Remember when you had to wait a week for a gadget review to come out in a magazine?

Back in 2008, I was desperate to know if the new Zune HD was any good before I spent my whole summer job savings. I waited three days for the new issue of a tech magazine at the local bookstore. When I finally got it, the review was just two pages and didn't even talk about battery life with my kind of music files. Now we can watch ten different video reviews the same day something launches. Does anyone else miss the excitement of that wait, even if the info wasn't as good?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.leo24d ago

Oh, the Zune HD. That whole thing feels like a weird dream now, doesn't it? I remember the big wait was for the first iPhone reviews, and when they finally came out, nobody could agree on if the touchscreen was genius or a total gimmick. Makes you wonder how many bad buys we all avoided just by having to sit with our own thoughts for a few days.

faith_king24d ago

Yeah, and that waiting period killed so much hype for gadgets that didn't deliver. Like, remember all the pre-release buzz for the Microsoft Courier tablet? The videos looked amazing, but then it just vanished. Or the Palm Pre webOS demos that seemed so slick, then the actual phone felt cheap. A little forced patience showed which ideas were actually half-baked.

claire_hart5323d ago

I used to hate waiting for reviews, but that delay saved me from some real junk.