Comments on: Microsoft tries to reclaim Windows' image

After years of letting Apple's attack ads go unanswered, software maker sets out on difficult, costly journey of trying to take back control of what Windows stands for.

[peestandingup]

It's almost impossible for Microsoft to have an original thought. And they absolutely suck at advertising.

Name me ONE memorable Microsoft ad. Just one.......Didn't think so.

[Lyle_O]

Why would they have to make ANY memorable Ads? They don't really need to advertise as much as say those stupid pets.com commercials they played during the superbowl a few years ago. Wait, where is that company now??????

[BeatleMegaFan]

"Like Apple's Geniuses, Windows Gurus won't be paid commissions. "

I'm just guessing here, but I find it hard to believe that the Geniuses don't get paid regularly. All of the Apple Store employees I talk to say that the Geniuses are the best of the best, and they do get paid well from the looks of it. Their income can't be based on their interactions with customers at the Genius Bar; not all of the Geniuses work at the support desk. Many work in the back handling repairs and maintenance. How would they get paid from customer interactions? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not seeing how this works.

That said, I think the new ad is sub-par. Seinfeld can be funny at times, but his attempts at humor in the commercial just aren't funny this time around. Promoting Vista isn't really all that funny in my view. I did think it was funny that Gates had a premium shoe store card with a picture of his teenage self on it, but the joke in that wasn't very clear. Seemed like a form of self-deprecating humor. Anyway, the ad didn't really have anything to do with Windows other than the fact that Seinfeld wants to be able to eat his computer. It's pointless. Even if people are talking about it, what good does the negative coverage do for Microsoft? Until they turn their boat around, Vista is still going to maintain a poor image, even though SP1 was worked very well for most Vista users. We shall see where this goes, but honestly, I don't care too much. Apple's music event on the 9th will be more interesting.

-BMF

[ofmyony]

Vista is horrible. I think Microsoft should have put more weight on user experience instead of making the program run itself. I mean the automatic update feature is the most annoying feature I have ever seen and the malicious software tool is horrible and annoying. Microsoft stop trying to bust users for pirated copies and make your software work well for the users not your own interest. Microsoft spent 300 million on this campaign to brainwash its customers,

Make a better product and let word of mouth be your saving grace. Microsoft will be out of business if Windows 7 is a bust. I think it is dead now but they are a huge company and will last a little while.

I guess it is time for the Microsoft fanboys to speak up their dear product Windows and IE and Office and Windows Live and the Zune are looming disasters. How many products can a company destroy in 1 year

[jbernar6]

I dont understand why everyone is being so judgmental about an ad. While it wasn't the most hilarious advertisement I've seen, it wasn't the worst. And Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates looked like they were having fun too, everyone take a breather.

[ChuckieChen]

I think people is just venting their frustration with Vista and how rich Bill is.

[whiplash55]

I use Vista on several machines and it works great. I have an early, low end core 2 duo machine and it runs fine. I love the search and sidebar and friggin hate going back to XP at work.

[topgunb2]

+1

[Lyle_O]

When I first saw this commercial I thought It was brilliant. I was watching football and it came on. I couldn't believe that they got Seinfeld and Gates in the same commercial. I took it as face value, something that would make me laugh. I didn't get so deep that It made made angry at Microsoft. People need to lighten up!

[cardfan1212]

The gripers are basically stupid. The fact they don't get it tells you a lot :) Apple has catered to them like they're 6 years old too long. These are the type of people who have to look online to find someone to explain the latest episode of Lost to them.

I see all these stupid people and smile... It's simply amazing how dumbed down this country is becoming.

[Thomas, David]

SInce I still believe there is nothing to get. It would do well for those to claim to have "gotten it", to simply explain it.

[MattAlland]

The ads are fine. A little less arrogant than Apple's. It doesn't do much though one way or the other. I almost feel like subconsciously they want us to get nostalgic of the 90's by picking Seinfeld, because it was back then that Microsoft was on top of the world, so much so that they were almost going to get broken up.

Microsoft is in a weird place though. Gates no longer carries the title of world's richest man, and that kind of messes up the whole company. The seas are changing and it may not be long before people start buying Linux devices on a mass consumer scale, or Apple starts producing cheaper machines. I would safely say the only reason consumers use Microsoft powered machines now, is price. You can get a laptop for $500 that works pretty well. Every ooh's and ahh's at the Apple machines, but they're not cheap.

