The advent of the Internet seemed to offer every techi-enthusiast or gadget-lover an alluring promise of unimpeded access to all the information, specifications and promitional material on products and technology available.
And yet, that promise seems to consistently fall short of expectations. Its such a familiar scenario: you've been excitedly eyeing a new piece of technology from the fringes, waiting to take the plunge. Perhaps its a new HD TV, a gaming console, digital camera or cellphone but its inevitably an exciting purchase, and probably a relatively serious one, and you don't want to get it wrong. There are plenty of features on offer for the picking - do they deliver what they promise and are they right for you? In the final moments before the big eagerly anticipated acquisition there is the web search on the particular model you've been eyeing and it always seems to generate the same results lists.
The manufacturers own websites are inevitably included in there somewhere though its seldom of much use. It seems so few companies ever "got" the concept of the web. Consumers making their way to you website are hungry for information and will not be satisfied with the same scant 5 features summary you've already printed on the product packaging, or an electronic version of the same one page brochure they've made available in the stores. The search results are peppered with retailers selling the product you're interested in, though apart from the variance in prices they all carry the same generic product summary. You may come across a number of commercial reviews or magazine articles but all too soon you learn it seems as if they're all working of the same press release and you can't help wondering if they've even seen the physical product itself.
If you're lucky, buried in there you'll find a decent review or forum discussing the product you were searching for. An added complexity here in South Africa is that often product model names and numbers (and sometimes even brands) are customised from their international counterparts making it harder to find the information you're looking for. There are excellent resources out there, ironically provided by fans and online communities rather than the commercial enterprises themselves, and unfortunately they're buried under all the other stuff.
Through contributions and posting on forums and the positive responses I began to appreciate how useful other people's experiences and research findings were. We all make these acquisition decisions and its helpful not doing it alone and being able to benefit from the experiences of others. The purpose of the reviews and writings on this space are to share the experiences and research with you in the event it could prove useful. The Gadget TreeHouse will not try to be another gadget news site offering the latest scoops, and releases for all things tech. There are plenty of those already. These may inform you of things to look out for, features and useful functions you might appreciate but may not have been aware of and similarly issues, problems or annoyances that you may want to be aware of before taking the plunge. And ultimately, to try and contribute towards the big computing cloud that in your next search you may come across something a little more useful than another dodgy online auction site listing.
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