Vet Your Purchases with ReviewGist

Before I buy anything electronic online, I usually head over to our big brother CNET to see how the experts rate it. I used the scores over there (combined with the user reviews at Amazon) to decide on both my camera and my phone. Now, though, there's a site that combines CNET's reviews with reviews from tons of other gadget sites all over the web. The meta-review aggregator is called ReviewGist, and while it's not perfect, it's pretty sweet.

As CrunchGear points out, it uses algorithms to cull reviews from select sites around the web, and that means that it sometimes has trouble discerning the useful from the not-so-much. But it had no trouble at all differentiating the Lenovo ThinkPad X61s (which I eventually ended up buying) from the ThinkPad X61, plus it brought up points from other reviews I would never have thought to consider (like the fact that it has a 4:3 screen ratio).

When I eventually bought the X61s, I was armed with information and more confident than ever about my decision.