As I’ve written earlier, I’m trying to find the best Windows 7 backup program. I’m running into the problem that there is no Consumers Reports for software. Let me explain what I mean. Consumers Report is an independent testing agency. They accept no advertising so you know they don’t exhibit a bias to advertisers. They also at least attempt to have a scientific basis behind their ratings. They also don’t allow the companies to put up badges with their ratings. Contrast this with Consumer Digest, which is what you see in the car ads. They are funded by advertisers, and their results are suspect.
Consumers Reports, however, doesn’t do software. Arguably, they don’t do computers well at all. There is a distinct lack of a trustworthy source for hardware and software ratings. There are numerous websites that purport to rate all sorts of computer things, but their technical skills and independence is unknown. You have no idea whether they have any skill with the particular software they are assessing, or whether they are colored by their advertisers. Perhaps the best of the bunch is PC World (they seem to have outlasted PC Magazine, Byte, or Computer Shopper), but even then they accept advertising. Further, their ratings are inconsistent. One month one product is at the top; the next month the criteria changes and they go to the bottom.
Now, add to this the skew created by user ratings. What isn’t made clear when you read user ratings is that the vast majority of users don’t bother to comment, because they are satisified with the product. If Toshiba, for example, sells 20,000 models of a particular laptop and 20 people comment, that’s a miniscule percentage. Of that, if half are negative, that’s an even smaller number with problems. But just reading the comments that doesn’t come across. It’s like the occasional lemon of a vehicle doesn’t mean all vehicles of that model are bad.
So how do we get reliable hardware and software ratings to begin with? Has any company jumped into the “Consumer Reports for Computers” model?
