Microsoft Attempts to Woo Students With 'Crowdsourced' Laptops 128
theodp writes "Q. What do Chris Brown and Steve Ballmer have in common? A. They both want you to Beg for It. GeekWire reports that Microsoft is touting its new Chip In program, a crowdfunding platform that allows students to 'beg' for select Windows 8 PCs and tablets that they can't afford on their own. Blair Hanley Frank explains, 'Students go to the Chip In website and choose one of the 20 computers and tablets that have been pre-selected by Microsoft. Microsoft chips in 10% of the price right off the bat, and then students are given a link to a "giving page" to send out to anyone they think might give them money. Once their computer is fully funded, Microsoft ships it to them.' Hey, what could go wrong?"
They are windows 8? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I don't think anyone wants one. Begging and debasing yourself for a computer makes sense, if you really need one. Doing it for a computer that suffers from delusions of being a tablet? What's the point?
Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Crowdsourcing is interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but it really doesn't help when this kind of project tries to get people to turn it into spam. Want to drive your early 1980s Vanagon through China on the Silk Road, and write a book about the experience? Good project for crowdsourcing (but didn't make its kickstarter goal). Want to record an album with your band or film a documentary on something super-nerdy? By all means give it a shot.
Poor student wanting to buy a device Microsoft picked for you? Just makes the whole concept of crowdsourcing look like what it is: begging. The appeal of crowdsourcing, in my opinion, is that if the project succeeds, something fun, interesting, or exciting gets brought back that the people who helped it happen get to enjoy. Not just the person who gathered the funds.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bah, US only... (Score:4, Insightful)
So don't buy the machine.
Hopefully more linux users will start buying linux machines or bare OS machines and we can get some actual reasonable statistics.
Re:Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
That those same loans would cover in fact. I know, I bought a laptop that way once. I had no working computer and needed it to do my university homework.
Here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft with another new half baked idea.
Painful to watch and execute me too ad campaign.
A day late and a dollar short.
Say what you will about them, the fuckers are consistent.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
That 10% discount is almost as much money as you could save by forgoing Windows for something useable and free.
Re:Bah, US only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crowdsourcing is interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is worse than begging --- this is *lobbying*. You're not asking for the computer you'd particularly want given the whole world of available choices; you're working on behalf of Microsoft to provide advertising for Microsoft so that people will give money to Microsoft, and in return you get a crappy device that's not what you and your family/friends would have decided to spend the same $X00 on in the first place.