Element14 - win a 34461A DMM

[mikeselectricstuff]

From Twitter  :
5 Agilent 34461A Digital Multimeter's to give away in our latest RoadTest. Enroll for a chance to get one now
http://www.element14.com/community/roadTests/1194?CMP=SOM-ROADT-AGILENT-34461A-ENROLL-TW

[lewis]

From Twitter  :
5 Agilent 34461A Digital Multimeter's to give away in our latest RoadTest. Enroll for a chance to get one now
http://www.element14.com/community/roadTests/1194?CMP=SOM-ROADT-AGILENT-34461A-ENROLL-TW

God I hate it when big companies get punctuation wrong.

[Psi]

So it's not really a competition/give away, more a review/test and you get to keep it ?

[Bored@Work]

So it's not really a competition/give away, more a review/test and you get to keep it ?

The review/test thing is the big question. It depends on if/how element14 and Agilent tend to enforce their rules. I think there is a threat if you don't deliver a review within end of October they'll exclude you from further road tests. I have no idea if they do so. But judging from previous reviews, the quality requirements for reviews don't seem to be hight. At best they are boring reports of "I did this, than that". At worst it is "I received it, it is great, thank you and good by!".

And it seems this time they also want at least three blog posts in addition to the review, strongly suggesting to do videos. That makes four pieces you need to produce, three with video.

If you take the requirements serious than it is quite some work, at least for people with no experience in video blogging. In that case you really have to earn yourself the meter. If one (and element14) don't take the requirements serious one can of course get away with maybe two hours of work. If one is a leecher and doesn't care about exclusion from future road tests one might get away with zero hours.

[EEVblog]

So it's not really a competition/give away, more a review/test and you get to keep it ?

Yes, that's how it works.
Element 14 convince companies like Agilent that they have a massive community and if they give equipment away to their members (some of it very expensive) for "road tests" they'll get a bunch of quality "reviews" that will get countless views and massive product engagement that the PR department will drool over and be able to tick off their monthly social media KPI's.
The truth of course is that that community is pretty awful (no offense to those who contribute of course, it's just the website), and their engagement and views are pretty low.
If Agilent and others did the same thing here on this forum (arguably by far the leading T&M forum the net) they'd get 100 times the views and much better engagement.
But Element 14 have much better clout.

Here is the stuff available and previous reviews:
http://www.element14.com/community/groups/roadtest

[robrenz]

I signed up as a trend chart expert  lets see if I get one

[Fsck]

I signed up too. The odds are probably against us.

[Wytnucls]

T4P on this site got a top of the range Agilent multimeter to review through Element 14. He had never done a decent review in his life before, so you stand a pretty good chance of getting one too! Now that I think about it, I never saw that Agilent review he was supposed to come up with... 

Well, there was this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/u1273ax-discussion/msg196642/#msg196642. Never saw anything else that looked remotely like a review, but I could be wrong.

[EEVblog]

T4P on this site got a top of the range Agilent multimeter to review through Element 14. He had never done a decent review in his life before, so you stand a pretty good chance of getting one too! Now that I think about it, I never saw that Agilent review he was supposed to come up with... 

All the reviews for that are here:
http://www.element14.com/community/roadTestReviews?roadtestid=1132

[Wytnucls]

Thanks Dave. I thought he would have been keen to post it here as well:
http://www.element14.com/community/roadTestReviews/1436
Lots of pictures...( always looks impressive)

I don't know how they choose these people, but the reviews are pretty lame...

[tom66]

I applied too. Worth a shot. I already have an accurate 0.005%DCV 6 1/2 digit meter I scored off eBay with a broken IEC filter, so it'd be nice to compare that (as it's well past calibration) with a new meter. Wonder how much difference 12 years out of cal makes.

[Galaxyrise]

I was pretty shocked at the default privacy settings; make sure you check them if you just created a new account.

[george graves]

Element14 must have the worst site registration process in the history of the interwebs.   I'll choose how strong my password is, thank you very much.  "F_YOU_AND_THE_HOSRE_YOUROAD_IN_ON_1234"

[Fsck]

I was pretty shocked at the default privacy settings; make sure you check them if you just created a new account.

oh wow, that's pretty bad. thanks for the warning

[robrenz]

I signed up as a trend chart expert  lets see if I get one

Obviously I am not expert enough

[AndersAnd]

Just make sure you use a disposable email address, I have tried to unsubscribe from Element14 several times, but they just ignore it.
They are the worst spam factory out there.

I use the disposable e-mail service 10 Minute Mail for sites where  you have to use a validation e-mail, if I don't want to give away my real e-mail address: http://10minutemail.com
Very quick and easy to use.

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/about.html

Welcome to 10 Minute Mail

By clicking on the link below, you will be given a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.

Why would you use this? Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don't want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is nice and disposable. And it's free. Enjoy!

Get my 10 Minute Mail e-mail address.

[robrenz]

If you have any intentions of winning one of the road test reviews you better use a real email address since they need to contact you when you win.  I took the Keithley 2450 SMU road test application much more seriously than this one and I won one of the 3 units given out on this road test.  I can put up with a lot of spam since I got a $5400.00 SMU for free.

[echen1024]

What was the format of your application?

[robrenz]

Just a very extensive description of what my review would cover.

[echen1024]

Ahh. Thanks

[ben1066]

Hm, for future reference do they ship overseas?

[robrenz]

AFIK it covers everywhere that Element14 sells products so that would be yes.