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Microsoft Bribing Bloggers With Laptops
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Dec 27, 2006 11:12 AM
from the hey-where's-mine dept.
from the hey-where's-mine dept.
Slinky writes "According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a 'no strings attached gifts'. This 'reward' for their hard work on covering tech in general is coincidentally right before the launch of Vista to consumers. To be clear, these weren't loans, they were gifts, and they were top-of-the-line Acer Ferrari laptops. Microsoft blogger Long Zheng broke the silence over the source of the freebies."
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I'd just like to tell Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Anonymous Coward
555 Mockingbird Lane
Anywhere, KS 51248
I look forward to "reviewing" Vista for you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yay, a free laptop that isn't really yours (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone should get the list of developers who got free laptops, so we can send them Knoppix CDs as "no strings attached gifts". These laptops already need rescuing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 2. Reformat Hard Drive.
Step 3. Install Linux or whatever other Os of your choice.
Re:Yay, a free laptop that isn't really yours (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of MS's onerous content protection guidelines is to make the hardware as difficult to reverse engineer as possible. From inaccessible circuit paths and obfuscated drivers to encrypting the bus and "suspicious voltage" trip wires. Widespread adoption of DRM-crippled hardware will make open source and alternate platform drivers outrageously difficult. In addition, all the extra hardware and effort to lockdown equipment from its OWNER will make it cost more too.
You cannot avoid DRM by simply avoiding Windows. Freedom loving geeks will have to do a bit of research to pick DRM-free parts. Maybe someday manufacturers will opt for a "DRM free" sticker on the box instead of "Designed for Windows Vista."
Parent
Re:I'd just like to tell Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
51248 is nowhere close to KS.
Parent
Re:How is this bribing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How is this bribing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, record labels will send free CDs, t-shirts, and other materials. Movie studios will fly reviewers out to special reviewer-only screenings of their films in a high-end theater. Microsoft wants Vista to be run on the best possible hardware for it, so they'll send out laptops with Vista preloaded. Apparently, Slashdotters are just now realizing how the industry has worked for decades. It's in the best interests of the companies for reviewers to have access to their products for review, because all this stuff is expensive and can be hard to find.
You do realize they can send the laptop back to Microsoft when they're done reviewing Vista on it, right?
Parent
Re:How is this bribing? (Score:5, Funny)
If Microsoft didn't engage in astroturfing and sent out Microsoft products then people wouldn't blink. Instead bloggers are being put into ethical conflict just as much as if they took a cheque from Microsoft.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, record labels will send free CDs, t-shirts, and other materials.
CDs are a requisite for review, so they don't count. Since they are the product in themselves, no one is inclined to get even more samples of something they don't like. If someone doesn't like Nickelback, they won't lie and say they love Nickelback to get more Nickelback CDs. Now if they shipped a high quality stereo to play the CD on, that would be an analogy. shirts and trinkets are marketing fluff that no one tracks and it doe
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Re:How is this bribing? (Score:5, Informative)
Um... Payola [wikipedia.org] is illegal (in the US, anyway: YCMV) precisely because it was determined to be bribery. Originally "Payola" [Pay + Victrola] was a newspaper-coined name for a 1950s music industry scandal which resulted in fines and criminal convictions.
Today (well, for almost 50 years, really), the industry gets around the FCC regs and Payola laws by hiring "independent record promoters (not to be confused with "independent record producers"). They pay regional promoters, and the promoters pay the local radio stations. Indeed that is the sole function of these promoters, per first hand accounts, frequent reporting in the media, songs by popular groups and even Slashdot, where this issue has been discussed several times a year for ages (2001 article) [slashdot.org]). Sadly there is little political capital (and even fewer music/advertising industry contributions) to be found in pursuing it, and the FCC has turned a blind eye.
It's not just tickets to concerts or athletic events, it's expensive junkets and outright cash to program directors and radio stations, often billed as "promotion funding" (e.g. they give $1000 or some knickknacks to the radio station to be used as a prizes in a station promotion, and another $1000 or $5000 to the manager/director or station to pay for "administering" the promotion itself. The result is precisely the same as the outright bribery of the original scandal.
In recent years, NY State Atty Gen Elliot has prosecuting some of these these third party promoter arrangements as violations of his state's payola laws. Unless/until some federal prosecutor takes a case to court and gets a precedent saying it is an illegal circumvention of the payola rules/laws, it remains a legal loophole on the federal level.
Parent
Bribery and Blogging (Score:4, Interesting)
Many, many years ago, I ran an anti-Microsoft web site and Microsoft contacted me and sent me Windows NT 4.0. It was less bad than Windows95, but it didn't change my opinion and my site remained as it was. They just told me that they wanted me to have their latest stuff, so that I could write honestly about it. I respeted that.
Truthfully, I think Microsoft did this to solve a curious little problem. Most bloggers aren't rich, and they're going to try and run Windows Vista on a computer that can barely run XP. So give them a gift, so they can run Vista the way it was meant to be run.
To amplify this a bit, I have a Windows PC right next to my PowerBook that's less than six months old. I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor on it and it sort of wimpered and slunk off with a "Vista Basic once you upgrade it to 1GB RAM from 512MB" recommendation. It's blazing fast running XP, with a 2.8ghz Pentium IV. An Apple computer of the same vintage would have no trouble at all running Tiger or Leopard.
I think most bloggers are not going to be influenced by the gifts per se, but they will be nicer about Vista since they have a machine on which it will run well, which they might well otherwise not be able to obtain.
I'm not sure if that's good or bad, fair or unfair. After all, most people on the ground nowadays are buying $799 laptops that do not have a prayer of running Vista. But truthfully, I think there's enough information about Vista's performance out there for people to be able to make up their own minds, and so Microsoft's efforts will have little genuine impact.
