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Jerry Seinfeld Will Plug Vista

Posted by timothy on from the for-all-that-is-good-stop-sending-this-one dept.

Barence writes "Microsoft has signed up comedian Jerry Seinfeld to its $300 million Vista PR blitz, as it attempts to turn around the negative perception surrounding its operating system. Reports suggest Bill Gates will also appear in the ads, which, given the comedy timing he displayed in his 'Bill's Last Day' video, and the deadpan manner of Seinfeld, could result in a huge hit for the company." Reader Zarmanto notes in his journal that "Mac users might be quite amused, considering that (like many other TV shows) the set of Seinfeld always had a Macintosh prominently displayed in the background."

6 of 776 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Jerry Seinfeld by sokoban · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, the parent should be moderated as incorrect. Jerry Seinfeld was offered $5 million per episode to do another season of Seinfeld and turned it down. So no, he won't just go wherever the money is.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
  2. Oh, sweet irony! by CrazyTalk · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since Seinfeld always had a Mac on his desk in his show. In fact, if you look closely he had the latest model new Mac every year.

  3. Re:Don't Care by Jerry+Coffin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just an FYI, mac users are pretty similar to PC users. Most of us just don't care.

    They should care -- they pay for that. Macs don't show up by accident -- they show up because Apple pays for them to show up. When you buy a Mac, part of what you pay goes for Apple to buy product placements.

    Just FWIW, the last time I checked Apple had the largest product placement budget of any computer maker I could find. At least at that time, HP had something like 10 times the computer sales, but less than one third the product placement budget.

    Personally, I think this is true genius on the part of Apple. I'm convinced that product placements probably have a better payoff than almost any other sort of advertising. I think that's particularly true when/if a large part of what you're selling is a style or image.

    --
    The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
  4. Remember Leno? by ODiV · · Score: 5, Informative

    Didn't they try this with Jay Leno for Windows 95?

    Ah yes, here we go.

    I guess it was more at launch, then after launch.

    "Hay guys, I hear Windows 95 is fast enough to handle all of OJ's alibis at once!"

  5. Re:I have a novel idea... by hr.wien · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, I just saw that and frankly the whole "Mojave" thing looked staged. People sounded far too negative before they were shown Vista and were ridiculously positive after they had been shown it. I just don't buy it. It stank of marketing.

    Personally, after having used Vista for around a year now, I find it a typical Windows release. It's main strength is that there are tonnes of great software available for it, but it's generally filled with little annoyances that make my day more annoying than it has to be.

    And to counter the "you only hate it because it's cool" argument; My pet peeves include;

    • The indexer/superfetch grinding the disk way too much, especially if you have lots of files updated often (like, say, a Subversion working copy).
    • The indexer occasionally completely blocking any other IO, making listening to music and watching video impossible while it's working. (That one's especially pathetic)
    • Very often files and directories can't be deleted or otherwise modified for some reason. I'm guessing some process somewhere is using the files, but who the hell knows?
    • File copying is pathetically slow, Especially if you add network and ZIP files to the mix. (Yes, even after SP1)
    • UAC is quite possibly the worst implementation of permission escalation I've ever seen. It cries way too often and for way too little, training you to just click continue no matter why it pops up. Give me Linux and sudo/gksudo any day.
    • Every single piece of UI is a complete mess of legacy features, settings and looks, leading to a very inconsistent user experience. The font dialog from 3.11 is still in there for Christ's sake.
    • The task bar is still a very inefficient way of letting you switch between applications. With Aero they had the perfect opportunity to fix that with an Exposé like feature, but instead they fudged it up with Flip3D which is completely useless. I want to see all my windows at the same time so I can select the one I need, not a stack which hides them all on top of each other.

    You may now dismiss my opinion because I'm ignorant/incompetent/doin it rong. Thank you.

  6. Re:Service Pack? uhhhh.... by t000lish · · Score: 5, Informative
    -- "Can you point to a single instance of a company forcing users to buy a new peripheral rather than updating their drivers?"

    Creative.

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/046201&from=rss