Microsoft: Windows Vista as awesome as the Earth is spherical
Vista's new ad campaign attempts to explain why people who think Vista is a shoddy, inferior OS are pre-scientific, monkey-like humanoids, just like the imbecilic 15th century Spaniards who refused to believe that the world was round. The insinuation? Windows Vista is just as awesome as the world is spherical... only flat Earthers would say otherwise!
Hell, we can probably generate the bulk of the art for Microsoft's Vista campaign ourselves. Best Photoshops along this theme in the comments, please. For example, writhing maggots slithering through a piece of fatty, rotting meat. "At one point, everyone believed in Aristotelian abiogenesis. Get the facts about Microsoft Vista."
Update: Here's a "blank" of the image, with the text removed, for easy shoppage. Entries after the jump!
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One bizarre thing about this ad campaign (and the way it tries to insinuate that critics are Flat Earthers) is this:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/discover/why-now.aspx
"We know that’s what some people are saying on the Internet. And in its early days, Windows Vista did experience some compatibility problems. But thanks to our industry partners’ efforts during the past 18 months, here’s where things stand today."
So is Microsoft insinuating that just as Vista once sucked but is now much better, the Earth used to be flat but suddenly got round?
Brownlee, It's an issue of thought. The world was flat until we discovered it to be round. The last 18 months have been the "discovery" that has made vista awesome.
Brilliant Photoshop retort!
Wait til you see Joel's.
Whenever I'm told to "Get the Facts" I interpret it as "You are Ignorant" and feel insulted. How arrogant.
Has anybody noticed that that ship is obviously a man o'war from the late 18th or early 19th century, like the USS Constitution? You know, from a couple of centuries after the world was found to actually be round?
I always see "get the facts" as a challenge. sometimes, I already have them, so I pick up the banner and help out - the person waving the banner might not like it too much, though.
More irritating is that Microsoft doesn't even seem to have "the facts" about Columbus: the whole idea that contemporaries didn't believe in a round Earth is an urban legend.
Vista is officially a flop. I had/have high hopes for Windows 7. But I get the feeling Windows 7 is going to be Vista Second Edition.
"the imbecilic 15th century Spaniards who refused to believe that the world was round"
That's not exactly true. The geographers in Castilla and Portugal knew that time that the world was spheric. In fact they had a pretty near idea about the size of the Earth. They told Colon: Yes, Cathay is in that direction, but you'll never arrive. Is too far. 19.000 km.
Colon insisted that the distance was only 4.300 kms. But he never provided some proof of it. He just distorted the geographic data. Either he was just a bad geographer or he knew something that no one knew.
http://www.portalplanetasedna.com.ar/ciencia/ciencia8.htm
By the way, the ship depicted in the ad looks like much more modern than the Carabelas of Colon.
OF COURSE the Earth is a sphere... We're just on the inside surface of it!
@10: Actually, the Earth is banana-shaped.
This pretty much sums it up:
http://www.johnnykonline.com/files/vistacriticism.jpg
Pear shaped by a small fraction, the northern hemisphere being the fatter half.
The ship is *at least* 250 years later than those of Colon/Columbus. It's worse than showing a Saturn V moonrocket when talking about the Wright brothers.
Because attention to detail isn't like important when you're an OS developer. This is what happens when you give too much power to sales and marketing, people.
All of these worlds are yours except Europe.
I think Microsoft doesn't know their facts.
fact:
Windows XP was somewhat stable
fact:
Vista was dumped by companies who went back to
Windows XP, because it wasn't stable at all.
and it is @brianary for the win! Goal!
Matter of fact, I'm having a hard time identifying what kind of ship that is. Sizewise, it looks like a big frigate, like the Constitution, but sailwise, not a bit. Curious. Perhaps it's what they did in the mid-1800s, where my knowledge is woefully inadequate.
Metaphorically, I don't know as I'd compare Vista to even a heavy frigate- it's not near fast enough.
John, you know. You Call I answer.
Here's my version.
Ok, this may be quite subtle.
g is not Google, for those who are not so much into Physics I.
Anyway, what you're waiting for? Get your Physics Facts, dorks!
P.s. You Know what's good? A first class unconventional technology blog (oh, at least that's what you look like) bashing the new Windows Vista mega millions campaign even before it's officially started.
What a pity.
So, how do I submit my photoshopped graphic?
I thought it was funny listening to the Opie & Anthony Show (Heard on XM Satellite Radio and Syndicated to terrestrial radio). Anthony made a comment than in Windows, an error report says "Do you want to end this task". If you click yes, you get the same question over and over and it never closes the program.
I could relate because I remember having this exact same issue in Windows 95, 98, 2000, and in XP. But for the last 10 months I've been using Vista and I've done everything that this same system could with XP. But when a program DOES crash, I click the "Close this program" or "End Task" on the error report... and it works, 100% of the time.
This is my 12th Anonymous comment on BBGadgets. I might consider getting an account soon.
So, how do I submit my photoshopped graphic?
...i like vista. i haven't had any problems that i couldn't easily fix with it. i like the neat little touches they added, like the mp3 tagging software built in and aero. i will say that if you don't have a ton of ram, then you can't use aero, and UAC is a POS, but most road blocks i run into i fix by looking on lifehacker for a solution, or by downloading some other program. it goes without saying that if you want most things to run on any platform, you'll probably need to "pimp it out" a bit, like put in more ram, a better graphics card, download certain programs, etc. give it a few years, and there will be enough hacks and tricks and programs out that a lot of those complaints will be gone.
