Hey Microsoft – where’s my free Vista laptop?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 02 January 2007 23:56

Opinion and Analysis

Me? I’d like to think that if you fully and transparently disclose, you can get a free laptop and still be ethical about reporting into the future. But I’ve certainly read all of the articles for and against this view. It’s certainly a hard decision to have to make, but as I mentioned before, my soul not only doesn’t come cheap – it is not for sale. Whether I was ever to get a free laptop, or not. And any time that I have participated in creating an advertorial or paid editorial for a company, as I have done in the past, and will do in the future, be it in print, on the Web, or on television, this has always VERY clearly disclosed, as is the norm. I also do not consider the creation of paid and clearly disclosed advertorial content to be selling my soul.

And no, I have not created any advertorial content for iTWire. If I had, you'd have known about it. See the end of this article for additional disclosure, as disclosures are now the order of the day.

But as I didn’t get one of the laptops, I haven’t had to mount any arguments about why I’m keeping the laptop, or why I’m auctioning it, or why I’m loading Linux onto it, or why I’m returning it, or why I’m about to film myself smashing it into a million pieces and putting the video of the event onto the Internet like those guys in Canada did with the Smash my Xbox 360, Smash my PS3 and Smash my Wii websites.

It’s hard to know whether this whole Microsoft blogger laptop episode falls under the adage of any publicity is good publicity, because this one has certainly generated a massive online storm, only days before the big CES show in Las Vegas where Bill Gates will give his annual pre-CES keynote speech and will no doubt be talking us Vista and other Microsoft technologies in a big way. And let’s not forget the consumer launch of Vista at the end of January. Whether good, or bad, the tech world has been talking Microsoft and Vista non stop these past few days.

Apple’s MacWorld 2007 is on very soon, too, with demonstrations of their Vista challenging Mac OS X 10.5 bound to be on display in some form, even if just during Steve Jobs’ own keynote speech. Microsoft no doubt wants to keep Vista at top of mind during the impending Apple onslaught.

Whether Microsoft will ever do anything like this again is unknown. But it will certainly make the world’s big technology companies think twice before doing such a thing again.

One thing is for sure – whatever the ultimate fallout of this whole event, companies will continue providing products for review to journalists. Some of those products will not be asked for back, whether by accident or on purpose.

If a journalist or blogger finds him or herself in this situation, they either need to send the product back, or simply disclose the fact that they have been the recipient of a particular product (hardware or software) so the reader knows this when they are reading that journalist/blogger’s story. Or smash it into a million pieces with a sledgehammer, film the event, and put it on YouTube.

Disclosure and transparency in the modern world has become paramount. Reputations are at stake. If Microsoft’s actions ensure that the world’s journalists and bloggers are open and disclose what has happened, letting readers make up their own minds as to the trustworthiness of a particular journalist or blogger, then the quality of online reporting can only go up.

While in some people’s minds the whole thing has been a massive disaster, ultimately this will turn out to have been a very good thing for the information industry and Internet users at large, meaning better and more transparent news, views and interviews for us all… we hope!

Additional disclosure: Once again, I didn’t get a free laptop either. But I did receive a review copy of the business edition of Windows Vista at Microsoft’s Australian launch on November 30, and I’m using it right now along with a 60-day trial version of Office 2007 to write this article. The paid advertorial/editorial content I have created has been on Australian television programs (Bright Ideas and Room for Improvement), although content that I helped produce for news and current affairs television shows has always been genuine news content, and not paid advertorial content. Likewise, the articles I write for iTWire have all been genuine news and/or opinion. In print form, I work with a company to produce a custom magazine for D-Link Australia as the Editor of D-Link's own magazine. My photo is in every copy produced thus far, and on TV my face has been very clearly seen, so I have never covered up any paid work that I have done for companies, and I most certainly do not feel this has impacted on my ability to be an impartial journalist reporting on events, into which I freely inject scepticism and cynicsm where warranted, which is quite often! Thankfully, however, you are free to make up your own mind on the issue. I don't plan to stop writing anytime soon.