As part of a new-fangled viral marketing promotion with Hewlett Packard and marketing agency BuzzCorps, I will be giving away an HP laptop and lots of goodies along with 14 other college-oriented blogs. As you probably caught on from the name of this promotion, it is aimed at college students.
Each participating blog will get a week to run a contest on their site and select a winner. That means you’ll have 15 chances to win a new system. Each blog will have their own contest rules and entry methods. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do for mine but you’ll find out October 8th, when my contest officially begins.
This all started about a month ago when I got an email from a marketing agency hired by HP. They said they noticed I used an HP printer (LaserJet 1012). Rather than quipping “because Apple hasn’t made a printer since 1996″, I decided to see what they were up to. I’m glad I could help out with this contest. I got to choose between the dv4t, dv5t and dv7t laptops to giveaway. I went with the more portable 14-inch dv4t.
Along with the dv4t laptop, there is a media docking station, 500GB portable hard drive, HP Photosmart C6380 all-in-one printer and messenger bag included for the winner.
Below are the participating blogs, so you can check out each one and enter in their contests as well.
- September 26th: Poorer Than You
- September 28th: Broke-Ass Student
- September 30th: Broke Grad Student
- October 2nd: Study Hacks – Demystifying College Success
- October 4th: Cooking for Engineers
- October 6th: College Being
- October 8th: Paul Stamatiou
- October 10th: DormDelicious
- October 12th: Student Bloggers
- October 14th: Jessica Mah Meets World
- October 16th: UNEASYsilence
- October 18th: Gomeler.com
- October 20th: CampusGrotto
- October 22nd: Hack College
- October 24th: The University Blog
If you’re interested, you don’t have to do anything yet. Just keep reading regularly as usual.
Disclosure: Participating in this contest means I am unable to say anything negative about HP.
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Lately I have preferred HP over other PC brands. My girlfriend got a tablet that is pretty stinken nice. Doesn’t have too much unnecessary software and is sturdy. The only problem with it is those caused by vista. I do like the pic of the PC sitting under almost be lurked upon by the Mac with the iPhone moving to flank.
So just out of curiosity… are you unable to say anything negative about HP until the conclusion of the contest? Just for the duration of it? Only in the posts related specifically to the contest, or in everything?
That seems like a pretty big right to give up.
Dude, I only started reading you the other day (http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/05/18/how-to-setup-gmail-for-hosted-domains), then I see you on UNEASYsilence as one of the HP people.
Man, nice one! I’ve subscribed to your blog and I’m going to go back through some posts, noticed some nice stuff about PHP and shizz – after a few mis-starts I’m finally doing web design and development in Uni.
Oh and used to have a Wiki entry, I was going to start one ha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Paul_Stamatiou
Or was that a joke? The Disclosure.
I’m unsure.
I believe we are only unable to say anything insulting about HP during the promotion. If we find a trait that bugs us about the system if we are reviewing it then it’s perfectly fine to note this. BuzzCorps is just looking for us to don a professional manner in promoting HP products. I must say the DV4T is rather well packed, currently playing with mine before posting.
Do you have to be a college student to win?
Sweet, man. Questions: is the messenger bag an HP bag or one of the bags you did for the laptop bags shootout? Do you have to give away everything to one person?
Canada included in this contest, or is it a US-only thing?
@Arcadiy – I stated a bit too broadly.. I can’t say anything bad about this promotion, but when I review the laptop I can be as unbiased as ever and say what I want, as usual.
@Blake – they are HP-branded bags. As for if one person gets everything – for the most part I think so. The media dock is naturally for the laptop and the hard drive plugs into the media dock IRC so it’s kind of a 1 package thing.
@Michael – it’s a global contest, anyone can enter as long as they have an address
Wow! One day I’d love to be at the level where people send me schwag for my blog. The other night I was at an observatory star-gazing party and a guy had the laser pointer you reviewed…I was like “I know all about that thing…PSTAM.com”.
Looking forward to the contest.
Of course you are not allowed to say anything bad about HP at least until the contest ends.:) Now on the other side i think I’ll visit this blog again ;). A contest is more than welcome.
I guess this is US only, and that sucks. :(
@James – global. if you have an address, any address, you can enter.
Dear Paul
I am a student yes and new to computers, I live in
Trinidad. Probably I will be considered over the hill
but it is never to young to learn and I am experiencing
extreme difficulty with the downturn in the economy here
in my country. I need a computer and because of financial
constraints I doing my best to put together a home pc
in order to do research concerning my health and to go
online to do a course of learning with a distant learning
program.
please help me I need an lcd monitor and a printer to
complete the pakage.
can you help?
thanking you
Leslie C. Lewis
p.s. pleas do not display my email
thank you.