Awards are worthless

Being Awarded for actions taken or products delivered is always quite an honor, no matter how small or big the achievement. In hardware review world however the whole Award value system has gone down the drain drastically the last several years.

It goes back to 2004 and before, The Inquirer summed it up perfectly back then:





It boils down to the fact that many hardware review sites, big or small, are handing out “Editor Choice Awards” to practically every single piece of hardware they reviewed. Shouldn’t an Award mean that product X stands out from the rest of the contenders, what value does that “Award” title have if it’s being given to every piece of hardware no matter how good/bad it is. Imagine every movie and every actor/actress receiving an Oscar. How special will it be to win an Oscar if that was the case? Exactly: not very special.

If a movie gets an Oscar you can pretty much be sure the movie doesn’t “suck”, it might not be the best movie ever for you, but you’ll know it won’t be a B-rated horrible thing.

How can somebody reading hardware reviews know if the Award handed out to that product is worth something? Since they are being given out freely, they have little value.

Recommended Tags

Ever since our first product review here at Madshrimps we have received discrete questions from the manufacturers if we thought that their product was worthy of an Award. To which we replied the arguments seen on the previous page, and we have refrained from using an Award system and won’t implement in the future unless the hardware reviewing scene somehow sticks their heads together to create a guideline and min. requirements for Awards.

Until that day comes we will not give companies or their products Awards. Instead we will be doing the opposite starting this January 2007. We will be using “Recommended Tags” to let our readers know which products we think stand out and tell you why.

We already use “Recommended” quotes in our current reviews if we find the product worthy, now will add a recognizable logo and expand the definitions of the different recommended categories a bit.

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Recommended for



Recommended if a product is easy to install, configure and use, shouldn't be too expensive or exclusive either, as the novice user will most likely keep things down to earth and have a limited budget for his PC.

examples: Clip on CPU/VGA Cooler, Memory with working EPP, ....

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Recommended for



This one is obvious, the product delivers performance over that of other products in the same category,

examples: Geforce 8800GTX (high end VGA category), PC9200 memory, or lower end hardware like 7900GS with high OC, or 7300GT with DDR,…

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Recommended for



A recommended tag we can give to products who take a novel/new approach to a tried & tested formula. it has to be renewing enough to warrant it, a small change/update/tweak is not enough.

examples: VGA TEC cooling that works, ATX Case with different layout which proves better, Memory heatsink design that pays off, etc

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Recommended for



This one is reserved for hardware which will take the performance of your PC to a higher level, but also requires you to invest more to obtain it, while a value product like Core 2 E4300 might boost performance, it's not high end, the X6800 will make your PC fly, but requires you pay up, it's high end, it does it job.

examples: 8800GTX, X6800, i680 mobo, PC9200 mem, Phase Change cooling etc.. do note that the product MUST be able to GIVE you an EDGE over the competition, no matter what the price. X1950XTX is high end also, but not the best.

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Recommended for



This one overlaps the “Novice” one a bit in some cases, the mainstream tag will come in handy for products which will attract the masses, mostly mid-range products with attractive pricing and good performance/usability.

examples: Core 2 E6400, NV7600GT, Arctic Cooling Freezer 64/7 Pro,...

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Recommended for



This tag's alternative name could be "most bang for the buck", it can be OC friendly hardware, it can be cheap gadgets which make a difference.

examples: Intel Pentium D805, NV7300GT, Mousepad X, smart fan controller, etc.

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To reiterate, these recommendations are for our readers, we won't use them randomly, but only where they can be of benefit for our readers. Please feel free to share your opinion on this tags at the forums.