The magazine drew together reader survey results with their own internal data to evaluate peoples' experiences repairing and replacing certain classes of products, and the results aren't terribly surprising: Point and shoot cameras are cheap and difficult to repair, and get noticeably more advanced over short periods of time, you may as well just replace them if they break outside of two years of ownership. LCD HDTVs? Hold on a little longer.

Granted, the general trend here seem to be that it's not worth repairing anything that's more than a few years old, so it's less a guide about when to replace than confirmation that today's gadgets—even the most expensive ones—are more or less disposable. Full chart below. (Click to enlarge) [Consumer Reports via Consumerist]

The conclusion? Essentially the same as ours—as in, the Snuggie is lousy and nobody should buy it. Hit up the link to see the entertaining video. [Consumerist]

We aren't saying the unibody MacBook isn't a reasonable choice for top laptop. And Consumer Reports' reputation as the toughest in the business (they refuse to even run ads or accept free review units, for fear of coloring their reviews) is earned. But their history with tech products hasn't been all that hot (like when their top five list of phones included four running Windows Mobile), and this list is has some serious problems.

Laptop Magazine finds several flaws with Consumer Reports' findings, the most important of which is a total lack of transparency: How in the world did they arrive at these ratings? For example, the MacBook Air shows a performance rating of "Good," but what does that mean? The Air isn't exactly an impressively powerful laptop, and certainly its battery life leaves much to be desired, so how did it earn this rating? No benchmark standards were enumerated, and no explanation for the scores was given. Besides, CR also only tested, in the 13-inch category, six laptops, a full half of which were made by Apple.

Tech reviews certainly have an element of subjectivity, but Consumer Reports' status as the gold standard will fade quickly if they fail to explain their ratings with the detail their massive influence requires.

We at Giz recommend this fantastic site (with exceptionally attractive writers) for more detailed product reviews. [Laptop Mag]

Consumerist will remain the same great source of no-bullshit survival tips for navigating our capitalist universe, and will remain totally independent from its older corporate sibling. Seems like a great move for Consumer Reports, who surely hopes that Consumerist's well-earned cred will go a long way toward knocking off a few years from their geriatric reader base. As a non-profit, the new Consumerist will carry ads only for other Consumers Union related endeavors. Hopefully the deal also give them keys to CR's bad ass testing facility in Yonkers, and all the toys therein.

More details can be found at Consumerist. Congrats guys. [Consumerist, NYT]

Here's the list, provided by jkOnTheRun:

1. Samsung Blackjack II
2. T-Mobile Wing
3. Motorola Q9C
4. T-Mobile Shadow
5. Blackberry Pearl Flip

Ignoring for the moment that four out of the five are Windows Mobile phones, they didn't even pick new, actually good hardware. Not one of the phones, except for the Pearl Flip—which is actually the least capable phone in RIM's new batch of devices—is even from this year. Its top phone, the BlackJack II, doesn't even have Wi-Fi or a touchscreen, and is loaded with Samsung's BS proprietary ports, rather than industry standard ones. Beyond that, where the hell are the other good smartphones? If they wanna be dated, where's the BlackBerry Curve? They could shoehorn it in by reviewing one of the newer iterations with Wi-Fi. No Symbian?

Rob at BoingBoing Gadgets said a couple weeks ago (in response to me bitching about Consumer Reports, actually) that even as "a religious devotee of its general coverage," he finds "its gadget reviews are often ambivalent and unsatisfying, like an elderly grandmother trying to explain why she prefers sherry to port."

The heart of the matter—that Rob hints at—why Consumer Reports can tell you what vacuum cleaner or washing machine to buy with unrivaled authority, but apparently knows approximately dick about smartphones, is that they don't get software. And guess what? We've reached a tipping point where software is the most important part of a phone. Hardware is commoditized—read the spec sheet for any current smartphone, they've all got just about the same crap inside. It's all about software now, and it's going to go further in that direction. Why do you think everyone's pushing their own platform and app store, anyway?

