The new hardware deal articles are hit and miss

[Vheissu]

So, there have been quite a few articles lately with deals on gaming computers, monitors and such.

I’m not opposed to an article on an exceptionally good deal, but it seems like what is being posted lately is pretty indiscriminate. Pulling out a calculator and doing some fast math, there’s one article advertising a 6% discount on a monitor and another advertising a roughly 10% discount on a gaming pc. Those are both from the past week.

Gaming hardware is sold on sales these days, thanks to events like black friday. A 10% discount is the norm, not an exception.

I don’t want to poop on any particular writer - there have also been some good deals posted and as always some interesting hardware reviews - but going from what’s been posted lately, I have to ask what’s the point? It erodes the site’s credibility and looks as though it’s shilling random products.

Edit: also apologies, I think my old forum account was tied to an expired email address. Think I used to post here as Fruits way, way back in the day.

[alms]

Edit: also apologies, I think my old forum account was tied to an expired email address. Think I used to post here as Fruits way, way back in the day.

No worries! If you’d like to have your old account back, please contact me via PM, I’ll be glad to help. Otherwise, keep using the new one and live happy!

[Vheissu]

Thanks! I’ve actually bothered to enter the new account into my password manager this time around, so I think I’ll stick with it

[TheDreamlord]

I treat these articles as advertisements (which they are most of the time, in the sense of click-commissions) as ignore them. There is little value in the hardware articles, if I want to read article reviews I would go to AnandTech or TomsHardwareGuide. Anything else is kinda pointless or for the layman (meaning people who don’t know ram from rom, so to speak).

[Vheissu]

If those articles are just meant to be clickthrough bait it would be pretty disappointing. I’ve always followed RPS because it avoided that sort of cruft.

I’ll visit the proper tech sites occasionally although I think they tend to get lost in the weeds talking about details that are only applicable to folks working in the industry or overclocking hobbyists. Wish there was a happy medium between “Buy X shiny product that is on sale for the third time this year” and “here’s a graph of RAM timing and a review of a gaming motherboard with extra features that would be better put to use in server rack.”

[alms]

I’m really in a “if you don’t have anything nice to say” camp since Jeremy left. At the time there were criticisms, some more legit and other less so.

However, regardless how much I personally liked what Jeremy wrote that day, I always felt like he was trying to communicate facts and assessments that were actually useful to the readership, focusing on the important parts, calling marketing fluff out, and doing so in a way that didn’t confuse the less knowledgeable.

At this time, I’m not sure how much the individual writers are to blame, as I never heard of them before RPS, and afterwards, well…

[TheDreamlord]

I had to google-foo to find out which Jeremy you were talking about (Laird), but yes, I agree, his articles were good! They were proper reviews, with proper analysis and thoughtful commentary. A far cry from the current articles of headsets, monitors and keyboards.

[BillButNotBen]

I suspect they may be a necessary evil, and I just basically ignore them. Since I’m not in the regions that RPS covers, it’s very unlikely they’d be available to me anyway.

As long as there aren’t too many, I just skip them.

I’m not really into the hardware side of gaming, so the general hardware articles aren’t really that interesting to me.

Graham has talked before about how they’ve been experimenting and trying to find a way to do hardware articles in a more ‘RPS style’ rather than just being benchmark charts and data.
I suspect the problem is that it’s hard to write entertainingly about a SSD Drive, and the people who are into that stuff want all the charts and data, and the people who aren’t into that stuff only need hardware articles once every 4 years.

[Vheissu]

Wow, a trip back into the past! I had to look up Laird as well. I do remember his articles, and one of the interesting things he did was summarize industry trends and explain how they were going to affect us plebes. Funny to see one of his last articles heralding the return of AMD to the cpu market… 3 years ago!

There are other interesting and helpful things to cover in the hardware world that go beyond basic advice - take a gander at The Register (basically wot if John Walker was an enterprise IT geek) or Anandtech’s recent expose of cellphones cheating benchmark tests.

Personally I’m still waiting for a proper orthopedic review of all the gaming chairs out there

In any case, I don’t much more to add other than that it’s a pity that RPS’ earnest tech coverage is interspersed with the “deals”. I find myself questioning the content of articles or going elsewhere for a more trustworthy source.

Edit: ok, one thing. For the love of god, when covering pre-built rigs, talk about the quality of the company’s tech support and RMA policies. My less tech-savvy friends (and me by extension) will thank you.

[greywar]

I suspect they may be a necessary evil

This^.

Like we have discussed on other threads, rent/food/etc for writers requires compensation and there are expenses associated with running any site. RPS gets a lot of traffic, but very little of it generates much revenue.

If advo-info articles generate some cash for the site then who cares? I mostly don’t read them unless I have some particular point of curiosity.

Something has to pay to keep the lights on.