Put your shops on flickr or photobucket or wherever and send us the URL. Or email it to us (my email is rob at b b .net)
@24: Sure, you can work around a lot of Vista's issue. The thing is, though, that you shouldn't have to find workarounds. A good OS works to begin with.
Look at how they compare the versions of Vista.
Apparently, with the "Home Basic" edition, you can't have more fun on your PC.
That ship reminds me of a classic Winston Churchill quote that goes suspiciously well with the whole Vista experience...
See what my little team whipped up here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nate_marsh/2694007746/
Thanks, Meerkat! Added.
They use tabbed browsing as one of the "top ten reasons to try Vista".
Really?
This other version is just a nice quote :-)
@ #10: Define flop. M$ has sold 180 million copies of Vista since launch and is selling roughly 20 million per month. I realize sales doesn't equal quality but the numbers do seem to challenge the term "flop".
I hated Vista when it first came out. I had a few devices (printer and scanner) with no driver support and found UAC annoying as all get out. Lately, I've found I rather like it much to my surprise. I'm similarly becoming quite fond of Windows 2008 on the server side.
Clearly they have a marketing problem and I doubt this PR plan will do much to change it though most of the comments about their basis on historical facts are silly. Still, it seems that while there are lots of Microsoft haters out there, they just continue to sell. Profits for fiscal 2008 are way up - $60 billion earned.
Not sure what to think? I hope MacOS and Linux continue to gain support because competition is a very good thing. I must admit though that I'm a little tired of the M$ bashing. Use what you like.
the earth is a giant klein bottle, which is why if you travel in any direction, you will end up in the same position
> M$ has sold 180 million copies
Says who? If you're quoting MS, did you subtract the bundled licenses? Example: big company buys a bunch of new PCs but doesn't move to Vista yet, sticks with XP. XP sales aren't up because their blanket license covers the XP install. This counts as an OEM sale, but the OS doesn't really get used... Still, MS can count it towards their profit.
I'd like to see sec boxed sale numbers. I'm sure loads of people are using it, and a lot of them like the OS. A lot of companies are skipping Vista though, especially since XP works well and doesn't require upgrading hardware, and W7 has been announced as well.
@35: Yeah, the numbers come from Microsoft and yes, I'm sure it includes the bundled licenses. Of course they can count it toward their profit because they got paid for it which is I guess all that Microsoft and their shareholders care about. Your point is valid, though, not all of those 180 million sales are votes of Vista confidence.
I work in IT and from what I've read and heard, the 3 big issues that prevented larger companies from rolling out Vista were the lack of drivers, the end user training which comes with any new OS because some things have moved, and the fact that Vista uses a new imaging model which requires that the IT guys learn a new method for creating images to push to multiple machines. In larger companies, the "Vista annoyance" factor is pretty low because the IT guys can build an image that disables anything they don't want users to struggle with.
W7 will be out in a year and a half if MS is on target (they're often late) so I suppose some folks will wait for that though if you include the potential for MS delays and the fact that most companies wait for SP1, it's easily two years off if not more. I suspect most incentives for waiting will have been appeased well before then. Of course, W7 will be built on Vista. Maybe they will make it better? I dunno.
I guess my general point is that despite early frustration, most of the negatives associated with Vista have eased a bit with SP1, drivers catching up, and people just getting used to its new way of doing things.
“Afraid of scurvy?
We’ve got a great big lemon for you.â€
In response to:
...i like vista. i haven't had any problems that i couldn't easily fix with it. i like the neat little touches they added, like the mp3 tagging software built in and aero. i will say that if you don't have a ton of ram, then you can't use aero, and UAC is a POS, but most road blocks i run into i fix by looking on lifehacker for a solution, or by downloading some other program. it goes without saying that if you want most things to run on any platform, you'll probably need to "pimp it out" a bit, like put in more ram, a better graphics card, download certain programs, etc. give it a few years, and there will be enough hacks and tricks and programs out that a lot of those complaints will be gone.
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Or you could just buy a mac:)
My Frantic Scratchings
http://tommywrenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/mobygates.jpg
#38, we don't all have thousands of dollars to buy a mac. or have interest in making music or making home movies and arranging photos or movies. one of which i can do anyways with vista's built in tagger, the other two i can do with other programs. in fact, i can even imitate the look of a mac too! all the benefits of getting a mac without having to buy a $2,000+ dollar plus laptop that doesn't play any games that i like natively.
Vista sucks and people who use it should be in mental institutions not typing comments about how good it is.
Vista starts up --> takes 57% RAM. Ok I can put 10 Gigs of RAM but why should I??? Just coz it's cheap. I would rather buy tons of coffee.
Graphics that they boast of have been in Linux for quite a few years...and KDE 4.2 is far ahead of Microsoft time, which I guess is still in prehistoric era.
Games don't run. And microsoft says "Buy drivers compatible with vista..or actually buy hardware compatible with vista!".
Maybe bill gates is preparing those hardware devices...to fuck himself.
Yeah Vista did sucked when it came, no games would run, drivers problems etc.
I guess microsoft would not repeat the same with Windows 7.