If I'm going to buy something the first thing I do is go to ConsumerSearch.com They aggregate and analyze reviews for many different products and provide detailed write ups of their findings. They also weight reviews so for example Consumer Reports reviews are given more credibility than Epinions. So at the very least you can find links to all the review sites for a given product at best you just go ahead and buy one of their aggregated recommendations. It cuts out a lot of the analysis paralysis.

ConsumerSearch.com