'Lack of Resources' My Eye

Recently, a growing number of vendors have been declining to participate in Network Computing's product reviews, citing a "lack of resources." This is supposed to indicate that they don't have the time or manpower to ship us a product and help us set it up in the lab, but it sounds like a cop-out to me. Is it really possible that major IT vendors don't have the resources to participate in a lab test?

"Lack of resources" may be the politically correct way of giving us the brush-off, but we devote a lot of time to researching the products in a particular market and identifying the right vendors for each review so we can give readers a complete analysis of the options. When a vendor claims "lack of resources," it's frustrating, to us, and to our readers.

More important, we think--at least in many cases--it masks the real reason these vendors don't want to play: They're afraid they won't win.