast I hope not).

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Oh yeah. I bumped into this interesting little thread in Chip forums where someone claims that he bought an i5 750 for Rs. 7395/-. He bought it from a store in Bangalore (no not Golcha) and the VAT TIN number is valid and registered with the name “DIGI TECHH ELECTRO WORLD PRIVATE LTD.” and the address is:

NO. 59, 3RD MAIN, 1ST STAGE,
100 FEET RING ROAD, BTM LAYOUT,
BANGALORE
560029
This is the copy of the bill:
My doubts? Well the product description says its i5 processor, just doesn’t say which one. But if someone is in Bangalore and wants to buy an i5 750, there’s no harm in confirming the price of i5 750 from these guys before buying from their usual sources. FYI, it is a standard retail pack.

Also, you lot should join Gigabyte India and AMD India facebook pages, start voicing out opinions and grievances over there. The more such sites are buzzing with activities, topics, discussions, rants, grievances, the more international management of respective companies will concentrate over here and see a bigger market, hence more attention. If there are other companies who have national page on FB, let me know or put it on comments.

I’ll scratch your back, just don’t scratch mine for the love of God…

Ever had friends who have friends who need your help in fixing up their pc problems? Yeah its one of those blogs…

I have a pretty good friend whom I assembled a system- and that’s it. So he has this guy who is a music director (He’s doing something in T-series.. my concentration was somewhere else) and his hardware “engineer” (yeah, one of those “so-called” ones) screwed up the laptop. Yeah I don’t do laptops but I thought just this once I’ll just do it and be done with it.

I installed windows 7 home edition and he liked it. Then came the wishlist. It wasn’t a big deal since I had the software lying around somewhere but He was hanging around constantly nagging and talking so much. To top above it, he was one of those guys who could do stuff with those keys and knobs (whatever they call it) on a recording studio but couldn’t install a toolbar- or so I’ve been told.

A very VERY long time ago a girl had a problem (ooh yeah there’s always a girl involved at some point- this was way before I was in either chip, TDF or TE forums- even tech2). I wasn’t good at software troubleshooting then (and I am still not, but I learnt few tricks here and there since then) but after a virus scan there was about 212 trojans on that 320GB laptop drive. I didn’t bother to remove it and since she had this “contract” with this guy so she got it reformatted and reinstalled. What she didn’t know that reformatting the partition (oh yeah there was only one partition) cleans out everything in that partition. She did that usual “wtf” talks and switched on the psycho mode. After that the reformat man was nowhere been found.

Even after 3 years she still makes the same retarded mistake as her msn messenger always pings me sends links to porn sites and stuff. I am not in touch with her for pretty good reasons (always needs help) but the point stands. When you see a girl who needs your help- run for your lives!!!

Edit

Kids will eat your brains and psych you if you don’t give them a lot, this is also not an exception especially if they want music and movies- like my nephew. My friend Harshal saved from the constant irritation of my nephew who was asking for Akon’s music for some time now. Moral of the story as far as kids are concerned? If they need something, give the stuff they need and give it FAST before they follow you like zombies who crave for brains!!!!11

Not that I am saying that such people are bad or anything irritating (not…always) but they start relying and stick with you so much, that you wish you were in space and get them off your back by opening the nearest air lock.

so whom would you trust for advice and assemble your system (including yourself)??

We all have friends or relatives who are technically sound and they usually do claim they can put a system together.

That’s “cute” (Ati “proved” that even a monkey can install a graphic card and their drivers) but how many people can do it properly? There was this one type where speedyfreak (known as damngoodman999 on TDF) where he suggested his friend to buy true120e. His friend (most likely) installed the heatsink on his system and suddenly one beautiful night an ugly “accident” happened- the heatsink fell over 4850 (oh yeah the system was on).

This incident came first on tdf where I came to find out he was using the stock asus’ backplate. Later it came on TE and then it was pretty obvious that he used the wrong set of screws and backplate. Like an idiot, he does blame the heatsink’s weight but its obvious that its the user’s fault. Where was he looking?

But that’s a pretty old story! Well here’s a new one.

