It has been reported recently that several high-profile bloggers received free Vista-ready laptops from Microsoft worth thousands of dollars, to do with what they will. Now it was a Christmas-time story, during which period most journalists' minds are pretty-much pickled and incapable of a great deal of rational thought, but the news raises some interesting issues about blogging ethics (as has been reported elsewhere too, no doubt, but I'm going to weigh in anyway).

Most of those on the receiving end of this early Christmas gift were apparently reviewers, the implication being that if they were to get something like this in the post they'd be more inclined to go easy on old MS. Some declared the freebie, some have (presumably) not, which leads us back to ethics…To my mind unless you're one of those who has declared, you should no longer be trusted as a purveyor of impartial wisdom – got to give your readers the facts and let them decide for themselves.

But then again, there is a kind of misconception about bloggers anyway; yes, some of them (or us) do know what they're talking about, but to think bloggers are any more likely to be neutral and reliable than your average hack – as many people seem to – is pretty naïve…and should be punishable by death, or something equally unpleasant, like being forced to watch back-to-back omnibus editions of Eastenders.