Microsoft has been missing some big markets in technology and are paying for it. They didn't see the true potential of the web and search technology, allowing Google to sprout up from nowhere. They failed to grasp the digital media revolution as quickly as Apple did, and they're allowing basic peripherals on their OS to fail, opening gateways for complete transfers of their users. The fact that you have to download a better browser than the one that is on the OS by default is a joke. Microsoft's browser should be one of their top priorities, yet people are using FireFox or now worse yet (for Microsoft) Google Chrome. With Vista, in a desperate attempt to woo users, they focused mostly on making the OS prettier, but in the process, failed to introduce the kind of speed and stability people want. They tried emulating Apple's beautiful experience, but in the process lost out on what people would have wanted - which would be to make Microsoft LEANER and more secure, and perhaps more affordable.

I think, if Microsoft wants to stay competitive they should stop distracting themselves with lame products like the Zune, and even XBOX and focus on the real issue at hand. The web, and the web, and the web. They need to build up their OS as a cheaper and more secure alternative to Linux, and offer users more integrated software by default, more integration with apps, and a kickass browser. They need to totally redo their search brand, and msn.com looks like a cluttered piece of crap.

They seem tired in general.

[solitare_pax]

After watching the ad, I know exactly what I want to get!

A charro, like the ones they were eating.

They looked tasty.

[aaquitaine]

Are you kidding - the ad is "lame"? It's brilliant! I've been a Mac fan since my first Mac in '85, hate having to use a windows PC for work and can't get over how cumbersome pretty much everything-Windows is ... but the ad is great. It's funny, weird, unexpected, and they used Bill Gates (and got him to act surprisingly well) - he's a great attention getter and, after all this time, and all he's done with his foundation, actually sort of likable.

My boyfriend saw the ad and immediately hit record on TiVO because he liked it and knew I'd want to see it. I watched it twice with him. If getting people to watch the same ad over and over and enjoy it - while all the while being hyper aware that it's a Microsoft ad - isn't great brand advertising, then what is...

[ChuckieChen]

I don't think brand awareness is the problem, it's the bad rep.

[craig.knapp1]

1. Why does Windoze Vistless still not have a dual pane viewer like PC Tools v6.0 for DOS did about 10-12 years ago, or 2xExplorer does now? With all the external drives, camera card readers etc, I bet that most people spend a great deal of time moving data from one drive or directory to another on a daily task, opening two instances of My Computer to see drives side by side is very inefficient.

2. Why does MS Office 2007 hide the Print Icon by default?

3. Why does Windoze Vistless fail to offer an incremental backup system to sycnrhoze a primary hard drive to an external drive? One of the primary functions of an OS should be data management. When you purchase a computer with Windoze it is basically useless until you install about $1,000 worth of real software. Unfortunately other alternatives such as Ubuntu fail in the data management area as well. The data one creates is more valuable than the computer or software in terms of man-hours taken to create the data, photos, or whatever you have on your computer.

4. Why is my computer just as stupid as my IBM Selectric typewriter was in the 1970s? If I browse to C:\data ninety percent of the time when opening a file browser, why does Windoze Vistless not ask if this should be the default folder when opening the browser? Where is the Artificial Intelligence that we all feared in the 1980s?

4. Why hasn't someone ran MS out of business yet?

Craig Knapp

[Lerianis]

Well, the answer to 4 (I answered your other questions on another thread in another article), is because Microsoft is a kick ass company. They have a very good operating system (both XP and Vista), have very good products other than OS stuff (their mice and keyboards are extremely good, though a little expensive), and they are good at leveraging their power.

[b_baggins]

Because MS is entrenched in enterprise and enterprise is notoriously sluggish. MS is getting it's clocked cleaned in the consumer space by Apple.

[Benf]

I am a HUGH Microsoft fan, I bought 4 copies of Vista on day one, Installed it on all family PC's and my work installed Vista on the 7 various brand PC's they use, Never had a problem, faster than XP, much more stable, no blue screen on any of em'...yet. but as hard as I try I just dont get the new Ad, Sienfield is great but What the hell was the Advertising Agency Thinking when they made that ad, If I Was Microsoft I would be embarrased and hire someone else, That ad sucks.

[ChuckieChen]

MSFT is too fat and comfortable with their business model, basically locking people in and squeeze every penny out of you. Like Kodak, they are still sucking on the OS monopoly-**** while the web is going to eat their lunch. Dell was too stuck on the direct-model and is now paying for it.

