Question for everyone

[Andrew]

Amazon has a "Product Preview" option for links.  In general, if you hold your mouse over a regular text or image link to something on Amazon, it will generate a small preview box with info about the item - like best price, customer ratings, and if it is in stock.

I turned it on to see how it works and am unsure if it is an enhancement or not.  If you check any of the reviews, you can hold your mouse over the link to buy the movie at Amazon and the box should appear (the "Buy It" button near the top right will do it too).

What do you think?  Does it help you to decide if you want to click through or is it a useless bauble?

[Justy]

I have not been there but mouseovers in general really tend to annoy me. They are starting to pop up in some news articles. I hate to be reading something then accidentally move the cursor over an underlined word then have a stupid box pop up telling all about things nominally related to the article. I have to intentionally keep the cursor away from the paragraph. It's annoying. So I feel that my opinion would be the same at Amazon. All these boxes popping up getting in the way. Just let me click on the link. I'm happy with that.

[AnubisVonMojo]

I always prefer to the little preview window. Any additional info I can get about an item goes a long way in deciding whether or not I'm interested enough to buy it. 

[CheezeFlixz]

I find extra pop-up (hover) boxes just annoying. Often they block something I'm reading while I roam the mouse around the screen.

[Ash]

or is it a useless bauble?

It's a useless bauble.

The ads you describe irritate the heck out of me for all the reasons everyone else has stated.
Most times, I accidently move the mouse cursor over the ad when I'm reading something and it's the same as having a fly buzzing around you.
You just want it to go away.

I must admit Andrew, your choices for ads has gotten better.  

[Derf]

Ash said exactly what I would say. Those mouse-over pop-ups are horribly annoying.

[trekgeezer]

I'm in consensus with everyone else here. I visit other sites that feature the mouse overs and they irritate the living s**t right out of me. 

[raj]

I'll take the opposite side.  I don't mind the box, as it is just on the Amazon link.  If it were elsewhere then that would be real annoying, like all those hyperlinked ads I'm starting to see crop up.

If I'm putting the cursor on the Amazon link, then I'm probably at least going to go to Amazon and check out the movie.

[Andrew]

Wow, it is very obvious that the majority opinion is that they are annoying, vice useful.  I turned them off.

For the ads, the site uses a few ad networks.  I don't actually pick out ads that run on the site, so what you see is often the ads run by the networks (they know that the focus is movies, especially b-movie and cult films).  I can go in and micromanage the ads in most cases, but doing that is not my thing (and takes way too much time - I would rather be writing than doing that).