Try It Before You Buy It? Forget It!

Real-world verdicts are what matters.

Click here for more Full Disclosure columns by Contributing Editor Stephen Manes. He has been writing about technology for the past two decades.

As personal technology keeps getting more personal, the chances keep increasing that a single infuriating quirk in a product will make you loathe it. And your odds of learning about one of these deal-breaking irritants before you open the box keep dropping lower than ever.

Just when we need it most, when every product design is a wee bit different from the last, try-before-you-buy is becoming an endangered concept--even in retail stores. With the car-radio guys booming their woofers across the aisle, it's impossible to judge how loud a computer's fan will seem in the silence of your home. With notebooks strapped to the counter, it's impossible to determine how heavy the things will feel when you lug them around. With cell phones offering performance that depends on where they are, it's impossible to know how they'll work during your daily meanderings.

Too bad, because gaffes abound--like those in HP's new Pavilion Zd7000 Media Center notebook. Some Media Center! The unit's roaring fan is the most annoying on any system I can remember, and its separate USB cables for outboard IR port and TV tuner create an ugly snake's nest. Order on the Web, and you won't see the wires or hear the noise. Go to a store, and they may not have everything plugged in.

Even the best tech designers can make dumb mistakes. Apple perversely puts the IMac's on/off switch on the back of the screen's pedestal. Sony's elegant PCV-V100G desktop comes with an integrated LCD monitor and wireless mouse and keyboard, so it can work off a single AC power cable--but if you happen to use a modem or a wired network, its plug-ugly cable will dangle dopily from the unit's highly visible left edge instead of hiding in back.

My most recent exercise in exasperation was with the two-line cordless phone I bought for my bedroom. I wanted it because it uses the 900-MHz spectrum, thereby avoiding conflict with my 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi network. When I got it home, I discovered its tragic flaw: You can turn off the ringers on the base, but you can't make the handset shut up.

With a home office, I need to keep the bedside lines silent so that East Coast dimwits don't awaken me at 5:30 a.m. Seattle time, so the old phone is back on the nightstand. The new one has been banished to the living room--where I'm still fumbling with it, since it works differently from every other phone in the house. It doesn't sound great, either. But there was no demo unit in the store, and opening the box wouldn't have revealed much unless the handset had been charged and the base plugged in to two working phone lines.

You probably don't have to think very hard to come up with more examples of "What was the designer thinking?"--be they goofy cell phone interfaces or what I've come to call malfunction keys on notebooks. So forget try-before-you-buy, even if you have the chance.

Instead, think no-questions-asked money-back guarantee--if you're able to find a retailer or Web merchant who still offers one. Just consider yourself lucky if you don't have to use it.