While your advices might be a acceptable for hardware, I don't find it much help with minimum viable software. Proven software is generally out of date, version two can as easily be much worse than version one, and so called proven track records has numerous examples of people milking the good name of a company or product series.
The only thing a consumer can do to protect themselves is to hope that consumer reviews are correct and not gamed, and that they are still relevant at the time of purchase. This then leads to new problems, as a recent article on HN talked about (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207855). In particular, a product with many happy reviews but with a small set of negative ones produces doubt, the psychological effect of which pushes consumer to buy less reviewed items.
The only thing a consumer can do to protect themselves is to hope that consumer reviews are correct and not gamed, and that they are still relevant at the time of purchase. This then leads to new problems, as a recent article on HN talked about (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207855). In particular, a product with many happy reviews but with a small set of negative ones produces doubt, the psychological effect of which pushes consumer to buy less reviewed items.