What's up with Reviews?

By tsupersonic
in Site & Forum Issues

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Brandon H Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

Rich has some inside sources I believe so he's able to get new hardware pieces earlier; that's the main reason.

We used to have more writers with good inside sources but they have sense moved on to other opportunities.

Grand Master

Mindovermaster Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted
2 hours ago, Brandon H said:

Rich has some inside sources I believe so he's able to get new hardware pieces earlier; that's the main reason.

We used to have more writers with good inside sources but they have sense moved on to other opportunities.

 

I caught you in a spelling error! :laugh:

Grand Master

tsupersonic

Posted
  • Author
Posted
3 hours ago, Brandon H said:

Rich has some inside sources I believe so he's able to get new hardware pieces earlier; that's the main reason.

We used to have more writers with good inside sources but they have sense moved on to other opportunities.

Really? Some of the reviews I have seen are pretty late compared to other tech sites. The reviews seems to come out generally after consumer release dates. 

Grand Master

Rich Woods Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
21 hours ago, tsupersonic said:

What's up with Neowin Reviews? The majority of them seem to be done by Rich Woods. It's tiring and would be nice to have other staff review consumer tech. 

 

If it's just me, you can tell me to shut up :)

I'd also love to see more staff do reviews. Neowin doesn't tell writers what to write though, and there's no centralized system that sends out review units to reporters. It's up to each person to obtain their own review hardware. I do pass them along to other reporters when I can, but the biggest issue is that I'm the only one in the United States that's willing to do reviews. PR is mostly regional, so if someone reaches out to me with a review unit and I ask if they can send it to Europe or something, we'll be told to reach out to Europe PR, and most of the time, the item never comes or it comes super late. Anyone else at Neowin is welcome to do reviews; all they'd have to do is reach out to their local PR. We do have a reviews claims system, so we can see what's already being worked on.

 

As far as being late, that might be the case sometimes. I think we do pretty well for a site our size. This week alone, we did three embargoed reviews, which are reviews that are published as soon as the company allows. Those include the Lenovo Yoga C930, Yoga Book C930, and the Samsung Galaxy Book2. For the month we've done five, with the additional two being the HP OMEN Mindframe and Google Pixel 3 XL. There also may or may not be another one next week. I'll have the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro next week and yes, some sites have their reviews up already. Huawei gave devices to those that attended the event in London, which I was unable to attend because frankly, I was needed more here and couldn't spend a week in the UK (as awesome as it sounded!). But since I stayed here, I got to go to events where I could obtain the Galaxy Book2 and the RED Hydrogen One, so I'd say it worked out.

 

I also won't rush a review just to be first. There are some companies that will give you a day before an embargo, and I'd much rather be thorough than push out a weak review.

Grand Master

Rich Woods Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
Just now, dipsylalapo said:

What do you do with all your review units? 

 

You must have a pretty awesome spare room stacked with these!

Mostly, I send them back. I hang onto some for future testing. For example, the Lenovo Miix 630 and Samsung Galaxy Book2 will be good for seeing how Windows on ARM performance evolves over time. The Google Pixel 3 XL is one of few devices I can use to test future Android betas. Otherwise, this stuff just takes up space. It sounds like a lot of fun until it gets unmanageable. We're also working with companies to do more giveaways. We're actually going to be giving away a Lenovo Flex 6 14 starting tomorrow. ANNOUNCED HERE FIRST

  • dipsylalapo and Brandon H
  • Like 2
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Posts

    • Zed 1.7.2 has landed with updated OpenCode models, bug fixes and other improvements

