Notebook Review

The best notebook review is the one you get from a friend or colleague whom you trust has similar needs, tastes, and responses to what works well for a laptop. I consult my friend who is a computer genius—a program and software developer—as he knows all the functions I expect in a laptop that I use for writing. I also check in with my roommate, who is a devotee of the same brand as I have a fondness for. But I also check out the notebook reviews on at least three or four reliable sites, as well.

I call these sites reliable because they are not stocked with pre-scripted reviews written by employees of the computer sales company, but rather are candid articles contributed by people like you and me—people who bought a particular model and are honestly speaking their minds on the computer. They are the ones who have nothing to lose by writing a scathing notebook review and are the same who have nothing to gain by writing an elevated review. They get no kick-backs, no discounts, and no perks. They just get the satisfaction of knowing other consumers will benefit from their notebook reviews. Period.

Two sources I trust for the most part (trusting the reviews aren’t written by “fake” customers, that is) are Amazon.com and Epinions.com. Each uses a five-star rating system, for criteria such as ease of use, appeal of style, affordability, and performance/durability, and each makes space for written text to be submitted in the form of—in this case—a notebook review.

For example, here are a couple of descriptions of reviews of late, for the Compaq notebook:

The Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario M2010US (PX392UA) PC Notebook gets four stars at Epinions.com by one reviewer and five stars from another. Both consumers report that it is easy to use, and of the two who contributed notebook reviews, comments about this Compaq model point to its “great price,” its “long battery life,” its “decent” upgradeability,” and its easy to access Ethernet capabilities.

The Compaq Presario V2405US 14" Notebook PC (with Mobile AMD Sempron 3000+ processor, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive) gets four stars from a consumer at Amazon.com. The notebook review is short, but does note ease of use as a positive at the same time it includes advice to buy more memory for the insufficient amount of 256MB.

As you can see from just three reviews of two models/one make of notebook, the fine points are covered, the important points are made, and the truth is told…at least as far as we can see.