It’s beautifully done and very neatly sums up (in exactly one frame) not only what could be the end of an era, but why.

MS, how about a REAL Vista Coke vs Pepsi challenge where you invite users to bring any supported hardware running XP, with any combination of applications that runs on XP, for a public upgrade to Vista and Office 7 (why would you do one without the other?).

Come to think of it, it would also be a really fun thing to start on U-Tube. “My Vista Upgrade”. “My Office 7 Upgrade”. Wow. What a great way to showcase just how well the products really work.

Hey, you were the ones clearly needing marketing ideas. I was just looking for that cool Apple poster.

But in more recent years, they’ve made a classic business blunder by chasing Google and Yahoo, search and the iPod, and the like….all taking concentration away from their core businesses, Windows and Office.

Though I’m a confirmed Fanboy, its sad for me to see such a great company so lacking of coherent direction from the top.

Hope I’m proved wrong, but the upcoming ad campaign is most likely another horrible, misdirected response to losing their way.

There is no tougher competitor than Apple, and they can be expected to continue to take advantage of MSFTs misfortunes. Only MSFT can change that by re-concentrating on their core business. MSFTs ad campaign is *very* likely to backfire, making them a laughing-stock. A quick parody by the Mac guy is probable.

It’s not simply hardware incompatibilities. Vista is unstable and subject to the “molasses effect” that within 2-4 weeks of ownership the entire system will begin to slow down, take forever to shut down and restart, and randomly crash. We are talking about 2+ ghz Core 2 Duo systems, 2gb ram, 320gb hard drives and discreet graphics. I have reinstalled Vista on both systems 2 times (including fresh software installs), and within 2-4 weeks its back to the same slogging through wet cement problem. Both systems are protected by standard office grade virus and malware suites, and still the constant slowdowns and restarts.

Now a little over 100 days on the MacBook, with MS Office 2008, and no slowdowns or shutdowns. It is every bit as fast as when I took it out of the box. I use it in a full MS Exchange office environment, including VPN from home with no hiccups. Unbelievably, I can close the screen, unplug the Samsung 22″ monitor, ethernet, firewire Time Machine, and USB hub (with HP Laser), go home and open the lid and connect to my wireless network with all my programs back on the notebook screen…AND…the next morning do the reverse and be back up and running with all my peripherals, and never shutting down or powering off. As a PC user of primarily notebooks since a 1986 Toshiba 1100 plus, I can honestly state no Microsoft OS has been able to do this without freezing.

Mr. Paczkowski is not “continuing to spread the negative sentiment” – it is Microsoft’s fault with its release of continually buggy and suspect software. Mr. Gates as much as admitted this by his recent and ongoing Windows 7 revelations. Only Microsoft could believe that a marketing campaign could substitute for good coding. They’d be better off putting that $300,000,000 into R&D for SP2.

The only problem I have ever had was with Creative drivers for my Audigy 2ZS Sound card. Creative wouldn’t release any decent drivers unlike NVidia who have been awesome so Daniel_K hacked them, made them available online and satisfied us!

I agree that Microsoft has dropped the marketing ball but Microsoft does not sell PC’s (hardware) and does not own the channel like Apple does. So, it is much easier for a vertically integrated company like Apple to market itself. Microsoft has only ever done launch based marketing not relationship and life time value based marketing. The average Joe isn’t really buying a Mac because it is technically superior or inferior to a Windows based PC from someone like Lenovo or Dell, they are buying a marketing experience – which happens to be better than what the manufacturers are offering.

All that is happened is that conversations happened, opinions were formed, perceptions were made and then people like you continue to spread the negative sentiment.

Today’s consumer is totally unforgiving and with the conversational marketing age it is easy to spread negative sentiment whether based on fact or fiction or just opinion and this is the case with Vista.

Microsoft has not done any serious marketing since the initial launch and ultimately PC manufacturers have dropped the ball against Apple.