[WS:] I use them quite a bit too. Their user reviews can be a good source of information about a product, if properly used. What I am looking in those reviews is three things, the total number of reviews, the ratio of bad to good reviews, and the contents of bad reviews (I do not waste my time reading many good ones.) I generally do not bother if there are fewer than 20 reviews. I get interested if the ratio of bad to good reviews is low, say 1 to 5. I then read the bad reviews, which is more art than science. First you need to filter out bullshit, which can be anything from kvetching that the product was damaged (so fucking what, shit happens, return it and get a new one) to people complaining because they do not know what they are talking about. An example of the latter was some idiot complaining that a photographic lens produced a "blurred" image of the background. Apparently, he did not know that this can be a desired effect of fast lenses aka bokeh. So if after filtering out bullshit complaints I see repeated reports of a defect in the product, I conclude that these must be real.
Wojtek