New Microsoft ad finally hits Apple where it hurts: customers’ wallets
We’ve been wondering how long it would take Microsoft to kick things up a notch with its responses to Apple’s I’m a Mac smear series. Times are tough these days and it looks like Microsoft is finally starting to target cost with its latest TV ad. Titled Windows Laptop Hunters, the spot features a young woman named Lauren tasked with finding a laptop that meets her requirements — “speed, a comfortable keyboard and a 17-inch screen” — for under $1,000. If she finds one, be it a Mac or a PC, Microsoft will buy it for her. You know as well as we do that the only way anyone is scoring a new Mac laptop with a 17-inch for under $1,000 is armed robbery, so you can imagine how the commercial plays out. Forgetting the fact that the Best Buy she was shopping in apparently doesn’t charge a sales tax, Lauren ends up with an HP Pavilion for $699.99; a price even the most modest MacBook can’t come close to touching. The model she walked with features a 2.1GHz AMD Turion X2 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 320GB hard drive, DVD-RW drive and of course a 1440×900 17-inch display — definitely a solid system.
No, we haven’t quite stooped to the level of a local politician’s attack campaign quite yet, but it’s good to see Microsoft finally showing a little spunk with its response ads. Considering the times, we imagine there are plenty more value-centric ads from Redmond on the way; at least, we hope there are. Hit the jump to watch the full commercial.
Thanks, Don!
First and foremost that girl is cute as sheeit. Secondly, mac users = mac lovers = disposable income. That’s what your doing when you’re buying anything apple. Spending extra money on the apple logo. I’m a educated consumer and I will not spend that kind of money without the bang behind it. 3gs for the top of the end mac? really? How about a buy an excellent laptop, a desktop and a nice monitor to go along with it. To further drive my point. Everything is not even compatible with mac. My girl can’t even put songs on her LG or on a lcd picture frame she got for Christmas because She has a Macbook Pro. Despite all the pros/cons i can’t get her to use anything else.
Unix descendents make fine desktop OSes. NeXT cubes were lightyears ahead of anything else at the time, except maybe BeOS, and that was still POSIX compliant at a time when noone cared. I’ve been using Linux and BSD as my primary systems for over ten years now and they’ve been fine on the desktop. Mac OS suffers on the command line because it behaves differently than many Unix guys expect initially, but “pain in the ass” is stretching it. I’ve seen Linux guys get stumped by Solaris and OpenBSD, too, but both are completely usable from a terminal. And the only real problem I’ve had with any Unix-like OS on the desktop has been hardware compatibility, which I can work around by being smart with my hardware choices. Unix-alikes make great desktops, they’re just different from Windows, and unless you can grok that difference, you’re going to have a pretty tough time of it. Ubuntu is no exception, it’s just better designed than most to handle people expecting the “Windows way”. Different strokes for different folks.
Man, this ad campaign has really brought out the douchebags on both sides. It’s really ridiculous how much people measure their e-penis size by the OS they use.
@Eric W
Wow, you simply have no idea what you’re talking about.
I want to see you find a MacBook Pro equivalent to my HP HDX18 laptop. 18″ 1920×1080p screen, 4 GB RAM, nVidia 9600M, Intel C2D @ 2.26 GHz (Oh you got me beat by 200MHz) , 250GB HDD, 802.11n, HDMI out, and a BluRay/DVDRW drive.
Guess how much I paid? $1300. You can’t even get a base model MacBook Pro for anything less than $2000. The similarly speced model from Apple to my HDX is at least $2700 and that doesn’t include HDMI out or a BluRay drive, which you cannot even get on a MBP.
Are you kidding me? I hope that glowing Apple logo helps you sleep at night because my glowing HP sits right next to my spare $1400 I saved. I hope you enjoy that every time you’re seen in public everyone knows you have more money than brains.
how about you cheap windows users, stay cheap and buy your crappy computer. I will stay buying quality products and owning top of the line equipment because my job actually means something unlike your basement businesses. Stay there where you belong and order your 500$ cheap computer built in sweat shops.
And here’s a case in point.
@ Justin
i owned a hp hdx18… sent it back 2x for repair in 2 months time. My macbooks pros since 3 years ago, never. enouhg said
How am I a case in point? Eric W said something so completely false and I called him out on it.