[Forked_Tongue]

Actually timing for MS is now, many of the computer manufacturers are starting to release Vista on their computers with 3+ gigs of ram, mid-level graphics adapters, larger hard drives, and in some cases 64 bit OS as well all of which will help minimize Vista's bloated structure. Many of the people who will be upgrading are coming from a single core background, 5400 rpm drives, with the original amount of installed ram from the time they purchased the computer, many of these people will be blown away from mostly the hardware improvement instead of software interface. It's a shame most of them will never try installing XP or some version of Linux on it and compare the difference.

I've used Vista on a few machines and ran a few apps that I normally run on XP and noticed that Vista while initially appearing fast faded as it paged and locked down the ram (you can see this in task manager) instead of refreshing and releasing. I noticed on my quad core it improved after putting in four gigs of ram, but when running two gigs it was noticeably slower than XP, and most likely many of the early adopters noticed this as well but then we have to keep in mind it was missing many patches that fixed many of it's failings (it still copies files way slower than XP though when organizes multiple hard drives). I think in the long run Vista will become more acceptable not due to people getting used to it, but simply that most likely it'll usher a 64 bit OS to the masses, forcing the manufacturers to offer the masses as much ram, graphics, and hard drive space so people will shift their blame of the OS's bloat affecting the performance to the manufacturers offers since there is an index rating for the "Vista Experience" that MS will most likely use in the future to blame others for it's performance.

[Revrant]

Mine is shiny silver, and sexy. =)

The ads are very smart, but just too much for the average person to compute within the space of a few minutes, I enjoy metaphor and double meaning, but you can only go so far with a commercial. Hopefully the next ones build upon these and are more literal, but still just as smart about it.

[awild1]

first, I want to say that I am not a window or apple fanboy. I am currently running a windows machine but if I had the opportunity to add OSX as a bootable option on my pc (legit style. . . something like bootcamp. . .not the crazy config) I would do it in a heartbeat.

That said, I am glad that Microsoft has FINALLY broken silence. I really feel MS reputation was damaged the most during this silence for the exact reason cited in this article, Apple had the entire podium. Where the real problem started for MS, whether Vista itself was a sub par product or MS didn't get info out to hardware makers early enough to prevent issues, I don't know. What I do know is that MS's blunders over Vista are good for us consumers, why you ask? Well it has given apple enough of a foothold to gain market share to the point that MS is forced to a) put out a better product or b) surrender. So Vista is all that popular these days, so what? I can vividly remember a time in the mac G2 and G3 era, when apple was definitely "Do not crave", but did apple recover? Its business 101 people! Say what you want fanboys, but without these 2 big companies battling it out, we would not have the computing experience we have today.

I for one loved the seinfeld ad, I didn't find it all that funny, but it said alot and NOT "vista is great go buy it" or "your incompetent for not liking vista" . I feel it was the first positive step for MS to repair its image. I am confident that MS can dig themselves out of this mess, but the question becomes when? I am currently running XP, I want to buy and run Vista, but absolutely not if MS plans to roll out a new OS in 2010 already.

[eee444]

Seinfeld rules as always. The shoes are the Macs. Enjoy.

[jbs36]

The ads aren't ineffective. I learned that Microsoft is coming out with a line of edible computers.

[sportsfan206]

At least they aren't lying to people in the commercial like Apple does. 1. "Unlike Apple, whose software and hardware are all made by the same people..." WOW!!! you mean Intel doesn't make your processors? Amazing. 2. "I have a built in webcam, so you don't have to worry about add ons and more wires, we already have it" Oh wow, you mean no PC makers have those built ins??? Oh wait, they do. 3. "Apple is the most popular Laptop on college campuses" Now, I would grant them this one, if commercial wasn't Macs vs. PC. Being that the nerd in the commercial represents Windows OS based PC's and not a particular company, this statement is completely false. Windows notebooks dominate college campuses, Macs do not. Now seperate it by brand, then apple has a claim. But put together all the Laptops from Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. and Apple isn't even close.

[b_baggins]

1. Made = assembled. People with an IQ above 10 get it.
2. When the ad was made no one had a built in webcam outside of Apple computers. Now every computer has it. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery they say.
3. The phrase was most popular, not most common. There is a difference.

[letsgethightech]

It wasn't humorous, it was odd. How could they get this totally wrong?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiVMPgCf6YY