Software Reviews – Where to find them and how to get the most out of them

Small Business SoftwareThese days there are hundreds of resources available for finding reviews of software applications, but this very inundation of resources means that you’re left with little indication of where to get reliable and accurate reviews. Thankfully, there are several websites available that have taken the time to separate the wheat from the chaff which allows you to stop searching around and focus on deciding what software you want or need.

The first thing to keep in mind is what kind of software you are looking to purchase or acquire will determine in a large way which review site you will want to peruse. You wouldn’t want to go to a game or hardware review site if you are trying to make a decision about office productivity software, and that same website that is ideal for deciding on productivity software may be completely useless for financial or payroll software reviews.

One of the largest and most popular software review sites on the internet is cnet.com. Cnet.com has a wide variety of categories of software not only reviewed but also available for download and those files have been scanned for viruses and malware before you even download them. Not only does cnet.com have a large collection of software reviews, but they also have reviews for other technology, which makes it an excellent resource for a first stop when looking for new software.

One thing to remember when looking for software reviews is quite a few sites will pay for or otherwise solicit reviews of software without ever actually having the person writing the review use the software in question. If it looks like most of the reviews are for products you’ve never heard of or all seem to be coming from the same download link farm type of site chances are you’re not getting an unbiased reviews. Some reviews in fact are nothing more than SEO techniques designed to drive traffic to another site. This is why it’s important to make sure that the site you are using for software reviews is impartial and neutral in their reviews. Look around the site, are at least a few of the reviews negative? Are a few of the reviews written by the same person not perfect scores? Those can be your warnings if a site isn’t actually about reviewing software and more about driving traffic.

Another really good source of product and software reviews is PC World. PC World, much like Cnet.com, has a large selection of reviews of various software products as well as reviews of consumer electronics and other products. In general, the PC World reviews of security software tend to be a bit more in-depth and reliable than other sites.

On the open source front, there is no better resource for software reviews and release notifications, as well as thoughtful articles on security vulnerabilities and updates, than Freshmeat.net. Freshmeat.net is a massive resource for open source software reviews, downloads, and other information. This can be invaluable if you are looking to outfit an office with applications on a very tight budget, as most open source software is completely free to use.

Now it would be impossible to talk about software reviews without at least a brief mention of gaming reviews. A few of the very best sites for game reviews are PC World and Game Informer. Both of these sites have proven time and time again that they can be a reliable, generally unbiased source of reviews of PC Games.

Up until this point, this article has primarily focused on review sites for Windows systems, but it goes without saying that there are almost as many websites for reviewing software for Mac computers and Apple products as there are for Windows systems. The number one authority when it comes to any iOS software is, and has always been, Mac World. Mac World has been around for years and has always proven to be a good source of reviews for iOS products.

Finally, any article about software reviews would not be complete without a good site for Android reviews. With the Android spreading like wildfire throughout the mobile computing market in both phones and tablets, it is becoming more and more important to find reliable software for these devices. AndriodTApp is one of the best.

There can be tremendous challenges in finding good websites for software reviews. Trying to avoid the malware laden link farms, the biased or outright purchased reviewers, and the sites that are more about quantity of content instead of quality mean that it can be difficult to find a reliable resource. By taking the time to consider the source and their possible motivations you can be more certain that you have chosen a review site that is going to give you accurate information.