Man! I wish we were much bigger because I would say all kinds of nice things about Vista for a free laptop:
It seems that Microsoft and AMD have partnered to hand out some nice Christmas presents to select bloggers. Microsoft has reportedly sent out new AMD-equipped Acer laptops in an effort to get prominent bloggers using Microsoft’s new Vista operating system.I don't look at it as bribery, I look at it as promotion and I think it's smart. If it's a good system, then this is a good way to promote it.
The promotional effort comes just before the official release of the new Windows Vista operating system, but Microsoft isn’t a computer manufacturer so why are they giving away laptops?
Typically when a company wants journalists to review their new software on a fast machine they loan it out for review purposes and then the machine gets returned. If Microsoft were to give away copies of Vista that would make sense and probably raise no eyebrows at all, but giving away a whole laptop understandably strikes some as little more than bribery.
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But getting paid a few pesos from PayPerPost or to put something on Digg is one thing, getting a $2000+ Acer laptop is a whole other ball of wax. As Warne says, now that the word is out, expect the negative publicity to be every bit as shrill as the positive which means Microsoft’s PR move may well end up backfiring.
