As one of the 49.9999 million bloggers who did not receive an Acer Ferrari laptop preloaded with Windows Vista, courtesy of the Redmondian Empire, I just want to say that I’m damn miffed about the whole deal.
But then, had I been on the list, I’d be compelled to join the big Blogospheric Hand Wring and Pontification about whether I should disclose the gift, what I should write about the product, and spew forth all kinds of tripe about bloggers somehow being cut from better cloth, and how integrity needs to be preserved, and how by damn, the blogosphere is the only thing keeping us from ruination.
Horsefeathers! A blog is a platform. Period. Run by a human who is subject to all the foibles of frail humanity, and sometimes errs. Or who may be a crook and a deceiver. Just like in, say, real life?
-k-
PS – I thought Microsoft had a good idea on this whole thing. Not good enough for me to ditch my Mac, but a good idea nonetheless.
Technorati Tags: acerferrari, microsoft, windowsvista
As I always say, free shit is free shit. It’s what you do after you get it that determines how ethical it was.
What I would do after would be something along the lines of saying, “Thanks, dude”. And then Ebaying the crap out of it. There is some nifty Apple stuff I want. Then I would put up a post on my blog about how I ebayed a free laptop and got some great new toys. All ethical like.
Ethical, and a great use for Microsoft products. Unless you wanted to keep the laptop, and install Fedora, Ubuntu, or something like that.
-k-
I heartily agree, it’s a great idea to get a free new top-of-the-line laptop from Microsoft. Too bad they besmirched it with Vista. Nothing that can’t be fixed by applying a little, or a lot, of Linux . OpenSuSE is my preference, although it’s losing ground fast to Kubuntu lately in my home.