I'm glad the bloggers will at least get some cool free stuff. We all like that. It's a pity that Apple's legendary customer loyalty makes steps like this entirely superflurous for the likes of me who would not mind a free MacBook Pro at all
D
Parent
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top of the line? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There have been some great laptops -- even the Compaq luggables were good -- but I agree that few will get fired for buying a Thinkpad.
Re:top of the line? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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In any event, arguing silly semantics about the 'top of the line' doesn't change the moral of the story - Microsoft wants good press and is going out of its way to get it. That's not surprising, they just have a bigger PR budget than most.
Is it wrong? No.
Is
Re:top of the line? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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I write about their products all the time and they're always trying to influence me, but nobody's ever offered me anything like a notebook.
despicable (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Reviewers will be far less likely to criticize Vista's complex pricing structure not having had to personally invest energy into weighing the cost/benefit of buying a mid-range edition.
2. Reviewers will be far less likely to run into technical issues resulting from running the OS on mid-range hardware.
3. More reviewers will focus more energy on features unique to Ultimate, which would be an implicit endorsement of Ultimate over all other editions.
These actions are intended to inhibit (albeit to a limited extent) the spread of unbiased criticism to those who would benefit most by it. Going back to Ethics 101, this is (however subtly) acting against the best interest of society, and therefore unethical. Of course, in a society accustomed to a continuous assault on fact from many angles (sales/marketing/politics, etc.), this will go entirely unnoticed.
From the perspective of diminished responsibility, I'd say this action is so minutely unethical that to label it "immoral" is misleading. "Guerrilla Marketing" would be a more useful characterization.
Parent
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
A new laptop to run Ubuntu on? Who cares?
Credit where credit is due. (Score:3, Funny)
I would be protesting this blatant attempt to reward the faithful if my mouth weren't watering so heavily.
(This may be a secondary ploy -- not only do they get to reward the faithful, but all their blogging enemies die off in saliva-related drownings...)
Okay, MS is involved, but this is news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hardly a bribe then (Score:3, Insightful)
According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a 'no strings attached gifts'.
To me, that's a gift not a bribe. I can't remember the specifics, but I'm sure Apple did something similar a while ago. They're saying "thanks for the coverage", and that's that.
I'm happy over here with my OS X machines with Linux installs on the server side, and I still can't see a reason to be going after Microsoft for this. They got coverage, and they said thanks.
Cheers,
Ian
Re: (Score:2)
Only partly. The "gift" is also a very obvious hint that more may be forthcoming if they keep up the "good work". THAT makes it a bribe.
TWW
Re:Hardly a bribe then (Score:4, Informative)
Not the same thing. Apple gave laptops to the top contributors to the WebKit open source project. [webkit.org], not just people that had said nice things about them.
Parent
"Silence over the source of the laptops"? (Score:3, Interesting)
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"Enjoy the laptop.. Cool!" (Score:2)
Yes! (Score:2)
2) Write Wind0ze suxx0rs, Linux 1337 review
3) Format HD, install Linux
4) Profit!
Disclosure (Score:5, Insightful)
good for them (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still waiting (Score:5, Funny)
Caught red handed (Score:3, Interesting)
OS (Score:3, Funny)
I got a free Enterprise computer in 1985 (Score:2)
The Open source crowd can't really object, because they've been giving away free copies for years.
Why is this bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since Vista might not run all that well on some of these folks old A21M Thinkpads or whatever, sending out CDs might be a bit risky. Especially given the general flakiness of laptop hardware. Getting a harvest of blogger comments about how Vista refused to install or installed, but ate six directories containing a new novel is really a dubious marketing investment. Since Microsoft is awash in profts from its unchecked monopoly practices, why not give away laptops along with the OS?
Counter-Productive as Bribes (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Pro-Microsoft, got a laptop
2. Pro-Microsoft, didn't get a laptop
3. Anti-Microsoft, got a laptop
4. Anti-Microsoft, didn't get a laptop
The gift effectively marginalizes group 1 -- people will say, "Sure, you say that, but you've been bribed." And it'll partly marginalize group 2, as people will suspect them of being bribed and just not admitting it.
Conversely, it empowers group 3. If they're getting 'bribes' and still criticizing Microsoft? Well, gosh, they must be of sterling moral fibre, or something.
Group 4 would be split -- there will be those who increase their criticism out of either bitterness or a sense of moral outrage, just as there might be those who tone down their criticisms out of a vague hope of getting some future handout. Indeed, there will probably be more people writing about it, period.
No, it doesn't make sense as a bribe. Looking at it as a "thank you" or at worst an inexpensive play for publicity (peanuts compared to a TV ad) makes far more sense.
Bloggers are switching to Mac (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, it's still a bribe. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe one or two out of that number don't write straight-down-the-line praises of microsoft products. Most, however, find their enthusiasm for Microsoft somewhat re-enforced by the arrival of a beautiful, beautiful machine. And the bloggers don't write cood Microsoft copy because they have to. They do it because they want to.
As far as I can tell there's nothing grossly unethical about it. It's n
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If it was "no strings attached", why would Microsoft have bothered in the first place? Seriously -- just felt a pressing desire to spend tens of thousands for the fun of it?
Microsoft knows that these bloggers have a long and deeply ingrained communal morality of "returning the favor" (it permeates all elements of our society), and no matter how much they might try to convince themselves that it won't affect their perception, it will intrinsically obligate them to b
Re: (Score:2)
The 360 wasn't forgotten this year. It just wasn't in such limited supply to make