Microsoft gives bloggers "free, loaded laptops" with notes offering to let them hold on to the machines after their review is done. Mere marketing, or malefic manipulation?
The interesting part comes later, however, when MS requests the computers back after critics find out about the freebies and whip up the biggest storm they can:
Disclosure is everything. That this goes for the gifter, as well as the giftee, should go without saying. Disclosure: anyone involved in reviewing stuff soon learns to fear the mailman. Everyone wants to review games and gadgets until they have to review Hello Kitty Cutie World Delux or anything made by Hewlett Packard.
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