Ron Schenone

Microsoft Wants To Know – ‘Are You A PC?’

Posted by on Sep 23, 2008 | 9 Comments

Last evening Microsoft unveiled its lastest barge of what are supposedly anti-Apple commercials, this time having people saying ‘I’m A PC’. As I sat there in disbelief at the lameness of the commercial, I looked over to my wife who asked me ‘what was that about?’ The only response I could think of was that it was to show how many people use a PC.

But what makes the commercial silly, is the fact that no one disputes that more people use PC’s. What Apple has attacked in the past is the weakness of Vista as an operating system. This seems to have worked for Apple which has slowly nibbled at Microsofts dominance of the computer market. So why the ‘I am a PC’ ads?

I believe that Microsoft is going to have a tough sell convincing anyone that Vista is a s good as Apples operating system. In fact they may have a tough sell trying to convince PC users that Vista is as good as XP. So what is Microsoft trying to accomplish besides spending $300 million? I am really not sure at this point.

The Seinfeld-Gates commercials were a disaster in my opinion. It now appears that the newest commercials are also missing the mark.

But what do you think?

Comments welcome.

  • Bruce

    Ron, these lame commercials just make you want to slap Microsoft upside its (figurative) head and knock the stupid out of the company. What happened to that hip bleeding edge culture that Microsoft once stood for? They are totally reinforcing the notion that they are just plodding along completely out of touch with today’s market. 300 million? And this is the best they can do? Geez…..

  • http://icantakeyourpicture.com Mitchell

    I agree. Maybe Microsoft should make a “Why I’m a PC” campaign, rather than simply acknowledging the fact that a majority of computers run Windows.

  • czl

    I believe Microsoft lost a bundle on Vista, which they are desperate to recoup. I still use XP, and 2I, myself, as I don’t feel the need for a closer relationship to MS, which Vista provides. I don’t need, nor want an operationg system that acts like a warden. Obviously Microsoft distrusts its me as a user, and I react accordingly.

    OSX is obviously the better operating system in many fronts, but than if one compares the cost of the computer plus the operating system, it becomes obvious that the price is nearly double.

    I think I’ll put up with the older system, and the poor commercials for the price difference.

  • http://www.aevium.com Chris

    I use both Vista and OSX regularly. I have a PC that’s got a 4 core processor, 4G of ram, and 2 massive HD’s. I also have a 750MB video card. It’s a Haus. Vista Business runs very well on it. The system, as I built it myself, cost significantly less than a comprable mac system. So PC’s have apple on the price point. As I use the Adobe products, and they work on both platforms, there is no significant edge the mac has over the PC, except possibly with security. I use a program called TrendMicro to quickly detect and remove spyware stuff that can I suppose only make it through because of security holes in IE.

    Apple also has microsoft on the integration and application side. Dragging and dropping and viewing documents from app to app is so easy and everything is very responsive and integrated.

    Vistas dialog boxes though, can do everything any operating window can (create folders, move files, open them, anything. And Aero is kinda fun. I mean come on, its about time windows users had a little bling ;) .

  • http://twitter.com/MichaelHostiuck Michael Hostiuck

    What do you recommend for defragmenting on a mac?

    • http://twitter.com/MOSHONAS Zack Moshonas

      iDefrag, Its an amazing piece of software!

  • uberRegenbogen

    The geek in me takes exception to equating fragmentation with disorganisation. To the OS (specifically the filesystem driver) the blocks of a file are always organised; it knows exactly where it all is—no matter how scattered. Fragmentation is not an unsound condition; it is merely sub-optimal per mechanical concerns. Rectifying it is never actually required—merely desirable in certain situations (particularly in OSes that make no effort to mitigate it).

  • http://twitter.com/torroella88 Carlos Torroella

    Do we need to use defragmenting thing in linux?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681289821 Bob Snyder

    There’s an even more important reason NOT to defrag an SSD. Because of the limited read/write cycles, a daily or even weekly defrag run on such a drive will kill it very quickly by using up those read/writes and leaving large chunks of memory which can no longer be written to. Defragging an SSD = BAD IDEA.