A free laptop?

Ever since I first read one of Jeremy Clarksons collections of columns I’ve lusted after the reviewers lifetyle - not for cars obviously - I can’t drive and have no desire to do so - but for computers.

You see, each week Jeremy is given a new car to drive and at the end of the week it’s taken away and a new one delivered - he can phone car companies and have cars dropped off if he needs something specific - and he gets paid for it.

Apparently there was a long time where he didn’t see the need to own his own car as the review cars fitted the purpose just fine.

This just seemed brilliant to me - wouldn’t it be great to get a new laptop or desktop every week - trying a new machine all the time and constrantly having the most up to date computer - files aren’t a problem as all of mine are stored on a seperate USB hard drive.

Obviously it was a pipe dream, my day job has rules against that sort of thing and I’m not exactly a high profile journalist for a tech magazine or website.

But it looks like blogging is enough to get you to that status nowadays - at least with Toshiba it is. I recieved this e-mail just before I went on holiday.

I work for talkToshiba and our objective is to get people talking about Toshiba on the net.

As an established blogger, we’d like to give you the chance to trail a Tecra A8 Notebook for a short time, and write an honest, objective review of it which will be published on the net. We arrange delivery and pick up, so it’s relatively hassle free.

Please let me know if you would be interested in participating in this or if you know anyone else technologically minded who might be, perhaps a friend who’s experiencing problems with their current laptop.

Now my first reaction was to delete it as it was clearly spam - but I decided to investigate further which involved checking out the url at the end of the e-mail address and it turns out it’s not spam but a pretty interesting viral experiment.

Toshiba send a laptop to bloggers or people that comment regularly on tech forums for a week - they then write about their experience and good or bad it’s getting Toshiba laptops talked about by and too the people that might actually buy one.

After a couple of e-mails checking to make sure there are no catches and that I WILL be objective and balanced we’ve agreed that I’ll take and review a Tecra A8 Notebook for one week in September.

This is a really interesting and brave project by Toshiba - one I applaud them for but I did have to wrestle with my conscience for a while - is it right to review a product that’s been lent to you - I’ve only ever written about things I’ve either paid for or a free before now.

Then I reasured myself that it happens all the time and that it’s how everyone from the BBC to TechCrunch get around to reviewing products and services.

So if anyone else wants to send me something to review - on the understanding that I’m not a particularly nice person and you might not get a favourable review if I don’t like it - the address is ryan@upyourego.com.

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