      By David Uzondu · Posted

      Zed 1.7.2 has landed with updated OpenCode models, bug fixes and other improvements by David Uzondu Zed 1.7.2 recently landed on the stable release channel, bringing a host of AI-related features including automatic context compaction and settings-based skill management, along with other things like better Markdown preview rendering and custom git commands in the graph view. Starting with the AI stuff, the developers introduced "/compact", a command that basically summarizes your conversation history on demand. This tool prevents your active chat window from hitting token limits by compressing older parts of the dialogue into a brief overview. In addition to that, the team relocated skill management to the settings UI, improving how the application communicates errors regarding those skills, and updated the OpenCode model roster to support DeepSeek V4 Flash, MiniMax M3, Qwen 3.7 Plus, and Nemotron 3 Ultra Free. External agent users can also monitor context window cost metrics and delete individual sessions directly from their history. Right-clicking ref labels in the git graph now opens a context menu that runs different actions against selected targets, kind of how VS Code does it. Here are some of the bug fixes this new release brings: The active agent fails to auto-select when creating a new git worktree. A scrollbar unexpectedly appears on wrapped code blocks in the agent chat. Collapse indicators for project headers appear when performing sidebar searches. Bracketed ellipsis title prefixes fail to show the ellipsis icon properly. Project icons render incorrectly in the recent projects picker. Diff hunk controls appear inside non-editable commit view multibuffers. The software update button hangs indefinitely on the downloading stage. Restoring an agent terminal in a remote project triggers a sudden crash. Splitting a pane that contains an active commit view causes a crash. Linux Wayland freezes when trying to read the clipboard from laggy external apps. Zed is a "newish" code editor trying to break the massive stronghold VS Code has on the developer community. Funny enough, the editor was created by former GitHub employees who worked on the Atom text editor (which Microsoft killed in 2022, several years after it bought GitHub). The project officially hit version 1.0 back in April, introducing platform parity for Windows and Linux alongside deep support for DeepSeek-V4-Pro.
    • Microsoft confirms Windows 11 26H2, urges IT admins to prepare for release

      By TheGhostPhantom · Posted

      26H2 absolutely will support ARM Windows just not on devices that came with 26H1. This is evident by the fact I am running 26H2, which on my MacBook Neo and Surface Pro 12 (inch), within a VM.
    • Mp3tag 3.35

      By Copernic · Posted

      Mp3tag 3.35 by Razvan Serea Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs. Mp3tag supports the following audio formats: Advanced Audio Coding (aac) Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac) Monkeys Audio (ape) Mpeg Layer 3 (mp3) MPEG-4 (mp4 / m4a / m4b / iTunes compatible) Musepack (mpc) Ogg Vorbis (ogg) OptimFROG (ofr) OptimFROG DualStream (ofs) Speex (spx) Toms Audio Kompressor (tak) True Audio (tta) Windows Media Audio (wma) WavPack (wv) Mp3tag 3.35 changelog: This version introduces a new Files options page, enhanced toolbar customization, support for RF64 WAV files, improved Discogs and MusicBrainz tag sources, and many other improvements and fixes. See the Release Notes for more details. Download: Mp3tag 64-bit | 5.7 MB (Freeware) Download: Mp3tag 32-bit | 5.2 MB Link: Mp3tag Homepage | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Microsoft confirms Windows 11 26H2, urges IT admins to prepare for release

      By +Good Bot, Bad Bot · Posted

      The FIFA World Cup is not US centric.
    • Microsoft confirms Windows 11 26H2, urges IT admins to prepare for release

      By WrongHead™ · Posted

      It’s amusing how Microsoft is pushing IT admins as if this was a major, game-changing update. In reality, it’s just an enablement package that bumps the build number, which is disappointing compared to the more substantial 22H2 and 24H2 releases. Technically, 25H2, 26H1, and the upcoming 26H2 are essentially the same, differing only in support schedules. They could have included the Windows K2 improvements here, but chose not to. The era of Windows being in the backburner continues, and this 26H2 release feels like an afterthought. Shame, Nadella, shame.

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      AMV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      AMV earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Collaborator
      ryansurfer98 went up a rank
      Collaborator
    • One Month Later
      Eurosoft10 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Eurosoft10 earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      523
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      172
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      78
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      72
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      71
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!