Buying Guide - Advice
Before you plunk down your corporate or personal credit card for technology products, do some research and find the best value for the capability you need. A little time spent up-front can save you lots of time and money later.
Shopping for technology with your focus on the bottom-line - lowest cost - can cost you much more than you think. Many (not all!) products that are low-cost lack some feature or characteristic that may not be visible to you on initial inspection, but may be critical down the line.
- For example: The plethora of consumer-grade routers for home and small office networks - some of them use the word "firewall" on the box. This leads you to thinking that they offer hacker protection superior to the boxes that don't say "firewall". In fact, every router has a simplistic firewall technology, namely Network Address Translation (NAT). But NAT is only one of the firewall technologies employed to thwart hackers (and a very minor one at that). A true firewall has Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) as well as flexibility in data processing (sometimes called rules, filters or filtering). Unless the box specifically states that it has SPI, it is not a true firewall (imho). Buy the cheap one without SPI and you've gained yourself a false sense of security, and left your network at risk of compromise (which can cost you $$$ later).
So where do you turn for advice? Be careful here, many small businesses and home users depend on the 'expertise' of staff, relatives, and friends who's knowledge is sorely limited. Most people are happy to recommend something to you that they've used and had no problems with. But that isn't the same as a comparative analysis of a range of products from different manufacturers that compares the feature sets, the real-world use of those features (often wildly different than claimed), the purchase price, and the quality of the support structure.
- For example: Hardware manufacturers vary significantly in their support structure. Many are so consumed with putting out new products, they offer scant support for their existing product line, and virtually nothing for products they've discontinued. Say you purchase a wireless router from the example above. Check the manufacturer's website for firmware or driver updates - if the device has been available for a year and the manufacturer hasn't issued any updates, it's likely there will be no improvements to the product, much less fixes for bugs and whatever doesn't work right (and believe us, there are bugs in all technology products!).
Positek.net conducts extensive comparative analysis of competing products that serve a similar function, including the availability of technical support, ongoing driver/firmware support, and the willingness on the part of the manufacturer to support their products even beyond the warranty period. This is on top of the feature set comparisons, the real-world experience using the product in a variety of circumstances, and the cost comparison. We also research online for both negative and positive experiences from others, as well as reviews by other companies (such as www.zdnet.com).
Conducting your own research is pretty easy. We routinely conduct iterative web searches (try www.google.com) on a number of keywords and phrases associated with the products and capabilities, and include searches for positive and negative comments. We suggest you do likewise!