REDMOND, WASHINGTON- The ball of light, data, and self-referential wankery known as the Blogosphere nearly imploded last week when journalists discovered that Microsoft had given high-performance laptops to some of the Net's top bloggers. Message board posters are furious that the company would employ its formidable resources in such an obvious attempt at bribery- yet the gesture may not be quite what it seems. The gifts come at a cost- they are all pre-loaded with Windows Vista.

One of the famous bloggers known to have accepted the gift, Ara Gant, has not uploaded a new entry since just before Christmas, and it appears that the laptop's fresh-out-of-beta operating system could be the source of the problem. Vista's DRM copyright protection scheme is reportedly so strict that it will not allow any data in or out.

The situation has left Gant alone in his apartment with no connectivity whatsoever. In a hand-written letter to his handful of "real life" friends, a panicked Gant describes his webless anguish. "At this very moment there are millions, or at least dozens, of people out there waiting to hear what I have to say. Thanks to my new laptop, they can't. Oh, God- the creeping numbness of not being able to check my hits. I keep sticking notes on my fridge with every random thought in my head- just to remind myself that I exist. I'm so furious right now- I would post a thread about it but, as you might have guessed, I CAN'T!"

When the scandal first broke, many of the lucky bloggers who received the laptops kept quiet about it for fear they would be labeled as sell-outs. Now, however, deducing the list of recipients is fairly simple: just look for the lack of new posts. Very quickly, the online outrage has shifted from "trying to buy off influential bloggers" to "trying to shut down influential bloggers."

Naturally, these amateur columnists could very easily switch to another computer, perhaps the same one they were using prior to receiving the poisoned laptops. However, users have so far been unwilling to give up their souped-up new Acer machines because, although they are bore-hog-boobs useless without Net connectivity, they do what little they can with blinding speed.

"This isn't about the laptop itself," explained Gant. "The laptop is a symbol. It says that I'm important- not just an underemployed software engineer who can't maintain a relationship or a decent career. It says that I matter. That's why I carry it everywhere, sleep with it under my pillow, and why I've sent photos of myself using it to every girl who ever rejected me. Believe me, that's a lot of stamps. If the laptop actually worked, then I'd just have emailed them."

From all corners of the Internet, rancor over the Vista-infected laptops builds with each passing day. Some are even calling for a federal investigation into Microsoft's plan to silence critics and allies alike. For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, however, this is a simple case of "caveat early-adopter."

"It was certainly not our intention to sabotage those folks," said Ballmer. "I have no idea how that happened. I do know one thing: those socially retarded morons now sincerely regret ever replacing the 's' in the company's name with a dollar sign. Hahaha. Who's the sweaty hack now, eh?"

A blogger from Australia complicated matters on Tuesday after claiming that his Vista laptop was fully functional and attempted to prove this by posting a blog entry from it. As it turns out, he was actually using a MacBook running OS X, an all too common mistake for Vista enthusiasts.