My point is that Consumer Reports desperately needs to overhaul the way it reviews phones, before it doesn't just look out of touch and silly, but hopelessly so. [jkOnTheRun, ZDNet]

CR found that, unsurprisingly, the number of folks hitting the stores is higher this year despite the economy's current position in the proverbial shitter—26% versus 21% in 2007. And of that 26%, electronics remain the main target, although much more so this year than last, with 85% heading to the gadget aisles over 70% previously. What's hot with CR's poll respondents? Gaming systems (those Xbox 360 price cuts seem like they're working out pretty well), which 46% of BF shoppers have their eye on first (compared to a much-lower 29% last year. iPods and other MP3 players come in a close second at 44% of folks planning on buying, up from 33%.

Still, I must throw in my two cents here: if you're able to wake up at the crack of dawn to stand in the cold waiting for some electronics deals with hundreds of other bleary-eyed souls, you're simply not doing Thanksgiving with the gluttony and excess it deserves. So save the shopping for later in the day at the computer, in your underpants, with a nice hot mug of the previous night's mulled wine helping you start the day (er, afternoon). That, friends, is a post-Thanksgiving Friday well-spent. [Consumer Reports]

More Advice for the Black Friday Fray:
• The aforementioned Ultimate Survival Guide.
• 5 Gadgets You Can't Skimp On (And How to Save Money Buying Them)
• Best of Black Friday Deals Complete Roundup">All the best deals in one place
• Plus these late breaking ones from Cupertino: Apple Black Friday Deals Include Some Decent Third-Party Discounts
• Warnings: 7 Crappy Black Friday "Deals" That Aren't Really
• How To Choose an HDTV on Black Friday (or Any Day)
• How to set up that new HDTV you just got.

Photochop Contest:
• Brutally Honest Black Friday Ads Showcase Retailers on the Brink

Why You Might Want to Avoid Shopping on Black Friday, altogether:
• 10 Reasons We're Doomed: Black Friday Edition
• WalMart Worker Trampled to Death by Deal-Crazed Black Friday Shoppers

[Complete Black Friday Gadget Coverage at Giz]

You probably only read Consumer Reports if a) you are at your grandparents house or b) you are a grandparent yourself. But that's too bad, because tucked quietly away in the NYC suburb of Yonkers lies one of the biggest and best electronics testing labs money can buy. And what goes on here at Consumer Reports main test facility probably puts most other tech pubs to shame.

We got a chance to look at all of the top dollar gear used to put everything found in CR's electronics pages in a complete vacuum of testing, basically removing every possible outside variable to test the pure hardware performance. That means anechoic chambers built on their own foundation (at a cost of $2.5 million in 1980) for total sound isolation; industrial-quality cell tower base station generators inside fully RF-shielded rooms that can crank out every possible mobile phone frequency at any strength; a "head and torso simulator" named Pedro, able to be calibrated down to the millimeter for testing every aspect of cellphone call quality possible, and a nameless human finger simulator composed of, well, meat (in action below as well). See our captioned gallery for a closer look:

Unfortunately, what makes CR so exemplary as a reliable testing lab also contribute to its fate to be found mostly on grandmother's end table next to the bowl of fossilized peppermints. As a non-profit organization, CR doesn't sell any advertising to anyone, anywhere, nor do they accept any review units or advance loaners from the company—everything they test, from a new BMW to an electric toothbrush, they buy.

While that means employees get pretty sick re-sale discounts on new cars every year, it also means CR is fighting an eternally uphill battle vs. the other tech pubs that don't keep such high standards, and that CR must keep all of its online content walled within a pay site for subscribers only. The subscribers it has are among the most loyal of any magazine, but the vast majority of them are older.

(The aforementioned human finger simulator gets put to the test on a mower that CR's resident high-RPM blade expert refers to as "the most dangerous thing i've ever tested." - video edited by BBG)

And due to the natural constraints of a magazine with no ads, the mountains of test data gathered for any particular product end up truncated and distilled into CR's famous comparative charts, where their scores are rendered in linearly receding bars and crimson doughnut dots. CR's benchmarks are designed to place all new products on a relative continuum, rating them "fair" to "excellent" in comparison to how products over the last several years have fared with the same rigorously standardized tests. But a problem there, obviously, is that often it looks like CR loves just about everything—this year's television are naturally going to present marked improvements over what's been available over the last few years, which tends to stretch the data toward the good end. Kind of like how you have to search forever find a review on CNET with a score of less than 7.0.

(Inside the soundproof womb of the anechoic chamber - video edited by BBG).

