A long time ago, when I first started doing motherboard reviews, I vowed to disclose if I was using pre-release engineering sample hardware in my reviews so that readers would know that the results and findings could be different from the finished product. I also said that I would try not to use engineering samples whenever possible, because there is a dangerous potential for the manufacturer to enhance and buff up a sample that a reviewer will work with. I don’t do as many hardware reviews anymore, and I rarely get any engineering samples, so it’s not as much of an issue. More of a problem these days is the publication of pre-release copies of software, which flood the Web with useless drivel to the point that when a real release review comes out, its importance and impact is diluted.
There is little point in publishing much of a review of an alpha or beta copy of an operating system or program. The alpha stage means that a product is in active development and can have many bugs, some known, some not. Many features aren’t yet implemented, some don’t work at all, and some could harm your hardware or data if they malfunction. Any critical analysis of this situation is totally useless to everyone — users and developers alike. So why bother publishing such tripe? My guess is, it’s an effort to be first to print. If you did not already know that the first review of a popular product tends to get the most traffic, you know now. Publishing alpha and beta reviews is the best way to get the first review. By the time the release comes out, you can have written several reviews of pre-release alpha and beta test copies, thereby robbing the real review of the majority of the traffic.
The best example of this pre-release review craze is Windows Vista. Actual Vista reviews are difficult to find because they’re buried in a sea of beta reviews from the two years leading up to the release, most of which are completely worthless. I can understand a quick story (or a series of quick stories) on how a particular project is progressing throughout its development cycle, but as a reader I’d rather see only full reviews of actual releases. The only way to solve the problem is to stop reading pre-release reviews — if they don’t get any page views, there will be less of an incentive to publish them.
The quality of online journalism is, and has always been, mostly controlled by readers, not writers or publishers. Vote with your mouse.
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Copyright 2007 JEM Electronic Media, Inc. No reprints without written permission.