One of the most useful aspects of the Internet is the availability of reviews. I often enter search terms which include the product I'm researching or considering for purchase and the word review. There's almost always a lot of useful information to be found which makes the decision to buy a lot easier.

The last place I would go to get a review of a product would be to a newspaper that has a tech columnist. A columnist simply doesn't have the means to put together a review for a newspaper that can come anywhere near the quality of a review that can be found at a large number of Internet technology sites. It's hard to even take a newspaper columnist seriously because the limitations of the newspaper format are insurmountable, compared to the rich format of a Web-based technology site.

I'm thinking of sites like The Tech Report, Storage Review, Anandtech, X-bit Labs, Extreme Overclocking and such. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of web sites, each of which publishes product reviews that far outdistance what any newspaper is capable of publishing.

The review (i.e., reviewer) at issue here doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, and neither does the newspaper (The Washington Post) as a source for technology information. For my money the newspaper shouldn't even try to pass off this kind of material as either accurate or useful. The days are over when anybody can take the paper seriously any longer even when it comes to current events and opinion. The paper itself is a dying institution. Stick a fork in it - it's done.