Microsoft Sent Free Vista-Equipped Laptops To Bloggers

Apparently, Microsoft had sent a number of laptops to selected bloggers all over the world. Not any ordinary laptops, it's Acer Ferrari which equipped with AMD Turion 64x2 and Windows Vista Ultimate. All that with no string attached.

The story started to blow out last week when the selected bloggers started to post about their gift from Microsoft and within few days, thousand of bloggers have cried foul over Microsoft "bribery" move.

As for one of the "lucky ones", the foul cry were uncalled for. Mitch Denny from Australia have been Microsoft technology fan for a number of years as he been developing software on Microfost .net platform since year 2000. Plus, he have been an actively involved in Microsoft developers community activity since then. His argument are quite valid - you can't bribe people that already love your product.

What to do next with the laptop then? In a later email by Microsoft to The New York Times, a Microsoft spokeswomen stated that "Microsoft's official position is that once these bloggers are done experiencing the product, they can choose what they want to do with them,". Mitch going to pass it to his wife. While the rest are either giving it away, returning it back to Microsoft, auctioning it off or might even keep it for good. A rare case would be Marshall Kirkpatrick which were asked to return it back.

A baffling move by the Redmond giant? Yes, it is. A good move to promote blogging to public? Could be. Being bloggers now looked so cool? Hell yeah.