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You have to be careful with reviews. Sometimes they're accurate and unbiased but there are times when the following biased reviewing practices occur:
- the reviewer is paid by the manufacturer to do a "competitive" comparison that is manipulated to make the paid product come out on top.
- the reviewer only reviews products that manufacturers submit and ignores any other comparable product.
- the reviewer, in this case a magazine, only reviews products from manufacturers who have placed advertisements in the magazine.

Good reviewers do competent, fair, and thorough comparisons of products they have access to but also mention competing products they may not have and give excellent guidelines about the technology in general. With that said, it's rare to find a good, reputable, non-biased product review these days.

What I do is look at the reviews that have been done on the products I'm interested in, gather industry information on products that weren't covered to the depth I require, and then make an informed, intelligent decision about whether that technology will work for my customer's specific situation. If nothing will work the exact way my customer wants, I see if we can't get a near fit and go forward from there. It's kind of like figuring out who to vote for in the next election -- you could go with what the media is telling you but then you'd be relying solely on their published information and you'd have none of the info they don't want you to hear.

Personal research is time-consuming but I always learn from it.

Joel