Before you buy that phone, our readers need to have a word
“TO IGNORE ONE informed PC Pro reader may be regarded as misfortune; to ignore two looks like carelessness.” With huge apologies to Oscar Wilde, that is the best way I can conceive to explain the importance of being earnest about customer support. The PC Pro Technology Excellence Awards ( see p24) are the greatest distillation of technical nous in this country, and we ignore that wisdom at our peril.
After all, we all have stories to tell of buying an item on impulse – or even after months of research – only to be disappointed soon after we removed it from its box. Nor are all flaws immediately obvious: often it’s a year down the line when you realise the solid metal is in fact brittle plastic, or that your chosen vendor has a casual approach to firmware updates that makes Jon Honeyball fume
( see p110).
This is what makes our awards unique and so valuable. It isn’t only two informed PC Pro readers sharing their experiences, but thousands. Short of buying hundreds of different printers from the various manufacturers (or phones, or broadband bundles, or laptops, or web hosting packages, or routers – but you get the idea), you’ll never have a better indication of what you’re about to get from the product or service you want to buy.
This is why we’ve been so brazen as to declare this a “special” edition on the cover. Even if you recycle most issues of PC Pro, I humbly suggest that this is one to stash for future reference. There’s no better way of drawing up a shortlist of vendors and products than to listen to what other people are saying.
You may also find it a useful source of inspiration; rather than opting for an obvious manufacturer or supplier, it could be that a left-field name emerges that’s a better fit for you or your business. Take Backblaze, winner of the Best Cloud Storage Supplier award. We didn’t have enough feedback about the service to include it in 2019, but this year it swept to victory on the back of sizzling speed and the fact that 96% of its users would recommend it to others.
Our final set of awards go to the Products of the Year – the hardware and software that, out of the hundreds of items our reviewers test and rate, stand out from the rest – and we have some surprises among the more predictable winners. Yes, Apple, come and collect your Tablet of the Year award whenever you’re ready.
We also give one unofficial award for “best community effort”. Davey Winder explains why: “Cybercriminals have been doing all they can to exploit the fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic since day one. Driven purely by greed, these scumbags (and there is no other word for them) have targeted those they see as most vulnerable and likely to generate the biggest profit: healthcare has been firmly at the top of the list.
“CV19 is a purely voluntary response by a group of information security professionals including CISOs, pen testers and security researchers, all united in a desire to help provide cybersecurity support to healthcare services across the UK and Europe. Their dedication, and they have devoted huge chunks of their spare time, has without any doubt helped prevent many an organisation from becoming yet another headline victim when more than just reputation is at stake.” Well said, Davey.