Brett's Blog MS thinks you're stupid Jun 11, 2010 | 10:25 pm I think we are all familiar with the stupid Windows 7 commercials that Microsoft has been running. They are basically trying to convince people to shell out $100+ to upgrade to v7. The way they are going about this is by explaining the dumbest features in the world. No. Not dumb as in I would never use that feature, but dumb as in a silly little feature like that for $100. Instead of touching on how secure the new version is, speed improvements, or changes to stability, they are trying to seduce folks by telling them that if you drag the window to the side of the screen, it will do split windows. OK. Not a bad feature, but definitely no reason to spend $100. The older commercials in which they illustrate how much cheaper PCs are compared to Macs were pretty good for getting the budget-minded to buy PCs. I don't particularly care for the Apple commercials, though some were pretty smart in who they targeted. This latest series of Microsoft commercials are basically saying that you shouldn't worry about security, stability, and speed -- you shell out the cash, because it now works more like a Mac and has a few nifty tricks that only Microsoft could provide. Why am I rehashing this? Did I forget to mention that one of those features is available for the Mac for only $7: Cinch. If it's not already available for XP and Vista, I'm sure it also wouldn't be difficult for someone to write a similar app for them. 5 Comments | Add Comment | Permanent Link | Return to Overview trekfanatic Commented: Jun 12, 2010 | 10:47 am AT&T thinks you're even more stupider. They have a commercial where kids are competing at a spelling bee and the contest is finally called a draw after 48 hours due to the fatigue of those in attendance and the fact that no one has been eliminated. AT&T's announcer then informs us that "The internet is making us smarter." I don't know what corner of the internet AT&T has been trolling around in, but "smarter" is not exactly the word I'd use to describe most people out there in cyberspace, and even if it were, spelling sure as h3ll is not an area of improvement. Idiocracy at work... Brett Commented: Jun 13, 2010 | 3:37 pm Well, the internet is making us more informed and also more ignorant at the same time. :) Timeshadows Commented: Jun 14, 2010 | 11:55 am The Snap feature was already part of Windows 3.1 or 3.11, but they dropped it later. Brett Commented: Jun 14, 2010 | 12:11 pm It's a nice feature, but basing your marketing strategy around it is pretty silly :) Similarly, there's a few features in OS X that I miss from OS 9 like tabbed windows - drag them to the bottom of the screen and they turn into tabs that open again when you click them. It's sort of the same as docking a window, but I like the tabs better :) Brilar Commented: Jun 14, 2010 | 2:25 pm My new laptop arrived just the other day preloaded with Windows 7 Premium. I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet, but I am interested in seeing what features 7 has. I've been using XP and Vista on our home Pcs for the last few years, so hopefully there are some improvements. Add Comment