The Spirit of Elijah

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Buying Wisdom
OK, this doesn't have anything to do with religion, but I think it's an important topic in today's world. I've been in retail for about fifteen years, and I have noticed how deception in marketing has affected the world in a negative way.
Here is the most important key in buying anything, this will help you get better value and be less deceived in your purchasing decisions, but it will make shopping harder.
Any major feature, especially if everyone is talking about one feature (*horse power, cubic feet, or any number) has been screwed with so much that it means nothing.
These numbers may be literally true, but they are deceptive. For example a washing machine's capacity is measured in cubic feet or in pounds washed. Whirlpool recently increased the size of it's drum from 3 cubic foot to 3.2. A Whirlpool employee told me, it's just like when Amana did the same thing, you won't be able to wash any more clothes, but the rating will be bigger. There is an industry standard for pound capacity, this is kind of complicated, hang on. They take small strips of different types of fabric, weigh them wet, and then put a sensor on the motor to check for excessive heat. The test is just to test the motor's capacity, not any of the rest of the machine. A Whirlpool employee was sent out to find out if their machine would wash 20 pounds of several types of clothes, including nylons. He reported back to his supervisor, "Twenty pounds of nylons wouldn't fit in the back of a pickup." There are a lot of machines rates at twenty pound, most of them will wash about fourteen pounds of towels and get them clean.
But the point is that this happens in most products, not just washing machines. Horsepower ratings are often listed above 1.85, which is what is possible for a 115 volt 12 amp circuit, but in the fine print it says peak horsepower. In other words in certain unusual circumstances the machine could build up pressure and release more power at a certain time. This means nothing.
Megahertz on a computer can have an effect on performance, but it also depends on a large number of other factors, including RAM size, RAM speed, bus speed, hard drive access speed, Video card quality, sound card quality, operating system, efficiency of the application used, Internet access speed, spyware, adware, and viruses. And I know it's not a complete list, but that's all I can think of off of the top of my head.
Stereo wattage and vacuum cleaner amps are two more examples. If you see a company not playing the number's game, it has been my experience that this is the best company to trust with your hard earned money.
I hope this has been helpful, God bless.