Guy wanted a board which can crossfire? Just give the bloody advice and be done with it!! Want something to add up, just say it and finish it off. Trying to cover up your mistake/ignorance by saying “A CF mobo would have exceeded budget though” is just not right. People are spending money and following your advice blindly because they trust the community and the advisors. For the greater good, just acknowledge your mistake and be done with it.

Before some of you geniuses play forum politics, it happens on erodov, chip, thinkdigit and most of the forums out there. Don’t give me that look, some of those so-called advisors recommend stuff despite not using it and making major mistakes- like suggesting ddr3 rams on a ddr2 board and so on.

The local guys are even worse than expected but you pay for the service and hardware- yikes!! Its too bad people call them “engineers’. “technician” and even “mechanics” but frankly speaking, they don’t know what they are saying and most of the time they will mislead you. Their job is to earn money- your goal is to get a better deal for the money. Do you see a big gap between the two?

But at the end of the day, no matter what kind of technically sounded friends you have, make an effort to do your own proper research. Even if you are not technically sound I am sure you blokes are educated. So why don’t you make efforts to google out the reviews? You have the internet!!!! What else do you need?

The not-so-great “lifetime warranty” contradiction

Before I start with it- yeah!!! I have the privilege to review AMD boards from Gigabyte . I post my reviews on chip, techenclave and techtree. I thank all those people who have helped me gain a ton of knowledge and putting it down for me in layman’s terms as much as I can. I also would like to thank my usual cup of tea made by my lovely mom, the cup of tea which makes me start my day at between 8-10pm in the morning till 3 am in the early morning on few occasions when I am reviewing these days.

So what is lifetime warranty (as far as pc hardware is concerned)? How the heck will people who have no/little/complete interest will know that when company says “lifetime”, it doesn’t mean YOUR lifetime? If that’s the case (Duh for many yeah but that’s not the point), how does one find out/predict the normal lifespan on a hardware component? 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? 5?7?10? Or does it come with a fortune cookie with a random number which lets you know the lifespan of your item?

If you see, few companies (no surprises- xfx) have started this “double lifetime” warranty as well- yikes!!! Before you mentally picture a scenario where a father hands down an xfx card with double lifetime warranty to his son, jokes apart its a pretty retarded move. We’re in a country where majority of the people don’t use their hardware properly and on top of it, dealers and distributors sometime have a temptation to land you in sorts of trouble during RMA (RMA is happening because of you or of defect is another argument which is best not mixed up here) and now- lifetime warranty!!! Heck some so-called advisors on certain forums (as far as I’ve seen, techenclave and chip) emphasize on the word “lifetime” as if its Godsent!!

Read the box/packaging? It doesn’t help on most of the products. Read the site- well..this is how things are at manufacturer’s end:

OCZ | Corsair | Super talent

Yeah they are all rams, but don’t be surprised manufacturers of other brands follow suit- like SSDs. One more (un)surprising point is that the word “limited” stands out wherever you see “lifetime warranty”.  One of the few who put it down in layman’s terms and on proper font size is skullcandy. But seriously- how hard is it to put down the numbers between 1-10. It saves a lot of headache and not to mention paragraphs on packaging, manual and sites where they have a section to explain lifetime warranty, but no word about  remotely talking about “how many months/years?”. Marketing gimmick? This is one of the lamest I’ve seen (but radiation-less board is on top of the list). In any case, just keep this in mind when you pick up something with a flashy lifetime warranty sticker and correct those who emphasize “lifetime warranty” in forums/stores to make an impression that the warranty is based on your lifetime.

Just as a side note, be careful when you’re buying and selling second hand items- especially in techenclave.

There was one thread I bumped into where a member (newbie) says “I’ve repaired the pins on my intel motherboard and sold it to a friend” . Now I don’t know if this friend is a TE member or does the buyer even know that it was repaired. Also about the case where someone used a dealer “friend” to forge a bill with a new date. For more story on this, you will have to read it from here but you will need to sign in.

Okay, why do you have to be careful when you sell? Because many blokes out there have this nasty habit of buying something from you without doing research in regards to features and/or compatibility and when they learn their mistake the old fashion way, they create a thread in the market section and try to put a pressure on you to return the money back.