Well, I'm guessing they are offering stock because they don't have any cash yet/left to bribe people with.

Out of interest, have they stated what [they think] their company is worth and how many shares the lucky prostitutes, i mean reviewers, will get?

They might have more luck offering a crate of stella.

Its not any worse than the programmer-crack of offering EXPRESS (Free) versions of all of your Visual Studio languages AND then hosting/blogging (Usenet) sorts of sites to get people to "write" about it. Heck the VS2008 Express has the entire suite of software of the VS2008 Pro version just stripped back a little bit.

Not any worse than offering CTPs that strangely don't time out when expected.

Last time I looked (months ago) Windows LIVE was still giving away websites (crappy ones, but still free).

They really shouldn't claim this machine will outrun a $3,000 PC. People may well benchmark it and tear them a new one. But, based on spec of a dual-core 400mhz PowerPC-based chip, it should certainly be pleasant enough as a desktop. A notebook based on this would be great, with a good battery the battery life would be insane.

It's clearly revolutionary. It's going to change the face of computing as we know it, all while being good to mother earth. Most all of my friends have them pre-ordered already and we're going to camp out all night waiting for the delivery trucks to come. All of the hip people are going to want one, and the trendsetters will make sure to have one early. I even hear that Paris is ordering one in pink!

Free kit /and/ stock options for a little creative writing?

/me looks for the box of integrity and tosses it in the corner.

Mine's the one with a little Devil (tm) on both shoulders.

nothing really, thanks I am off to find one of the ads.

I cannot believe the cynical retort to this approach.

If I am lucky enough to receive said product gratis, I will be giving it a fair evaluation, and no matter the actual review of the product I will place it surrounded by marketing features to encourage purchase.

The product looks quite good, in my opinion.

Is there a second email stating that in order to get access to the product, you need to wire a transfer to a Western Union account somewhere?. Perhaps their phone number contains 419?....

Ok perhaps it is also a serious enterprise. Many SOHO NAS systems use similar chips and are quite powerful these days; except they are often limited by clumsy implementation designs (fixed ram, slow bus, no video etc). It would be great to see it outperform the new Atom in terms of battery life.

"They really shouldn't claim this machine will outrun a $3,000 PC. People may well benchmark it and tear them a new one."

Not a problem. Nobody will ever see that review, due to the search results being flooded with paid-for blog and social network astroturfing that started months before an actual machine was available for review.

Bloody genius!

Are you sure this isn't a Nigerian scam..

Dear blogger,

My super intelligent uncle developed a new line of PC's that is faster than anything out there, but uses no power and produces no heat and costs buttons.

We just need $50m to get it going and then you can have $5gazillion in return.

send cheques, I mean blogs, to ....

I can whole-heartedly recommend this product to everyone. In tests it outperforms it's nearest rival by up to 28% at whatever it is this thing does. I currently have three and each one came in a colour and had its own wood based storage solution. Only a week after using this product, I went from 14 to 3729 friends on FaceSpace!

But, I found out from a guy I know in Second Life whose cousin works at the factory that they'll be hard to get hold of because they accidently used some secret military processors in them so they're super powerful and the government are trying to buy them all up before the Iranians can get hold of any. Honest.

Now gimme stuff!

It's not like it's unheard of practise. A tad sneaky, yes. Underhanded? Maybe a touch... but at least it's better than having drones of PR agents, isn't it? This way at least the geeks get a shot at some of the rewards of PR-dom, or something.

As long as it can run decent stuff like XP.

What, can't get my coat and worship Bill ?

I've been using <insert product name> for years and am supremely satisfied with it. My whole family is also using <insert product name> and it has revolutionised our life. We are happier, more productive and richer because of <insert product name>.

I wish them luck. We all know that the x86 architecture is very inefficient and we'd all like mobile devices with longer battery life.

http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page3.html

So for a free little box O trix(tm), I would do far more than lie on some forums O.o

^^^ What he said. I don't care if it's rubbish if it's free. Anyway, even if it is useless for its intended purpose, Hack-A-Day et al will be full of useful repurposings as soon as anyone gets near one with a screwdriver...

Are we in a Bubble again already?

We have no product, but tons of pre-IPO stock-options for those loosers who believe they might be the next Marc Cuban.

And oh yes, the most annoying time waster of a website in a long time.

So, the MO is:

1. Find some VC funding

2. Build hype

3. Repeat until popping up on all the hot company lists

4. Flip it to someone with too much money

5. Profit

Its the only way to get to the top these days, all the competition is doing it, so its only natural for them to follow!

One of the problems with communism has always been that that when the bolshie workers control the means of production, the poor sods who only have to buy the product end up losing out (think British Leyland). And one of the problems with capitalism has always been that when a bunch of faceless shareholders exhibiting borderline-psychotic selfishness control the means of production, the poor sods who only have to buy the product end up losing out (think ..... well, pretty much any privatised company really).

Now, if the means of production were controlled by the people who purchase the product .....

welcome our new, sweeter-than-apples overlords!

Sent them an e-mail. I'm in. Whatever it is, if it runs without crashing and I can install apps that work, I'll definitely give it honest reviews and post on it!!

They could hire a marketing company and pay them a ton of cash, or just do it this way.

This way is much stronger, and they will limit the number of people who can get involved, i.e. get the free machine.

The cherrypal looks quite smart, and the cloud computing idea is going to be interesting as well. That is maybe where the speed claim is coming from. Processing shoved to the server. Really we are having the return to thin clients, or as I like to call them Lean Clients, or Fit Clients.

The servers probably won't be green in and of themselves, but overall they will produce a net green effect, allowing processing to be centrally managed, rather than having powerful processors consuming power, but being left idle.

A lot of good ideas in this little box of tricks.

"So, the MO is:

1. Find some VC funding

2. Build hype

3. Repeat until popping up on all the hot company lists

4. Flip it to someone with too much money

5. Profit " .... By Daniel Kluge Posted Thursday 19th June 2008 10:12 GMT

Back in 1999 probably, Daniel, but in the Now, Profit is Loyal Servant/Master Slave to <Run>