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  • jjj - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    If Anandtech has no ethics and does sponsored posts, one would hope that Sandisk would be wiser than to do this kind of thing.
    Anyway , i hear Sandisk has a bit of a yield problem on 15nm , so some details on that would be interesting.
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I see no problem with ethics as this is clearly marked as a sponsored post with us, editors, having nothing to do with the content itself. This isn't anything new either as we've had sponsored posts for years.

    http://www.anandtech.com/tag/sponsored-post
  • arnavvdesai - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Previous posts were clearly marked as such. Its a simple bait & switch is what it is & please do not pretend to say otherwise. You wanted people to click & come in expecting an article. (caveat emptor is a disgusting excuse)
  • WagonWheelsRX8 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I agree. I thought this was going to be an in-depth article about SSDs, not an advertisement. Very disappointing. Next thing you know we'll see Buzzfeed inspired headlines! 'Anandtech installs an SSD, you won't believe what happens next!'
  • JonnyDough - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link

    Deception on the internet? Egads.
  • Mr Perfect - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I didn't notice it was marked, just clicked on the next article in the pipeline and wondered why it sounded like an ad.
  • hammer256 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Tom's has a clear label at the home page, next to the title of the article, that it's a sponsored post. I think it might be a good idea for Anandtech to do something similar.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Odd - when I look at this page, the title starts with "Sponsored Post:", the author is "Sponsored Post" and it's marked as "Posted in Sponsored Post". It was pretty clear to me before I even started reading it that this was a sponsored post.
  • Minion4Hire - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link

    Earlier in the day, "Sponsored Post" was not part of the title although the author was still listed as such. That was added to the title later, no doubt because of the criticism they are now receiving.
  • JonnyDough - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link

    ...and yet you still came here. Had I known it was an advertisement I'd have skipped it.
  • Samus - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link

    Don't feed the trolls Kristian. As an IT director, I found the article thoroughly interesting, although not surprising. I tell everyone SSD's will extend the service period of a machine or breath life into an old machine (even a Core 2) and this post makes a good reference for those facts.

    To me the article isn't so much Sandisk related as it is industry-related. That's why it still belongs here, even if it is plugging the somewhat surprising STAR program. I wouldn't let any outside company in to our firm to do disk imaging! How would they possibly succeed without having administrative privileges to optimize the system for the SSD (prefetch, indexing, etc) and update license data for various software. Even QuickBooks needs the entitlementdata.xml updated when you change physical boot drives...
  • gw74 - Saturday, April 11, 2015 - link

    OK now you're just trolling. the link on the front page starts "sponsored post" so there is no "switch" no "pretending, and it is an "article", a sponsored article. pipe the f*** down.
  • woggs - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Doesn't say that until I've clicked what seems to be any other article. It's an add made to look like an article, just like in magazines that I don't buy anymore.
  • Notmyusualid - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I'd just like to say, I love this site - check it everyday, and have done for years.

    But even I didn't recognize this article as an advertisement, until I saw the comments.

    So why not make it an article now? Ask Samsung to give us ALL the details of their experience on the matter... have employees describe their experiences, and how it has / has not impoved their daily workload, etc.

    As for the figures... I can't imagine corporates are saving all THAT much cash / device each year, but then, what do I know?
  • eanazag - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I didn't find it hard to tell the difference between this piece and articles written by the Anandtech writers. The author is clearly listed. I don't care to see more of this. As far as the content, if you have been reading Anandtech since 2009 you already know these benefits. Sandisk just realized this in 2015? I do not immediately understand the lower battery life savings of $45 per year.

    Anyhow, overnight upgrades with no effort on a company is not entirely true. If all the PCs upgraded were less than 3 years old, than there is a good shot. Laptops older than 3 years have a a failure rate in the transition that does take place. We routinely encounter this when a hard drive is on its last leg and the image copy process just won't take. You're then reimaging and migrating data as best you can. I don't think I would feel comfortable giving domain access to Sandisk. The process is not as rosy as depicted.

    That being said, I think it is pretty smart that Sandisk is offering this. I think they have decent SSDs, but they are not on my short list for go to drives. When I buy for the company, I make sure it supports the MS eDrive spec for hardware based Bitlocker. What you end up seeing is Micron and Samsung drives.
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    The X300s does have full hardware encryption support, including eDrive.
  • JonnyDough - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link

    This sure sounded like an advertisement to me. "by Sponsored Post"

    Welcome to Best of Media Corp, who recently bought Anandtech, as well as Tom's Hardware. All of the info contained in this "blurp" we'll call it, are well known advantages of SSDs. The numbers are nice I guess...but looks like we're reading advertisements now and thinking it's actual articles. Sigh. Why did I come here?
  • edzieba - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Jeez, adverts masquerading as news on the homepage (sitting i nthe Pipeline feed with nothing to distinguish it from a real article)? Not a good sign.
  • UltraWide - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    http://www.anandtech.com/Author/174

    It's a new editor!
  • colinw - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Is this part of AT under new ownership?
  • banvetor - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    C'mon guys... once you see the author name and the category, it is really clear what this is, and no one is trying to hide it. If that's the price to pay to keep AT free and with high quality, then I say it's a small price to pay indeed...
  • woggs - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Next we'll see articles considerably biased to Sandisk then... Separation of advertising and "journalism" is important. Now we know it's compromised.
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Articles like this one are a form of advertising that our sales people offer to the clients -- it's not journalism because us, the editors, had absolutely nothing to do with this article. There would only be a conflict of interest if me or another editor authored this article, but as you can clearly see that's not the case.

