Many sides to the same coin

Web browsers, anti-virus protection, operating systems, social platforms or just researching for a new camera.  When researching you read articles, many of which have a bias one way or another to start with, then you have the comments from readers, reviews from purchasers for particular products.  I’m quite sure that we’ve all heard the phrase “there are two sides to every coin”; it would appear in todays world there are a minimum of 4 sides to every coin!  I’ve broken this down to 5 groups of commenters and reviewers in general.  The ‘totally erroneous’; “Superman would kick Batman’s ass”, The ‘hate anything and everything’; “Microsoft sucks, they’ve never made anything worth while”,  ‘Love anything & everything’;”Oh Linux is the only thing I’d ever use, they walk on water” even if the particular product, truly does suck!, ‘Tin hat brigade’;”It’s a government conspiracy to invade our privacy in order track every waking move of every citizen”, then you have the people that have actually used and thought out their comments & reviews, weigh out the pros and cons, given a useful opinion or review of the platform or product!  When reading comments/review one must first wade through the tons of groups 1-4 in order to get the ‘few’ group 5 views.

The ones that irk me the most are those who feel compelled to comment, when in fact, they’ve not even seen, much less tried the platform/product?  If you’ve not even seen/used then, keep your opinions to yourself!  Over the years I’ve tried many things, some were great, many worthless.  But before I try it prior to making a comment, good or bad!  Remember the old cliché “Never put all your eggs in one basket”?  As fast as things come and go these days, I use more than one platform/vendor for the same tasks.  The simple fact being, from experience if you rely completely on one vendor/platform exclusively your going to get burned sooner rather than later.  How many times have you used or found something you like, just to have it be “discontinued” or “no longer supported” a few months down the line?

The best bet is use what “you” like and what you feel comfortable using regardless of what someone else’s skewed opinion may be.  Keep in mind that “Opinions are like A**holes, everyone has one, most of them STINK!  Keep your options open and think before you speak!  If your compelled to make a comment or write a product review, first and foremost…try it for at least 30 days (longer would be better in most cases) then and only then make an intelligent and useful comment/review!