« Serving up an AD-Smart Intranet from Linux | Main | My Windows Virtual Machine is Off by an Hour »

The Microsoft Ship Begins to List

McDonald's is #1 in the fast food industry.

They dominate, but not overwhelmingly so. Burger King made inroads several years back to knock the golden arches off of their perch at #1. During this time, they attacked McDonald's by name in their advertising.

McDonald's never, ever mentioned Burger King or any other competitor in their ads. Despite stupid hot coffee lawsuits, changing perception of good taste vs. good diet, and relentless advertising by their rivals, McDonald's simply continued to advertise their product on its merits alone, without referring to its competition.

I'm not a big fan of McDonald's, although I will treat myself to a high-fat, high-calorie helping of the most delicious french fries on the planet. But I only eat them occasionally.

The point that I'm making is that you don't mention the competition in your advertising unless (a) you're feeling like you can dethrone #1, or (b) you are #1, but a sinking ship.

The strategy sometimes works in the former case. It has for Apple, in their Mac vs. PC commercials. It NEVER works in the latter.

With that, if you've been watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament on TV, you've likely spotted the commercial where the redheaded ditz comes to the conclusion that buying a laptop computer with Windows Vista on it is a much, much better deal than purchasing a MacBook.

The Microsoft ship has begun to list.

The commercial is full of misinformation, which I'm certain that Apple will jump all over in short order.

You may save money on the price of the computers when set side by side.

However...

How much is your time worth? You'll spend an hour or two uninstalling the crapware that is generously bundled into your Windows machine.

You can spend time installing free versions of antispyware and antivirus, OR you can shell out dollars for a commercial product.

You must do one or the other. Surfing the internet on a Windows machine without malware protection means certain infection.

Then, there's the matter of an office suite.

Microsoft refuses to acknowledge the existence of Open Office. Having to install a converter into the extremely expensive product is simply a political statement on the part of the software manufacturer. Sure, you can open an AmiPro document from 1990, but odt files? Gee, we don't even know what those are.

So let's assume that you have to spring for Office 2007 Home and Student. That's 150 bucks.

OR, you could save 50 bucks by purchasing the Mac iWork home package.

I'm not a Mac guy, but I've managed to point out two obvious flaws in the Microsoft commercial's reasoning.

It's fascinating to watch a sinking ship, particularly when it's the Bismark.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.baldguyweb.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/683

Comments (3)

SiliconDoc:

The "listing", and with your last line, by then, after your spew, sinking ship - made 3 BILLION BUCKS last statement.
Profitable in a downturn, and like the distorted, brainwashed, gaggling crowd of completely idiotic liars the DC machine promotes every day of the year, making less profit than projected, but a heckuva lot of profit anyway, like 15% overall - is "a sinking ship"....
Look, stop being part of the problem, a bunch of spewing, class clown dumbasses who can't do the math if their life depended on it.
Microsoft made a slightly smaller profit than they usually do, but the profit they made is quite extraordinary given the condition of the world economy, and in comparison to all others, but to you, the blithering idiot communist whining useful idiot tard, their ship is sinking....
If Microsoft is sinking, the majority of the world is DEAD at the bottom of Davey Jones Locker, you complete and utter JACKASS !
Have a nice day, you stupid son of a *****.

Ron Enderland Author Profile Page:

I found your comment in the spam bin, SiliconDoc, don't know if it got there from problems with the captcha system or from all of the caps and exclamation points ;-)

Microsoft, the undisputed king of the desktop, is feeling enough Apple heat to mention them by name in their commercial. In other words, to give Apple free advertising at their expense.

That's a listing ship.

Welp obvious troll is obvious.

Back on track, provide empirical evidence that Microsoft is failing or please stop blithering MicrosoftIsDying(TM).

Post a comment


Get emailed notifications of new articles!
NOTE: I will not sell any email addresses I receive, and will not send any unsolicited emails, either. If you sign up for new article notifications, that is ALL you will receive, and you can cancel at any time. You have my word.
--Ron Enderland

Enter your email address:

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on March 29, 2009 5:36 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Serving up an AD-Smart Intranet from Linux.

The next post in this blog is My Windows Virtual Machine is Off by an Hour.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Powered by
Movable Type 4.261