In answer to your questions:
1) I'm afraid we were unable to migrate all the comments on News and Reviews across from the old site to the new as the commenting function on the new site is different from the old one.
2) Review by brand search is now fully integrated into the search box: simply type in the brand you want (ie Sony) and wait for the auto-suggest to bring up the brand, then click on the link. That will take you to a brand page such as this one:
http://www.whathifi.com/products/sony
This is actually better than the old site as search on that didn't work properly, often not returning products at all, whereas now you'll get a list of products, news and Best Buys for that specific brand with our reviews listed first.
3) We are now using an external database to supply all the technical specs for products. In order for the specs to be pulled through to the site, the manufacturers have to supply us with the relevant Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) for each product so it can be correctly identified in the database and linked to the relevant review.
We have found matches for around 4000 of the products we have reviewed, but are still missing MPNs for around 800 products. These tend to be products produced by the smaller, more specialist hi-fi companies who (in some cases) have been unable to supply us with the relevant MPNs.
We are working hard with our database supplier to get the info updated as soon as possible (in fact, I have a meeting with them next week to discuss this very issue).
4) Forum search: I have requested that a separate search box be built into the Forums so you can search the Forums by topic, manufacturer, brand etc as before. Our dev team is working on it and we hope to make the update soon.
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