So this ad is suppose to be a real person, not actor in a real life situation. Instead we find out she’s an actor, found through Craig List, didn’t even spend more than 30 seconds in the store and lastly declared that Windows/PC users are losers and not cool at all.
Why didn’t Microsoft do it for real instead of faking it. We all know the Apple ads are with two actors. Apple isn’t trying to fool anyone there.
This ad was started of with a great premise of real life, instead its stumbling all over itself.
The first PC listed on Microsoft’s “Choose PC” campaign page for laptops costs $1,999.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/allaround/
Imagine this commercial done with cars:
- I need 4 doors is the requirement and it gets me from A to B — but I only have $10,000 to spend.
Scene 1: Let me check out the Mercedes Dealership…
Scene 2: Nothing in there. Let’s head over to the Kia dealership. Yay!
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Microsoft would be far better off ignoring Apple in their advertising. They are only generating a lot more talk about Macs than there otherwise would be. And, in some of those extra, otherwise non-existent, discussions — Microsoft will lose customers.
When #2 attacks #1 it’s viewed as competitive. When #1 attacks #2 it’s often viewed as weak.
When you’re as far ahead as Microsoft is, you focus on your strengths. Otherwise, it doesn’t look like you have any…
If price is all they’ve got — they haven’t got much.
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But at least Microsoft is being genuine in these ads. Unlike the copy-cat ‘I’m a PC’ line of ads, which are uninspired by anything that genuinely came from Redmond.
In these ads, Microsoft is being paranoid…and they’ve always been paranoid. Some would say it’s done well for them…but moreso in the 80’s and 90’s.
Nanufacturer Restore CD != OEM Windows install DVD
To those people that claim OSX crashes all the time / applications crashing.
That’s what you get for trying to buy cheap ram. I’ll bet that most of you upgraded your RAM and didn’t think twice about it.
The funny thing about this ad is she wanted an Apple product but she settled for a cheap HP model.
Hope her selection of a husband will include considering the UI , reliability, and something that comes without all the stickers that came pre-attached.
At least she’s cool enough to drive the “Cool Girl Car” the VW Beetle Convertible. Maybe Microsoft kicked in something for that too although I doubt it.
Isheep. Nuff said
she walks into target and ends up in best buy?
Hahaha isheep sooooooooo true. Its like a cult or something
Ouch!
Windows is better than Mac, at least Microsoft doesn’t control everything you do… and what hardware you put it on……..
If you buy a product, it should be up to you what you do with it….
I’m all against monopoly [the game and policy] but I’m tired of all things Apple [though I wouldn't mind being given an iPhone].
For the last two years it’s been “Apple this, Apple that”.
It’s annoying -_-
Ps: Event when anyone doesn’t want to talk about Aplle, they end up talking about Apple. Bad Apple.
Microsoft is still hurting their brand with these petty bitch slaps to Apple.
In the end what it all amounts to is how big or small your wallet is. You have a few thou lying around, go buy that mac book, you wanna save a few hundred bucks, buy a PC that works for you, that’s exactly what Lauren did, she went with something that WORKS for her, that’s what we all ultimately do. All this posturing about my mac is better than your pc or vice versa is all nonsense, your mac might not work for me, same as a pc wouldn’t work for you, does that necessarily mean one is more superior than the other based on price tag? I choose to think not. Let’s just use whatever works for us and all get along. Peace!!!
I have a LOT of disposable income but I choose PC because I want to play quality games. You can forget that on a Mac -period!
A PC is awesome, way more power and features for a cheaper price. PC’s are used everywhere you go school, work, library and so on.. Well, except the Apple store, which are about 250 stores worldwide lmao!!
Buy a PC for the price of a Mac and you just bought yourself a beast, top of the line computer that tears a new one in any Mac.
Like many people already know, what kept Apple from going down was the Ipod not the Mac’s.
P.S. I’m not an Apple hater, I like my Ipod! lol
LOL hahaha. This was a joke.
What about the bundled software? Does the HP come with something similar to iLife ‘09, a decent mail client (okay mac mail isn’t perfect but outlook express????), address book and all from one vender?
After getting that nasty virus or to try to avoid it and spend all that money on software, you will be pretty close to a G.
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