CNET has been bought by its advertisers!!!

I recently came across some reviews of various systems. What took me by suprise is that the Sony A190 beats out the eMachines M6811 by 1.5 points, a 20% difference in terms of rating. The Sony A190 is a notoriously overpriced, underperforming machine whos only claim to fame is its media center abilities. Of course, I could not let this go unanswered, and had to sermonize the editor in charge of this travesty...e-mail listed below:

Dear Mr. Justin Jaffe:

I was recently looking at laptop reviews posted on your website, and I came across an anomaly.

You review a Dell 9200 with all of the bells and whistles, and then compare it to an eMachines m6811. In terms of raw testing, the eMachines comes out a winner by a little in terms of business apps and sysmark scores. It is beaten in the graphics department by the same machine, but trounces a Sony with a newer ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with the same amount of VRAM.

All through your review of the eMachines M6811, you knock it for having a slow hard drive (at 80GB), an older GPU (the aforementioned 9600), and relatively hefty bulk. You end up with a score of 6.8. The Dell 9200 plus, which cost $1000+ more than the M6811, is two pounds heavier, slightly slower on business apps, which the Pentium M 755 is supposed to excel in over its AMD cousins, and faster than the Sony A190. In fact, the far less expensive m6811 completely outperforms the Sony A190 in every way. Yet both of these machines score at 8.3 overall. The Sony rates higher than the eMachines in terms of performance in your evaluation by one point, even though the eMachines, through your own testing, was a superior performer. I hope the LCD TV feature is worth the extra $800.

In the overview of the eMachines M6811 review, you suggest that the zd7000 is a better buy. Configured in the same way, the zd7000 is stiff competition. Its lack of a multiformat DVD+-RW is more than compensated for by the 17” widescreen display. The graphics capabilities, though, are very similar. In fact, 3dMark04 testing shows that, with the same amount of VRAM, gaming performance is neck and neck. That extra $250 for the bigger display could be worth it. Again, a score of 8.3 for a very similar performing notebook that is heavier.

I would hope that you are testing every item that comes across your desk fairly. I see ads for HP, Dell and Sony on your site, but none for eMachines. It is my sincere wish that your reviews are done with a blind eye towards advertising dollars. At this point in time, though, it would appear that dollars are more important than sense.

Check out these reviews, and come to your own decisions if you like. The e-mail address is listed as well if you would like to make your opinion heard...DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, FLAME OR SPAM SAID E-MAIL ADDRESS!!!

http://reviews.cnet.com/eMachines_M6811/4505-3121_7-30994117-2.html?tag=top
http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_Inspiron_9200/4505-3121_7-31223734-8.html?tag=top
http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_VAIO_VGN-A190/4505-3121_7-30898700.html

E-Mail to the Editor
[email protected]

 

Rev, you have an excellent letter here. Please post any reply.

As for the logic behind this. Sadly it's not uncommon for the mainstream media to be biased. We see this all the time and purposely made it a point to be as objective as possible. You can see this clearly on our PDA site where our editors routinely focus on what's wrong with each device. The point is, you have to take these reviews with a grain of salt. Most of these guys have to churn out 4-6 reviews per month, which is not nearly enough time to actually work with the device enough. You can tell by the depth of most reviews. Generally they're a re-hash of the marketing materials for the device along with some opinion that sometimes has basis in fact, sometimes not.

Anyway, good letter, let's see if anything comes of it.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

You guys are right. The other insight is that sites such as CNet get so many laptop review requests that they can actually demand money from manufacturers to "speed" the process of a laptop review and bubble a review to the top. CNet gets such an amount of traffic that it helps mfrs. to have their product front and center on such a site when the product is new.

When you're a public company such as CNet I guess it's just always a balance of business sense versus complete impartiality. Just another reason not to make a company public IMHO.

 

So far this is all I have heard back from CNET:

Giuseppe,

Thanks for your email.
I appreciate your careful reading of our reviews.
I promise that I will respond to your email more fully as soon as I can.

Regards,

Justin Jaffe
Senior Associate Editor
CNET Reviews
[email protected]


I will keep everyone updated.

 

Here is CNET's response:

Giuseppe,

On a the basis of pure SysMark performance, you're correct: the eMachines M6811 is basically on par with the Dell Inspiron 9200. However, the Inspiron 9200 scored significantly higher (about 20%) in our Unreal Tournament gaming test. And that's why it got a performance subscore of 8, while the eMachines got a subscore of 7. In our tests, the performance of the eMachines and Sony was basically the same. Because the Sony was the first machine with a mobile Pentium that we tested with SysMark 2004, perhaps we gave it too much credit; you could argue that may have deserved a performance subscore of 7, rather than the 8 it got. Point taken. I'll discuss making an adjustment to the review with the author, Brian Nadel, and our Labs staff.

As far as comparing the Dell Inspiron 9200 to the eMachines, I think that the Inspiron 9200 is clearly a superior machine. Performance is but one component of the overall score. The Inspiron 9200 has a multiformat double-layer DVD burner, a 17-inch WUXGA display, quality speakers (and subwoofer), a really tiny AC adapter, a faster hard drive, and a DVI ouput.

The HP zd7000 also offers a number of features that the eMachines does not, including a larger display, a TV tuner, Windows MCE, and a huge keyboard and number pad. When we reviewed it, back in March 2004, it delivered a performance that was largely comparable to the Dell Inspiron XPS EE, probably the top-performing system we've seen.

I inherited this beat earlier this year, and along with it came a legacy of reviews, scores, and procedures that I'm not entirely satisfied with. I concede that our testing, scoring, and comparison procedures leave room for improvement, and I'll be working hard in 2005 to improve the way we review all notebooks.

You can find more information about how CNET tests and reviews notebooks here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/Labs/4520-6603_7-5142378-1.html?tag=dir
http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_Inspiron_9200/4505-3121_7-31223734-8.html?tag=top (this is slightly outdated, as we no longer officially test or score desktop replacements for battery life)
I welcome your feedback and suggestions.

As far as your accusation that CNET has "been bought by advertisers" and your witticism--that "dollars" override "sense"--all I can say is: untrue. We may not be perfect, but we give every laptop that we see a fair shake.
Our goal with every review is to supply consumers with the best buying advice that we possibly can.

Regards,

Justin Jaffe
Senior Associate Editor
CNET Reviews
[email protected]

 

And here is mine back:

Thank you for your response to my e-mail. It is when a large company will respond to any response from a consumer.

The Dell Inspiron 9200 is, in fact, a quality machine in many ways. However, the cost differential and its intended use puts it in another category. It is lighter, with an emphasis on battery life and portability. It also costs, with some configurations, $1500 more.

At the same price and configuration, the zd7000 is very stiff competition, with features not present on the eMachines. However, with the features you have listed on the zd7000 below, the machines would come up to more than $2800 dollars-the P4EE bumps that price up to over $3400.

The basic point here is that, for the amount that eMachines charges for their system, you would be hard pressed to find a system to compete with the M6811.

 

Good job Rev.

 

REV you are my absolute idol!GO GET'em.[ ]

COMPUTERS WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD.LETS CALL FOR THE GOVERNOR OF CALI!