Microsoft together with AMD gave out some timely Christmas presents (which are officially review PCs) to a bunch of bloggers this year. Brandon LeBlanc got one, Scott Beale got one, Mauricio Freitas got one, Mitch Denny got one, Zen.Heavengames got one, Barb Bowman got a media center, plus many other bloggers who has yet to receive it during the Christmas rush. They seem to have covered everyone from A-list to Z-list, a first in the industry with such a valuable gift, kudos for thinking about the little guys.

Some people got Ferrari 1000s, others got 5000s (Some got Media Centers even). The following specs are from the Ferrari 5000.

The machine looks just as good as it specs. As part of Acer’s Ferrari designer computing range, the carbon-fiber case is styled with a slick threaded finish with genuine Ferrari badging and color strips. Just like the racing counterpart, this machine has grunt. It sports an AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core 2ghz CPU, 2GB of DDR2-667 RAM, AMD-ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 on a 15.4″ widescreen. It also has a 160GB SATA drive, HD-DVD reader and burner as well as a 1.3mp camera. Full specifications available at the Acer website.

Assuming it doesn’t use Sony batteries, this laptop blows everything out of the water. It retails for a hot $2,299. But if you write about Microsoft, they might even give you one for free. Is it ethical? Probably not. Is it worth something to hard-working sweat and tears bloggers? Hell yeah.

I don’t see the Free Software Foundation handing out any Ferrari’s.

Update: Robert Scoble also picked up the story, comparing this to PayPerPost. Although I think PayPerPost is about profiting, whilst this is about rewarding. Even though the outcome might be the same.

Update 2: Dan Warne from APCMag has a different perspective on this issue, he thinks this is highly inappropriate and immoral. Could this act of generosity turn upside-down into a PR disaster?

Update 3: Just something for everyone to keep in mind. Remember bloggers are given a choice which includes giving the machine back when they’re done with it. Keeping the unit is a decision made solely by the bloggers receiving the computers.

Update 4: Looks like I’ve stirred up the waters a bit, so here’s some of my opinions and clarifcations.

• Slashdot has labelled this a “bribe”. However unlike what they have claimed, these were not gifts. As it may happen to coincide with Christmas, it is important to note Windows Vista is launching in 30 days. It is nothing more than just good timing and coincidence.

  I, however, wrote these as “Christmas presents”, only because it happens to coincide with Christmas. Officially, these were review PCs with the the options at upon completion of review to either send back to Microsoft, give away or keep indefinitely. This choice is solely at the discretion of bloggers.

• Some people have accused my good friend Brandon LeBlanc of accepting the Ferrari without disclosure. Whilst it is true he did not disclose he received the machine from Microsoft in his original post, he had always intenteded to disclose in his review article in the near future. I think nothing less if not more of him for admitting his mistake.

  Bloggers like Brandon put a lot of hard work into their blogs and most of the time receive little or no reimbursement for their highly valuable work. I wouldn’t think it would be inappropriate at all, in fact only fair that these bloggers deserve to keep these machines as ‘rewards’.

• I, myself, am receiving a machine also. It hasn’t arrived yet, possibly Friday. Unlike what Tech.Blorge quotes, it is not a Ferrari, but is apparently a Velocity Micro Media Center PC.

  I intend to accept it, open it, and drool at it. Without having a TV or monitor with me, it would be kind of hard for me to use it. As David Flynn suggested, I’m considering giving it away through a contest or charity auction. But I’m also in need of an upgrade, so don’t bet on it.

• Aaron Coldiron, who was responsible for handling these machines at Microsoft, responds in a comment below.

Update 5: These machines were sent for review and reviewed they shall. Brandon LeBlanc is one of the first with an actual review of the machine (Ferrari 5000). It’s a beast without the beasty size.

Update 6: Mitch Denny (who received a Ferrari 1000 and disclosed it) has posted an excellent excellent post collecting all of the discussions including articles from both sides of the fence on this topic.

Update 8: Journalist writer and blogger Ed Bott thinks the whole moral debate is unnecessary. “Everyone in the community wins when that person gets the chance to play with new technology.” He got a Ferrari 5000, and might auction it off for charity.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by no one. Because no one cares about Long.

Days away from attending the biggest electronics show, I’m being stripped from one of the most basic of technologies, internet access. Due to family reasons, I’m moving to Hastings, a rural town 50km away from where I live at the moment and almost 100km away from the Melbourne international airport. It also happens to be Christmas, when everyone has an excuse not to work. The only internet option is ADSL, which optimistically speaking, can only be connected in weeks.

That means I’m going to be stuck with local library internet access. You’re limited to 1 hour a day and only Internet Explorer 6. Oh it’s going to be an agonizing week until CES.

Speaking about CES, if you would like to meet up, please send me an email (which might hopefully be read). But otherwise, I’m going to be at the Microsoft Vista Lab, Bloghaus and the Microsoft viral campaigns. Spot the asian guy!

Happy holidays and happy new year! Thank you for reading and supporting me this year. 🙂

Update: I’ve found myself an unsecured WiFi access point. Together with a free VPN solution called Hotspot Shield from Anchorfree, I’m going to be using this until ADSL gets connected. It’s not so bad after all.

Another day, another Microsoft viral campaign. This time, The fake Center for Digital Amnesia Awareness has launched an online campaign called “Stop Digital Amnesia” (via Furrygoat) – a medical-like project discussing the problems and solution for a made-up disorder called “digital amnesia”.

According to this very fake professor, “digital amnesia” refers not only to lack of storage capacities, but “isolated devices compounded by digital protection deficiencies.” The solution? Sharing. “Access throughout the home and increased connectively with loved one, combined with daily backups, these steps can prevent or even reverse digital memory loss.”

