PC Pro Excellence Award winners 2011

Depressing ...

That "Software of the Year" has again gone to a product that has been around for years and which your own review concluded had not done enough this year to justify upgrading. This is a bit like giving the "Best Picture" Oscar to Orsen Welles every year on the grounds that "Citizen Kane" is still the best movie ever made.

Depressing what this says about the lack of innovation and fresh thinking in the software industry.

By JohnAHind on 30 Sep 2011

Very depressing...

And why reward a company like Adobe that unrepentantly overcharges it's UK customers year after year?

By dmkgtc on 30 Sep 2011

Awards

A reminder - all the awards are reader voted. They won because our readers valued them, nothing else.

Barry Collins
Editor

By Barry_Collins on 30 Sep 2011

@Barry

The criticism was aimed at the industry not at PC Pro. Though next year, you might consider giving the readers a "none of the above" option if they consider none of the short-list worthy of an award?

You've got to admit that there is a stark contrast between the genuine innovation of the hardware winners and the minor feature churn Adobe have delivered at such a high price!

I could accept an argument that the winners are the best choice from an uninspiring short-list, but why no tablet apps or even cloud apps which seems to be the only place there is any spark of innovation in the modern software industry?

By JohnAHind on 30 Sep 2011

EVGA motherboard?

Does anyone know anyone who owns one?

By Alperian on 30 Sep 2011

Awards and EVGA motherboard???

Never heard of it. It is all very well saying "all awards are reader voted" but if all the vendor staff, say a dozen, gave a product 99% across the board would that count more strongly then 100 real users giving say Gigabyte or MSI a range of scores in the 90’s???
For the awards to have real credence they should show the number of votes for a product or manufacture, that would be simple since we vote on-line. It would also give a real indication of the typical number of users for a product.
What has PCPro to hide by not giving these figures?

By kerry2651 on 30 Sep 2011

I Smell a Rat!

I wonder how many employees of Adobe voted multiple times using multiple email addresses or perhaps some people just don't want to bite the advertisers hand that feeds them lots of cash.

Some may call me cynical but I just don't trust their motives!

By shrek59 on 30 Sep 2011

Before you start on the conspiracy theories ...

check out the shortlist here:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/369514/pc-pro-announce
s-awards-2011-finalists
Personally from that list I'd have gone for Vegas Pro, but it is a close run thing, and probably a consumer photo editor has more exposure (sorry!) than a pro video editor.

By JohnAHind on 30 Sep 2011

I Smell a Rat!

I wonder how many employees of Adobe voted multiple times using multiple email addresses or perhaps some people just don't want to bite the advertisers hand that feeds them lots of cash.

Some may call me cynical but I just don't trust their motives!

By shrek59 on 30 Sep 2011

I don't understand the smartphone award. It has taken years for anyone to catch up to Apple's iPhone with the Samsung Galaxy S2. The iPhone killer was sought for so long and when it arrived, it was overlooked.

By Alperian on 30 Sep 2011

Is it worth it anymore?

The days when there was so much new every week almost have gone. The industry has 'matured'. Can these awards be justified today?
Perhaps the list should be whittled down or amalgamated in order to provide some competition. And have a follow up along the lines of - who bought one of the awards; tell us and be in for a prize/surprise.

By Jaguar on 30 Sep 2011

@Barry. I would like you to know that I deeply respect and admire your mag which I have bought for years (yes I am the one gg), but I do not understand this (the awards).

By Alperian on 30 Sep 2011

Feedback

Thanks for all the comments. To answer a few of the queries:

Only companies with a statistically significant number of votes are included in the Awards tables. This year, the minimum number of votes to qualify was somewhere around the 50 mark (I don't have the exact figures to hand), but I must stress the vast majority of companies - especially the likes of Adobe and Apple - will have recorded hundreds, if not thousands, of votes.

We have measures in place to prevent voting fraud. I can't spell these out, for obvious reasons, but one such measure is a trace on how the person arrived at the voting page. So, if a company sent out an email asking all staff to vote for their company, we'd know about it. There are several other telltale signs of such block voting.

Alperian - I don't think anyone doubts the likes of HTC and Samsung have made great strides, but remember this is a satisfaction survey. iPhone owners are hardly likely to be less satisfied, just because the rivals have improved. The Galaxy II also only arrived on the market relatively recently. There will be many more Samsung handset owners with less impressive smartphones casting their votes.

Barry Collins
Editor

By Barry_Collins on 1 Oct 2011

Best online Retialer

Never really heard of them and they get excellence. They dont advertise in PC Pro do they?

@Barry based on your coments of Apple I would have thought this would have been amazon, ebuer, overclockers or someone else. But then again they dont avertise in PC Pro....and yes I'm a born again cynic.

By gpah20 on 2 Oct 2011

Hmmm

@GPAH20, QuietPC are well known and used by thousands of people in the UK alone -- i buy all my Zalman CPU fans/ case coolers from there, as their prices are better than other e-tailers as they are official suppliers and actually have stock.

Still find the Mobo & GFX Card awards odd though -- EVGA, really?

Glad Iiyama did well though

By IainNIX on 3 Oct 2011

@gpah20

Last year's online retailer winner, John Lewis, doesn't advertise in PC Pro. Neither does Apple, the winner of two awards this year, nor Amazon, another of this year's award winners.

These conspiracy theories are really rather tedious.

Barry Collins
Editor

By Barry_Collins on 3 Oct 2011

Zen Internet

Good to see that this excellent ISP has been awarded again this year.

Adam D

By codedv on 7 Oct 2011