If you knew anything about Penny-Arcade or how they run their business, you know they're not paid shills. They are a pair of gamers who are very vocal about their loves and hates. They have a history of supporting a wide assortment of devices in their history. In the beginning they used to be ardent supporters of Windows based tech, but now they both sport Mac based products as their work machines. These can clearly be seen in their videos on their Web Series as well.

They even have a history of only allowing advertisers whose products they enjoy advertise on their website as well. These adverts are almost always games. They have no problem lampooning 'AAA' games with large advertising budgets if they think the product is crap. However, if they enjoy the product they have no problem supporting it either by doing custom content for the developers, which is put off on a specific section on their website and given the disclaimer that it is content paid for by developers.

Mike, in his time as a Surface user, has been very explicit about what he enjoyed about the device and what he didn't enjoy. He has also wrote up blog posts about what Microsoft sent him for free or where they sent him and has given his readers full disclosure about his relationship with Microsoft.

I think it's rather silly to lampoon a person, based off of an article of him giving a favourable review of a product that you think is bad or dubious.