A Decade of Dreadful Microsoft Ads

Barence writes "PC Pro has rounded up the most howlingly awful examples of ads churned out by Microsoft over the past decade. The selection includes the cringe-worthy Gates & Seinfeld ads — where Gates looks like he’s delivering his lines with the help of a cattle prod — to the terrible Windows 7 party ads (an 'F1 key for social inadequates,' according to PC Pro), to the one that got away: an excellent in-house training video produced by The Office's Ricky Gervais."

Comments

Microsoft's Most Effective Ads

[Greg Hullender]

The Mac vs. PC ads that Apple runs have benefited Microsoft enormously because they've forced it to focus on serious quality problems that management had successfully ignored for years on the grounds that "nobody cares about that." It's hard to argue that nobody cares when someone is rubbing it in your face on a daily basis. When I was at Microsoft (over 14 years), nothing was more frustrating than reporting an inexcusable quality problem and having it dismissed on the grounds that "it's been in the last several releases, so it doesn't need to be fixed."

When I play with Windows 7 and the new Office Beta, I see dozens of my pet peeves fixed, and I'll give a lot of credit to those Mac vs. PC ads. The most effective ads for Microsoft -- ever!

--Greg (In some sense of "for" of course) :-)

The Decade of Microsoft

[Slash.Poop]

Can anyone really deny this was the decade of Microsoft?

Personal
XP released in 2001, is still going strong and will be for quite some time.
7 released in 2009, is going strong and has received great reviews.

Professional
Server 2003 released in 2003, is still going strong and will be for quite some time.
Server 2008 released in 2008, is going strong and has received great reviews.

There was the Vista speed bump but overall this was without a doubt a Microsoft decade.