After reading the responses to two of our most recent articles, the mouse and mousepad roundups, I've decided it's time to explain to the community how this site works. Since we've developed a decent-sized base of loyal readers now, it's only fair that I explain to them how we get our products, what questions we most often hear from our readers, what we are doing to address these questions, and just to inform you of the general state of the site and its staff.

Question # 1
Why have you not reviewed a major hardware piece, like a video card, CPU, RAM, etc.?
This is one of the most common concerns that is brought up. Here's how the process usually works for most established hardware sites. A review site of our size first has to call up the company who's product they want to review and ask them for a free sample. The company will then check to see if the review site is on their normal press list, and if not, evaluate the amount of hits the website has produced to see if it justifies sending a sample. Once this clears, the sample is shipped with either no strings attached, or with the stipulation of returning it after a certain amount of time. The snag with GotFrag Hardware at the moment is that we don't have the amount of hits per month yet to make major companies notice us. This situation is coming close to being resolved, but there will be more on that in the status update section of this article. Stu wanted to say that his job has become increasingly easier due to the promoting work of the community and our loyal readership. We are more than thankful to you guys that are helping us become better and better every day.

Question # 2
Why didn't you include a venerated, but old, piece of hardware in your roundup of similar hardware?
Our mouse and mousepad roundups had many requests to have older products, such as the QcK pad and the Intellimouse 3.0. Here's the short answer to this problem: We didn't get these products because we didn't ask for them. Now the long explanation. A lot of work went into those roundups. It all started with a massive amount of phone calls by Stuart “DigitalStu” Grubbs to people he'd never met. After establishing a professional business relationship with them or building on the already established relationship, he requested to review the latest gear that those companies were actively marketing. We were happy with these products and quite simply didn't bother to request the older, more popular products, which these companies still have stocks of. Simply put, we want to create reviews that help new purchasers make wise decisions on the current product available. The older hardware, while still a staple in the community, have had reviews written on them in the past. However, I agree that if you're looking to update your mouse, and you own one of these legacy mice, you'll want to have a standard of comparison. That's why in the future GotFrag Hardware will persue items that are already accepted as standard in the community - no matter how old they are.

Question #3
Why were certain gamer-specific facts left out of this review of gaming products?
This issue is pops up whenever there is a product that can only be reviewed qualitatively; that is, you can only provide impressions, opinions, and pictures about a product, and no solid numbers to back up that claim. Such was the case with our mouse and mousepad roundups. In order to resolve this situation, we will use a two-part approach. The first is to present whatever facts and numbers we can about the product, such as measure size of a mouse pad, measured weight of a mouse, or even measured max volume of a headset. The second part is making sure the person doing the review has enough experience gaming that his opinion will be valid. Therefore I have decided to make myself the one and only person that will conduct these tests from now on. I am a CAL-I caliber Day of Defeat player, and have more than enough experience in other games from Quake 1 to Quake 4 to form an educated opinion as to the quality of a product. Unfortunately, it is impossible to completely eliminate this issue because there will always be some obscure property that some of you were expecting. I hope this remedy is sufficient.