Benchmarks*: Why the Asterisk?

You may have noticed that all the "benchmark" results posted have an asterisk next to them. Why?
The main reason is that these results are preliminary. I am publishing them on this blog as they arrive, in the order they arrive, and asking for comment. This is to avoid any accusation of "cooking" the results to favour a particular product. They are interesting in and of themselves, but they don't prove anything.
The second reason is that they are incomplete. The tests measure the "read time" of 800 files, all listed in the layout.ini file in Windows XP. These are not user data files, and don't tell you what you are likely to experience when using your PC on a regular basis. The comments received will assist in developing additional benchmark tests, in order to arrive at a more complete picture.
Some of the comments and criticisms received are valid and need to be taken seriously. One of the criticisms is that the timing program itself may be generating inaccurate results, and its one I am checking out as carefully as possible.
Another problem is that I do not know how accurate these results are: i.e. how does one calculate the critical margin of error? Is it 0.1%, 1% or 10%? Clearly this would make a big difference to how the results should be interpreted.

I therefore urge all readers not to base any purchasing decisions on these results until all the testing has been completed. In the meantime, try the products for yourself, because your experience may be completely different to the test machine.