The people active in the forums across the ten most frequented sites comprise less than 1% of an estimated 300,000 installed and active community users. That pretty much declares my point right there. From less than 1%, an online poll then uses self-select in to gather only those like us in this thread who are essentially a little curmudgeony or possessed of our own egos enough to want to bother. We select ourselves in for various reasons, those reasons can easily denote personality traits not typical of the average user. There is no method of online polling that can be said by anyone who deserves their credentials as a professional researcher to be able to gather a valid selection set. They are merely useful for annectdotes. For guaging the views of people with views like you, or for guaging the views of people who have the kind of views that are connected to people who can't stop mouthing off like I'm doing right now... :) Of people who feel a need to make you hear them. And frankly, we are not the people who need to be heard... And just because we want to be heard, that does not mean we are actually the ones driving the market / buying the product. It is simply too easy for it to be limited to only those that select in. Consider another common polling method - having your pollster stand outside a grocery store and ask people if they could fill out a form or answer some questions. It is rather easy to select out of this - you just say no and walk away. But the original sample is decently random, and you can still get a good cross selection. The end result here is that you are not choosing them, and they are not choosing you. Both situations when they happen void the validity of data. An online poll however, requires an active step from the user - they come to you by choice, you don't come to them by choice or by random. That is all it takes to destroy the validity of it. That is just one of many potential flaws. If you paid for it, I understand you have an investment in seeing it as good data, but I would not pay for it again... You bought 'a bill of goods' as they say. It may be 'a start' - but a building built on a bad foundation eventually falls down.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery