When reading a product review, how can you decide if it's just marketing hype? With great difficulty.
Product reviews abound on the net, a great place to check out some by your peers is to search usenet. Just type in the name of the product and you'll find no dearth of people complaining about every defect and difficulty it has given them -- an invaluable source of a priori knowledge, giving you the edge as an enlightened human. Note how I did not say as an enlightened 'consumer'. Who wants to be a 'consumer' anyhow?
And who wants to be a 'prosumer' anyway? Aren't we more than producers and consumers of wealth, goods and services? I'm more.