02 Mar 2010 14:56:58 GMT from Bert Hyman :

We're ready to replace our 15 year old Bosch. We were never happy with
its performance or reliability anyway.

Are there any legit online sources of ratings and reviews? Browsing
around, all the sites I've hit so far seem to be nothing but parking
places for paid ads directing you to other Web sites.

Is Consumer Reports still held in high regard in this area? Is their Web
site a useful substitute for the magazine and worth the subscription
fee?

It's common on Usenet to bash /Consumer Reports/, but the bashers
either are just stupid or don't understand the purpose of the
magazine. Nothing can guarantee you won't get a lemon, but if you
follow CR's ratings you improve the odds.

The magazine's not what it used to be, and in particular there's much
less information about individual model features than there used to
be. But it's still the best thing around. Household appliances are
one area where it does quite well. You should pay attention to the
general buying advice (features to look for), and to the reliability
ratings for brands.

When you've narrowed your choice to one or two models, then do an
online Web search for user reviews.

I would not waste money on an online subscription: visit your public
library instead. They might even have an online subscription, but at
the least they'll have back issues. And every issue contains an
index of the previous twelve months, so you won't have much trouble
searching because of course anything older than a year or so won't be
much use for current models.



--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...