While I enjoy reading product reviews on eHam - they're usually the first thing I look at after entering the site - I do get a little annoyed when people send in perfect 5.0 scores for complex equipment they've just unpacked. I can appreciate the exhilarating experience of taking something out of the box and turning it on for the first time, and the desire to share it with thousands of others. However, other than verifying that your new radio has lights that come on and that it makes noise, I propose that a more meaningful review might be based on several months' experience.

Occasionally I see rave reviews based on a few hours with something ("the 'Extreme HAM-9000 Mark IIg Field' I just powered up for the first time is far better than the [insert 'Yaesu', 'Icom', 'Kenwood', etc.] I sold after owning it for six weeks.") only to see another review from the same person giving the same equipment a 0.0 score because it smoked a week later. Perhaps choices for the "time owned" field should be 0 to 3 hours, 3 hours to 3 days, 3 days to 3 weeks, etc? Short-term reviews should be restricted to stuff like; indoor speaker wire, with perhaps a separate category for "doobie" (dead-out-of-box) experiences. Other than doobies, numeric averages should only be calculated for equipment in the 3-month and older categories.