    The business and editorial sides have always been separated. The business people have no say in what products we review, how we review them or whether the outcome of the review is positive or negative. In turn, we don't know who are running ad campaigns and how much they are paying for them, and frankly I don't even care because I get paid on a per review basis, so whether the manufacturer likes the review or not doesn't bring any extra food to my table.
  • hrrmph - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    This site just sh*t on Anand's legacy... again.

    I'm just surprised at who is defending it. In it is indefensible to muddy the waters in this manner. It is click bait, regardless of who at AT did it.

    The readers are correct to call it out for what it is: crass and off-putting.

    We all knew it was coming, so there is no surprise. But, don't expect us to be quiet about it.

    There are lines that shouldn't be crossed. First the boss spoke down to you folks (the authors) publicly. I protested, and that stopped (thankfully). I stayed silent when AT dropped DailyTech. I guess over the years I got weary of trying to explain why AT and DT = 3 instead of 2. AT is boring without DT. Tweets: great, I always wanted to watch one-half of a boring conversation. What ever happened to blogs that gave us some extra insight into the souls of what makes the authors tick... and...

    ... now the marketing folks want to steal even more screen real estate away from editorial.

    Eventually there will be nothing left of AT that can't be gotten better elsewhere. When that happens (and mark my words, it IS in the process of happening), then finally someone will be sent in to resurrect the empty shell of the site, in an attempt to regain at least some of the glory that once was.

    If they fail, it will flounder around until it fades or is sold for scraps (as we've already seen with so many legacy sites). If they succeed it will be done the way it was at ExtremeTech (show everyone the door, whether they are good or bad, and start over again from zero), which would just be brutal.

    Or you folks can grow a pair and tell marketing to eff-off when they want to cr*p on your product. Because that is what they are doing.

    Choice is yours. If you truly have no choice (as in, they will fire you), then respectfully stay silent. That would be better than doing their wicked bidding for them.
  • alphasquadron - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I agree with the previous poster. Everyone that starts off on this path are always confident that this money influx regardless of whether you see it or your other department sees it will never change them. Someone sees the money, to say a large(or small right now) influx of money does not affect anything and can be ignored is not believable. You are not the first person(and won't be the last) to confidently state that money will not affect how they do things. I think its a slippery slope towards becoming more biased even if it will be 1-2 years later.
  • DanNeely - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    As ugly as it was; the different color scheme from the AMD sponsored posts from a year ago made it much more obvious we were reading an over-glorified press release; not normal content. Just using "sponsored post" is much less obvious; especially since a significant number of pipeline posts have been driven by press releases with no product available in the past.
  • munim - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Hey if this keeps the lights on at AnandTech, so be it.
  • Gunbuster - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    This is what I do, the employees must hate me for swapping them to SSD's on their craptastic Latitude E6420's instead of buying them new laptops or surface pro's.
  • DanNeely - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I'd rather have an SSD added to my 6420 than be given the same hdd crippled turd with a higher model number that work is currently handing out to people with older computers than mine.
  • fokka - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    it would be nice if the link was labeled "sponsored post" as well, so i don't have to click on it first, just to see that i'm about to read an advertisment.
  • v1001 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I actually found this interesting. Thought there would be more to it, but ad or not, it's something you usually wouldn't know if a company didn't do this study and release the information.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I agree: while I expected something more useful, AT style, knowing about this initiative can't be bad. In case you need some numbers to convince the boss to pay more for SSDs.
  • jdon - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    These complaints would be addressed entirely by placing "(Sponsored)" at the end of the title. The longer this sits in the Pipeline without an external indicator of it's status, the less respect I can have for any post in that category.

    Sorry to hammer a bell that is already ringing, but I feel in this case it is warranted.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    You are correct. That is an oversight on our part and has been corrected.
  • alacard - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Anandtech, you're shooting yourself in the foot with this new strategy of obfuscating sponsored content and then acting shocked that anyone wouldn't be able to tell the difference when your audience calls you out on it.

    For one, both this article and your obtuse response to the concerns of your readers are dishonest in the extreme, and secondly, by going down this route you're willfully cheapening your brand and lowering the bar for what people will come to expect from the once venerable "AnandTech".

    Hidden native advertising is the first step on the road to becoming a tabloid rag. You're only hurting yourself with this.
  • valinor89 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    "For full details and customer experiences of SanDisk’s STAR program, please refer to the ."
    Don't leave me hanging!
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Turn off your ad blocker (it blocks links as well).
  • Cellar Door - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link

    Ryan, please don't let this go the way Tom's did. I don't even know how they can't afford a spellchecker over there or what I'm looking at.
  • biofishfreak - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I just noticed this article in my RSS feed now has the "Sponsored Article" in the title- much appreciated, Anandtech! I have no issues with these kinds of posts (since I know you guys need to eat), so long as they are labeled as such in the title.
  • hammer256 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Yeah, that's all we needed. Hopefully people can quiet down now...
  • colinw - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link

    Yep I also use the RSS feed and am ok with these as long as they are labeled appropriately.
  • aryonoco - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Thank you for putting "Sponsored post" in the title.

    It's all that was needed.

    I have no qualms with more of this stuff in future if it is clearly marked both in the title and the author.
  • Anato - Sunday, April 5, 2015 - link

    I have no trouble for sponsored posts, its one way to get information. But as always for good journalism, its your responsibility to make sure people know what is behind the text. What I would suggest is to add marking to image and first line of text as people are "blind" for headings and authors.

    As I'm adblock user for medical reasons (some of us can't read if there is flashing image next to text), I'm happy to read this content and support Anandtech this way. Expecting more of these in future. :-)
  • Witchunter - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link

    Couldn't agree more. As long as sponsored articles are kept infrequent as they are now, I see no problem. There's some interesting information in the article as well.

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