Such are the dilemmas of serious hardware testing that makes any type of claims towards ultimate authoritativeness. But it's also the reason why the old bound volumes of Consumer Reports are the most well-worn volumes in the periodicals room of the public library where I used to work. The data is there, and it's rock solid. Taking a tour of their labs and meeting the engineers that do the work, it's immediately apparent that what goes on in Yonkers is among the more vigorous and pure analysis of technology being done by anyone, anywhere.

After all, don't you just have to trust folks who keep this poster hanging above their main laptop test bench?

[Consumer Reports, video courtesy Consumer Reports, edited by the good gentlemen of Boing Boing Gadgets - see them for more]

Used to be, diving into a whole new product line was something only for the crazy ones, those who live dangerously, the mavericks. "Wise men wait to buy" was the refrain that rang through the web, with fear of hardware defects and half-baked features tempering the go! go! buy! buy! fever of a new product announcement.

But things are different now.

Manufacturing is Getting Really Good
Whether it's a unibody carved out of a single block of aluminum or a smaller, more efficient and reliable die for a game-console processor, manufacturing is getting better. Across the board. Mark Kotkin, the head of survey research at Consumer Reports, says that on the whole, reliability is higher and frequency of repairs is lower than they ever have been for the major brands. In the repair department, two of the least problematic major electronics are LCD and plasma flat screens, a shocker given the fact that they are two of the newest product types at the store.

Put simply, companies have tons of incentive to make their manufacturing process better, incentives that aren't directly related to making customers happy. If manufacturing is simpler and has more quality control, more product gets out the door, reducing throwaways and padding the bottom line with less cost (ergo more profit). That's nothing shocking—manufacturing gets better as tech gets more advanced. But because there's a built-in financial incentive for this to happen, it's a factor that won't be ignored, even—or especially—when cashflow is tight.

Software Updates Are More Powerful Than Ever
Gone are the days when every piece of home electronics comes with a different set of core parts. Today, our gear is more defined by the software that's running inside. And while no amount of firmware patching or OS upgrading will affect a melted solder point on a GPU or a warped laptop lid that won't close evenly, software updates bring serious enhancements down the pipe. Even gadget novices know enough to stick flash drives into their TVs to get improved HDMI performance when the situation arises, or anxiously pounce on new updates for game consoles with the hope of a fix or a free new feature.

Apple may control updates to the Nvidia GPUs in the new MacBooks, but knowing they are officially upgradeable via software—to allow for all kinds of goodies, like 8GB of RAM, dynamic dual-GPU cycling, and the like—is a buying incentive.

Some phones have it even easier, getting updated over the air. The G1 wasn't even fully released yet when we caught wind of the first OTA update coming down the pipe, and within a few hours of going open source, bugs were already being filed and fixed in the main Android stack by outside developers.

And back when we said wait on the iPhone? We were proven 100% right, as we watched it come fully into its own, at long last, with the 2.1 software. But because it was a free firmware update for all iPhones including the first-gen EDGE models, early adopters who didn't heed our warning still benefited from the massive revamp.

Microsoft showed similar goodwill by letting its major Zune updates trickle down the entire line, the latest update giving it a song recommendation engine that bests the iPod's.

Software upgrades are not always advantageous—recent iPhone and PlayStation firmware releases are crowning examples. But what's broken in software can be fixed in software, and when the breaks are egregious, the fixes usually come fast.

Internet Bitching is a Powerful Force
It's hard to make over a million of something and not have a few duds slip through QA—that fact will never change. Even though Apple claims that the Brick process is so simple that they "can get it right every single time," there will always be anomalies. (Humans, after all, are still involved.) A quick scan of Apple Discussions right now shows people complaining about slightly tilted function keys—the solution offered? pull up on the sunken end slightly with a prying tool.

This level of minutiae is there because now, complaining about product defects on the Internet actually gets results, and major companies are shifting their strategies because of that. Not previously known for warm fuzzy customer relations, Dell was forced to take action after increasing unreliability (and the company's tight-lipped or non-existent response) threatened to bring the whole ship down. The reaction? They created the Direct2Dell blog and IdeaStorm feedback site. Now only days after a story with unaddressed hardware issues hits Digg's front page (bad battery life, 3G reception, and on), a recall notice or firmware update goes public. Companies are learning a fundamental lesson: Having thousands of angry product owners unite on Digg to flame your defective hardware is not good.

