SiliconBeat

I serve as the Mercury News’ personal technology writer. As such, I often review tech gadgets and service. I plan on using this space to supplement those reviews.

So, in the future you should see entries about the latest products I’m playing with and my initial impressions of them. Perhaps more importantly, I also plan on giving updates about products I’ve reviewed in the past.

As a reviewer, I often have only a short time with a product before I have to write my review. I do what I can to evaluate the product in that time as best I can. But there are things I simply can’t test, particularly issues having to do with the longevity of a product or problems that only seem to show up after repeated use.

In some cases, I’ve either purchased products I’ve recommended or gotten to play with them for a while after I’ve run my review. Obviously, the more experience I have with a product, the more I know about its benefits, quirks — and problems. In some cases, this experience might lead me to change my evaluation of a product from positive to negative or vis versa. Readers of my reviews ought to know when that longer term exposure to a product significantly changes my evaluation of it.

For instance, in Fall 2007, I bought an Altec Lansing inMotion iM600 iPod speaker system and loved it. It offered good sound, had a built-in radio, was portable, worked with my iPhone was relatively inexpensive. I liked it so much that I recommended it last year as a potential Mother’s Day gift.

But late last year, it started to go on the fritz. I had to wiggle my iPods or iPhones around to get them to play music through it. Not long afterward, this trick stopped working and I couldn’t use it with my iPods or iPhones at all.

I called Altec Lansing customer service only to find out that the company wasn’t going to help me with the problem. I had had the product for about 15 months, so it was beyond its one-year warranty. They don’t sell any replacement parts. And they don’t have any service centers that could work on it.

So, 15 months after I’d bought it, my inMotion iM600 was essentially junk. Needless to say, as high as I was on it before, I’d now advise people not to buy it. And I will definitely take my experience with the iM600 into account when reviewing Altec Lansing products in the future.

I’m hoping that these entries will spark a conversation between you and me. I’m interested in hearing about products that folks would like for me to review. And I’m interested in hearing about the personal experiences people have with the products I review.

So let’s get the conversation started!