<font color="blue">I am amzed at the distrust of CR..............And the suggestion that message boards are a great place for unbiased data prior to purchase! Did you see Bob's post that he shut down. He was trying to compare the big 3 vs other brands. Boy did that get out of hand. He pulled his post and then a moderator eventually shut it down. People joke all the time about flame wars over color or hydro vs shift or synthetic oil vs dino oil. So we acknowledge that we are not always objective. Yet people insist that our anecdotal evidence outweighs the collective data of tens of thousands of CR survey respondents. </font>
Phil, please think about what you are saying. Essentially you are saying that those of us that rely on user forums for information regarding future purchases are unable to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Personally, when I post, I try to be as objective as possible. I look for this same trait in others when I'm the one looking for information. There are quite a few individuals on this board who are as unbiased in their opinions as can be reasonably expected of any human being. Bird is an excellent example. There are others who seek only to push their own brand/model choice in what is a pretty transparent effort to validate their own decisions.
We can tell them apart -- and the fair minded, honest opinions out number the biased, self servings posts, in my experience. Witness the number of posters who emphasize, "The dealer matters most."
With TBN and other well run forums, we get a variety of opinions. We get healthy public debate. We often get regional opinion, which might be critical if we face a situation unique to our locale.
Contrast that with CR, a publication that gives us statistics and selected verbiage from their respondents. Statistics without full disclosure of who, what, where, why, and how are meaningless. Statistics are easily manipulated -- just ask any politician. Trusting selected quotes is substituting someone else's judgement for your own.
Before the Internet, when research meant a trip to the library, CR was pretty much the only source besides the enthusiast publications, which, as you rightly point out, are suspect because of their advertising ties. Back then, a lot of us had no choice but to rely on CR or the word of our neighbors.
Today, it is different. Today, if I am considering a new diesel truck, for example, I will first ask here on TBN. I will drop in on truck forums. I will scour usenet and the web, but I won't bother with Consumer Reports. There is simply no point in it.
