Bribery, Schmibery

[akirlu]

For those of my Mac-head friends getting their knickers in a twist over the Eeevil Empire giving away free-no-nevermind-give-those-back laptops to promote Vista, Mr. Scalzi nails it right on the head.

Comments

Eek! My Knickers Are In a Twist

[ladyjestocost.livejournal.com]

Here I am, an accredited Mac-head (we have four in-house right now, and one out for repairs), _and_ I have a blog, and _my very own brother_ is a blue badger, and did the Eeevil Emmmpire send me a new laptop for my very own with Vista already installed?

Nooo! What's a girl got to do to get bribed around here? I mean, really.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Wait, I agree with Scalzi, too, but having followed this controversy through several blogs, I wasn't under the impression that the Microsoft critics were mostly motivated by being "Mac-heads"; indeed, many of them weren't even Mac users.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't think I said anything about either "mostly motivated" or the Microsoft critics in the aggregate. As a matter of personal observation, I see a more than random relationship among my acquaintance between Mac partisanship and knee-jerk MSoft trashing. But even if I'm right about that, there's no reason to suppose the relationship is causal.

[ckd]

Or, of course, the causality could run the other way; dislike of Microsoft could be one reason someone might buy a Mac instead.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Actually, if time comes they require upgrading to Vista, I'm going with Linux.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

This Mac-head doesn't have her knickers in a twist. Well, at least about this issue.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

If they sent me a laptop with Vista, I'd review it. I'd mention the circumstance of the review (as I did with some wine that a vineyard sent, and when I review music by friends) and give an honest review.

Remember my motto: I can be bribed.

But with full disclosure.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I read Scalzi's essay and it's pretty good. But this line really got me:

Leaving aside the idea of Microsoft being pure, unmitigated evil that destroys everything it touches,

Very funny. If Microsoft really were pure unmitigated evil, it would not be something that we could just leave aside. It would be the issue, and the laptop giveaway would be just an example. Of course MS is not pure unmitigated evil. It isn't really evil at all. I don't know if I would even go so far as to call it banal. But one thing for sure is that Microsoft is very pushy when it comes to marketing. Always has been, and it seems to be deeply ingrained in the corporate callosum. This laptop giveaway is very much an example of that pushiness. People don't like it, because they'd like to feel they can make up their minds for themselves.

I also would not put this as a Mac thing. (If it were a Mac thing, you would understand.) The obvious alternative to Vista is XP. It runs the same apps on the same hardware, with excellent compatibility, only faster. What's not to like? Maybe over the long run most XP users will migrate to Vista as they replace their machines, but it will take a while. Getting users onto NT/XP took a while too. I'm not going to go into the DRM thing, except that to the extent it is an issue, it will make adoption even slower.

Oh, and as you know, Bob, I don't wear knickers. If I had my knickers in a twist, it would be, like, totally pants.