My favorite example was Creative's unfortunate suppression of an unofficial driver—written by a totally random guy in Brazil—that gave the company's sound cards the Vista-friendly capabilities Creative itself was too lazy or distracted to publish itself. After nearly 2500 diggs later and plenty of posts from us and others, Creative finally realized it was being foolish. That's the power of internet bitching.

Even When You Wait, You Can Still Get Screwed
The first point here was unsurprising—tech manufacturing is more reliable than ever. But maybe you were thinking, "That sure wasn't the case with Nvidia's massive GPU recall." True, but the weird thing about that was that the product had been in production a long time before the defect was discovered. It affected everything from Dell laptops to MacBook Pros, many products that had already stood the test of time. In these cases, when a widely used component is at fault, even waiting for a product refresh wouldn't have saved you any trouble.

Reputations Are Important
You can also greatly increase your chances with a first-gen product by being smart about who you buy it from. While this theorem could be pretty safely applied to new products from Dell and Apple, for instance, buying a brand new form factor from someone with a less than stellar repair record—Consumer Reports' latest survey ranks Gateway worst for desktops and HP at the bottom for notebooks—may be something to think twice about. Just because a company is huge and does not mean it is immune to reliability issue. (Red Ring of Death, anyone?)

Final Thoughts
Don't take this is a blanket excuse for not giving a second thought to buying brand-new hardware models; while all the trends here are valid, designing and manufacturing complex CE gear never will be a foolproof process. Prices will go down, and reliability in the future will be better than today, so waiting is still wiser, even if it's perhaps just not as necessary.

This argument doesn't factor in another more complex and in some ways unrelated fact about electronic: Planned obsolescence. Companies have a separate financial incentive to weighing disposability over long-term reliability. Gone are the days where you can be satisfied with the same television for 20 years—advancements move faster now, sure, but manufacturers now make sure to leave off some future-proofed hardware—or charge a lot more for it—to ensure that your TV won't last too long. Which is a sad, but different, issue.

When the scope is limited to more contemporary times, these trends can be taken as a sign that things are improving, bettering your odds of not getting screwed compared to a few years back. Which is refreshing news for everyone: Getting screwed less in the gadget world = good.

The Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530 fires compressed air with a deafening blast. Our measurements top out at 157 dB—above a level that can do permanent damage to the hearing of an adult. We rate the toy Not Acceptable.

You can't make up stuff this good and Consumer Reports has a whole section of their site devoted to the vintage tech. How we lived, breathed and loved before today, we do not know. [Consumer Gallery via bbGadgets and Laughing Squid]

In the poll, Consumer Reports asked which cellphone service providers have the least static, dropped calls, circuits full and lack of service across 20 major metropolitan areas in the US. As it did last year, Verizon came out on top again, with an average approval rating of around 70%. Coming in a close second and winning out in some markets was T-Mobile. Far behind was AT&T, and then coming in dead last was Sprint.

To give you the high concept, Consumer Reports says:

Verizon Wireless is "among the better carriers this year and in our earlier surveys."

T-Mobile was described as "another solid performer that often offers more for your money."

Alltel Wireless is "One of the better providers in the three metro areas for which we had adequate survey data."

AT&T fell behind, called "Home of iPhone, but trails the better carriers in almost all respects."

Sprint was last place, receiving the dubious honor of being in the "bottom ranks of carriers we rate." [Consumer Reports]

Consumer Reports' Top Flash MP3 Players [Yahoo!]

The trusted consumer pub notes that many of the first 1080p sets weren't able to accept 1080p signals via HDMI connectors, but this one can do that and more, and like many of its non-"true 1080p" predecessors, the set does a great job of up-rezzing 1080i video to 1080p.

On the downside, the Consumer Reports reviewers noticed a rather narrow viewing angle, and pointed out the "so-so" black level of the set, a commonplace drawback of LCD displays, but a problem they judged to be worse than other Sharp LCDs. Overall, they gave it a big thumbs-up, calling its picture quality "beautiful." – Charlie White

First Look: Sharp LC-37D90U: 1080p in a 37-inch LCD set [Consumer Reports]

"In lab tests, the Buzz Off Flick Tee didn't work well. Within 2 minutes, aedes mosquitoes had bitten the lab director at least 35 times through material washed once. Some research suggests that permethrin-treated fabric might work better outdoors, but even a treated T-shirt won't protect bare arms."

Product Page [Ex Officio]