This of course brings to mind, the ‘Quattro’ Home Server, a concept that has been known since 2005. The most obvious connection between “Stop Digital Amnesia” and ‘Quattro’ is the mention of home connectivity. One would assume ‘Quattro’ will either enable or enhance home connectivity from computers to computers and even devices. By bringing together NAS storage with media control capabilities, it would also solve the problem of isolated devices such as TVs which would have previous had no right to access DRMed or otherwise copyrighted content available on Media Centers and desktops, to have managed access to media content on a centralized server store. Automatic daily backups is also another possibility, where ‘Quattro’ fetches predefined files and directories from computers on the network, and makes an image backup for safekeeping.

If you think hard about ‘Quattro’, which might be hard at this time of year, then a server opens up possibilities in many areas beyond media and file sharing. Microsoft has demonstrated with a server, you can enable unified management and control of services such as security (ex. Forefront) and communications (ex. Exchange Server). This could leverage many powerful enterprise tools such as web & voice-access emails, network-wide security protection and even internal patch redistribution to the home. It could make home IT management as simple as plug’n’go.

However, if it isn’t ‘Quattro’, than it could also be Windows Live Drive. However with specific mentions of home connectivity, I highly doubt it.

“A cure in Vegas, baby!” CES Central Hall, Sunday January 7th. I’ll be there!

Photo credit: stock.xchng faltered

Some of you may have been following The Vanishing Point alternative-reality-game that was originally revealed on the Internet Explorer MSDN Team blog on Saturday the 23rd of December. If you’ve been living under an inflatable rock (like myself), then the community at Neowin has an extremely resourceful forum topic that will help you catch up on all the solved mysteries and mysteries yet to solve.

If one thing’s for certain, then The Vanishing Point is a viral marketing campaign created by 42Entertainment, the same people who were behind the hugely successful “ilovebees” viral campaign for the launch of Halo 2. This time however, the puzzles are a lot harder and no one knows what the viral campaign is for.

Several clues and wild guesses based on successful attempts at solving puzzles included:

• Antepenultimate – “high-end laptops, gaming computers, media centers, software, gaming consoles, media players, and games”. Somewhat too obvious for an ARG.
• Zenith – “Fewer than a thousand people have ever been there to see the ultimate vista.” Some people suggested a trip to space, but space travel has been merely limited to fewer than a hundred people. But ‘ultimate vista’ suggests a sightseeing and travel prize.

And if you watch the YouTube video (original video removed, reuploaded to this link), assuming everything has been crafted to the last strand of hair on her head, she promises to “make someone famous around the world”.

“We’ve started, and there’s no turning back.” Everything will be revealed at Bellagio Fountains, Las Vegas on Monday January 8th at 6:30pm. “I promise you, it will be timeless.” I’ll be there.

Even though I didn’t have time to send Christmas cards, read my daily 350+ RSS feed items, respond to all my emails, register and schedule CES events, check travel information, check weather in Las Vegas, exchange currency or do a list of many other extremely rewarding and useful tasks; I had time to create a website.

Currently operational with a few bugs, CESBlogs.com aims to create an aggregated website, feed and resource for all things CES from noted influential Microsoft bloggers. I had to convince myself I had some sort of influence, otherwise I wasn’t to allow myself on.

I will be adding more bloggers if the need arises, but I hope it will remain a selective group for obvious quality and quantity reasons. Current authors include Mary Jo Foley, Ed Bott, Josh Phillips, Robert McLaws, Brandon LeBlanc, Todd Bishops and reluctantly myself as well.

I also want to give a shout out to CESBloggers.com who is creating a more generalized group blog.

If you would like to sponsor, author, suggest a feature to CESBlogs, please email me with the contact form in my about page, or also comment on this blog post. But by the looks of it, I probably won’t be able to reply quickly, so please be patient.

Josh from Windows Connected had received his CES 2007 guide book today and scanned this picture of a Microsoft ad placed inside. I did my best to enhance it as much as I could, but everything’s pretty clear already.

Josh and Robert McLaws speculated this is referring to Windows Live Drive, a rumor that’s been silent for quite some time when concepts like GDrive and limitless online storage were still hot on the heads of “Google OS” rumormongers.

“What matters most” is quite a subjective topic that could mean many different things to people with different backgrounds, interests and hobbies. For example, to a music-lover it could be MP3s. To an artist, it could be pictures. To an executive, it could be tax fraud documents. For a family, it could be photos or home movies. For FSF members, it could be anti-Microsoft propaganda.

If “what matters most” is everything, then it can only be Live Drive. A centralized file storage system with the ability to share files as well as protect them, that is accessible from any parts of the world with internet access, could open up so many possibilities. Not only would this benefit web applications like Google Docs for synchronization and collaboration, but also desktop applications like iTunes. Imagine having access to your entire music library anywhere, anytime. But of course, neither of this are Microsoft applications, so I couldn’t see them adopting or be allowed to adopt this model.

On the other hand, if “what matters most” is limited to only media, then it could be just Windows Home Server, another silent rumor that Todd Bishops mentioned today. Windows Home Server was believed to be a home-oriented server primarily used to store, control and distribute content on a home network. If this is what the ad is referring to, then to “store” would refer to the ability to store documents in a centralized location, to “share” content around the home network to X360s, Media Centers and other devices (ex. SideShow), and “protect” meaning either limiting access to files or providing security to the network.

Live Drive seems more definite, but Windows Home Server wouldn’t be too far off either.

What matters most is, this will soon all be revealed at CES.

Note: Windows Live Drive and Windows Server Home logos are mockups. They are not representative of any real applications or services at the time of writing.