July 22nd, 2008
Microsoft's "flat Earth" ad falls flat for me
Maybe it’s just me and the fact that my head has been warped by watching too many MST3K episodes, but Microsoft’s “flat Earth” ad just doesn’t work for me, and I use Vista!
Here, thanks to Ed Bott, is the teaser:
When I first saw that this morning, all I could do was come up with were smart-ass replies. I don’t know about you but that image is just so ideal for parody. In fact, the most serious rejoinder that I came up with was ”yeah, but the Earth WASN’T flat … “. After all, hardware and software incompatibilities and poor performance when the OS was compared to XP wasn’t down to the fact that people believed is something that wasn’t true (which is what this flat Earth reference is supposed to conjure), it was down to the OS. Back in the early days of Vista you could believe all you wanted in the OS, but that wasn’t going to get your printer working or your game running any faster.
Even the overall message that the ad is trying to convey is uninspiring. For example:
Meanwhile, a series of independent speed tests found that Windows Vista with SP1 performed comparably to Windows XP SP2.
Why doesn’t it win? Simple. Behind the scenes, Windows Vista is doing a lot more on your behalf than Windows XP does. It’s indexing your files so you can find them fast, keeping your hard drive organized, saving your work so nothing gets lost, and defending your computer against hackers and phishers.
So, when your favorite first person shooter starts to stutter, or that photo is taking a little too long to open in Photoshop, you can take comfort in the fact that Vista is doing a lot more on your behalf than Windows XP ever did.
Thoughts?
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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