I do a lot of reviewing products, hardware and software, and I try as best I can to put the products through the paces thoroughly before writing up a review.
But. Still.
There’s only so much a few days or weeks of testing will really tell you. Readers want reviews of products more or less as they’re released so they’re depending on reviewers to have early access or do quick testing shortly after release to get the review in time to have something to go by right before they make a decision.
I think, though, that there’s a need for long-term or follow-up reviews. Would readers actually spend time on a follow-up review of software or hardware if it offered a good look at how a product performs over the long term? For example, a laptop might perform beautifully the first month — only to have a component fail or break after five months.
A program might run just fine the first few weeks, but start to have issues after six months of use when you generate a substantial amount of data or it might have issues after a small update from the vendor/project. Or, it might turn out that you discover problems or spiffy features that were missed during the initial review.
I wonder if this is something that readers would be interested in? I can’t see many publications making it a high priority unless there was a fair amount of demand, considering it’s hard enough to generate all the first-run reviews…
