On a product revue (ABC Perth radio), the techo trialled Vista OS on his PC, encountering numerous problems, being lack of integration with non MS software, difficulty with high speed broadband connectivity (apparently this is a problem with new PC’s ex shop).

Perhaps this is why MS loaded the OS into 90 laptops, it had a heads up on the connectivity issue.

Any one else???

You also haven’t answered any of the questions. If you’re not up to it, perhaps you could get Aaron Coldiron to answer. This is not about the bloggers, and not about journalism. It’s about the behaviour of Microsoft and Edelman. You are a senior executive and I presume the executive responsible for this program in Australia.

pbkg, far from this being a triumph of the bloggers, it’s an attempt by the “corporate giants” to further entrench their power by cynically exploiting bloggers. Companies like Microsoft would like nothing better than being able to do an end-run around reviewers, and instead get their puppets to provide most of the coverage.

pbkg, thanks for the URL fixup.

I am intrigued as to the basis of your comments that the article linked to by Down and Out in Sài Gòn, notably
“the article suffers from a lack of knowledge of things, and as well a relatively high bias. Just because someone knows encryption relatively well, doesn’t mean though know anything about other computer technology. It all comes from an approach which is anti DRM, anti MS, and anti the PC moving into the lounge room.“ (my emphasis)

and that

“the author just seems to want to jump on the MS bashing bandwagon.”

as I see no evidence in what he has written, nor in his bio to support your assertions.

Perhaps you have an (undisclosed) agenda which you have not revealed to the blog ?

Certainly, many of those users concerned with “early uptake” and “cutting edge” technology wrt computing seem to think along similar lines here

I rank the register up there with the herald sun in terms of it’s overall reliability and correctness. I have been hunting for the latest article where they messed up, but I can’t find it at the moment. But it has a long history of just not getting technology.

And the same thing goes for the linked article/site. Apart from the horribleness of the site (hyperlinks have been invented for a good reason, particularly when using footnotes, and I wish people would use them more!!! grrr), the article suffers from a lack of knowledge of things, and as well a relatively high bias. Just because someone knows encryption relatively well, doesn’t mean though know anything about other computer technology. It all comes from an approach which is anti DRM, anti MS, and anti the PC moving into the lounge room. I just think the whole thing is a joke, because all of this is going to have a similar effect on Apple as well with the next release of OS X also including these sorts of updates. But, the author just seems to want to jump on the MS bashing bandwagon. Fair enough if it is valid, but in this case it isn’t.

@Dan,

- Microsoft doesn’t make or sell laptops, so giving them away makes it clear that it’s a genuine ‘gift’, not a product sample

Yeah, I read that already, and responded already. Here is another example of MS providing top of the line hardware to test on. The TV being a top of the line for people to test. No, they didn’t get to keep it, but see below.

- The fact that these were not product loans, but rather gifts with significant financial value.

So where does companies providing free hardware to give away in a joint promotion fit into this? Where does corporate hospitatility fit into this? Where does flying journalists to IDF, CES, E3, fit into all of this? There is nothing different between this and anything else.

It’s also curious that Microsoft only approached bloggers, not journalists, with this offer. I’ve tended to avoid using this point because it has the obvious comeback of “you’re just sour because you didn’t get one.â€? But if you can overlook that (rather obvious) response, isn’t it telling that Microsoft didn’t try the strategy with journos?

Haven’t you heard the latest, bloggers are taking over the world</slightly-tongue-in-cheek>

Is this the changing of the guard, the rise of the little people over the corporate giants… (yes, I realise the irony of this statement since MS is a corporate giant). For sure, most bloggers won’t have the same level of thought into their ethics, but how is this any different from alot of journalists. One just needs to look at cash for comment for an example of this. There are also reasons why I don’t like some of the bigger hardware review sites…

Add to this, the relatively shallow nature of the reviews from the major sites/journalists. One review of the beta of Vista promised to show you all the latest and greatest screenshots and was the biggest and most exclusive, and was published on a bigger website, and yet, it barely covered anything. It had 40 pages of screenshots (note quite 1 image per page 100 adds like normal, but close enough), but half of the screenshots where of various stages of the setup wizards. It didn’t delve into any depth of the system, nor did it highlight any other the new and better software. Whereas, another site dealt with the new photo gallery software which I was more interested in at the time (works much better than almost ever other gallery software for what I wanted at the time). Also, it allows for things to be discovered. I have been using XP since before it was released to stores *thank you to the corporate world*, and yet I am still finding new things that have been there all along. Giving Vista a head start in the community with people talking about, so it isn’t just the geeks that know about it at release is exactly what they are aiming at. Things you just can’t get from traditional journalists/major websites. It’s getting the non-geeks discussing Vista that MS is trying to get from this, and when it is discussed on sites that are normally political blogs, I guess that is working…

@Tony,

You want to add an .aspx onto the end of the link to Frank.

long time no talk

i don’t see it as a joke.

i do think it is a storm in a teacup

but what would I know – i am not a journalist

once the news from ces and macworld hits, all of this will yesterday’s news.

I left this comment on his blog.

Frank, it’s great that you take ethics so seriously.

There are a number of questions you need to answer about this.

First, Microsoft’s own policy towards vendors bans them from giving gifts to your staff, so you clearly understand the problems with expensive gifts. So why did you give expensive gifts to bloggers from whom you expected reviews of Vista?

Second, if your aim was to assist in reviews, why did you exclude professional journalists and experienced reviewers?

Third, if you argue the bloggers needed the gifts to do the reviews, why did you send them to MVPs who you know have Vista and good computers already?

Fourth, why do you try to shift the blame for this onto the recipients of the laptops? It is Microsoft and Edelman who made these donations, not the bloggers. The bloggers have done nothing wrong, although your actions have exposed some of them to considerable stress.

I think there are two key issues that delineate this particular gift from Microsoft from all the others:

- Microsoft doesn’t make or sell laptops, so giving them away makes it clear that it’s a genuine ‘gift’, not a product sample

- The fact that these were not product loans, but rather gifts with significant financial value.

It’s also curious that Microsoft only approached bloggers, not journalists, with this offer. I’ve tended to avoid using this point because it has the obvious comeback of “you’re just sour because you didn’t get one.” But if you can overlook that (rather obvious) response, isn’t it telling that Microsoft didn’t try the strategy with journos?

I personally think it’s because Microsoft knew there were ethical problems with the strategy, and if they offered it to a journalist, the potential scandal would be much greater than the potential benefit of having the hardware in the hands of journos. Bloggers on the other hand may not realise the risk to their reputation in accepting such valuable gifts.

I’m sorry if I’ve got you miffed – but that was my experience. I could have taken a little bit more time to fix some things (like the resolution), but I was also in the process of moving house back to Oz.

Speaking of which, if you were one of those bloggers that got the free PCs, would it have been ethical to erase the partitions, and install Linux over it? (Probably not.)

pbkg,

I don’t know what you’ve got against El Reg. Insulting, inflammatory, etc. – but generally sceptical, which I appreciate. I’ll take it over the boilerplate “20 new features in Product X” [that I'll probably never use] articles – so common in the computer magazines – which often appear culled from corporate press releases.

Whatever you may think of that publication, it’s not so bad that any link positing via there makes it automatically bogs. The information comes originally from Peter Gutmann, a security researcher in Auckland, who likes cracking encryption algorithms for fun.

As for Open Source – I’d say it’s not doing so well on the desktop, but it’s in rude health on the server side in corporateland.

It seems somewhat strange to me to criticize a common industry practice simply because they’re targeting non-traditional reviewers.