I get what you're saying, but I don't see why adding an affiliate link to an honest endorsement makes it any less honest.
While I don't agree with everything Jeff has to say, I wouldn't call him a shill. His reviews have always seemed perfectly honest to me. I've even bought products he's recommended and agreed with said recommendations - not caring whether or not he made a dollar off said purchase.
Isn't that the underlying reason for affiliate links? No doubt, they've obviously been bastardized in thousands of ways, but the initial reason for them was to make linking to a product mutually beneficial.
I thought it was parody, myself, because the bottom half of that laptop looks exactly like a MacBook Air, down to the arrows, slot ordering, and specs, and yet not once does he mention the "elephant in the room" of how it compares to the MB-A.
Same feeling. I hate apple, but recommending a MBA clone + win8 preview is very weird. Especially the win8 part, the author didn't tell any feature that makes it a big improvement over win7. Perhaps this is not about software after all.
yep, definitely an affiliate link. in previous posts atwood would disclose the affiliate links in the post (not sure why he didn't do so this time). amazon usually pays 4% on referrals (in this case 42$), so depending on the loyalty of his readership this "review" might be moderately lucrative.
In case anyone doesn't know, he's been one of the most popular Programmer bloggers for many years. He also started StackOverflow with Joel Spolsky (another very popular blogger). So his posts tend to be noticed.
