What’s amazing about this is that it should be targeted towards Microsoft’s customers, the people who actually pay money to Microsoft. It should be watched by rooms full of HP PC makers, or the I-T staff from big corporations who buy licenses, or MSCE’s whose job it is to endlessly reboot devices running Microsoft software, or the small number of nerds in a Microsoft user group. But instead it’s targeted towards consumers, who don’t know what a software version is or understand that there is more than one kind of “Windows.”

Not only that, to most people, “Windows” and “Word” and “Excel” are certifications for office workers, like a type of drivers license. You “know Windows” or you don’t. You “know Excel” or you don’t. This goes on your resume. People who want to hire you will read that you “know Windows” and nod approvingly. So even if they understand software versioning, they don’t want Windows to change. They want the steering wheel and speedometer to be in the same place every time they have to drive a company car, not moving around arbitrarily.

Microsoft always seems to want to pretend they have Apple’s customers, like some weird kind of envy. Vista was made for Mac users who didn’t want it, instead of being made for XP users who direly needed it. There are many Windows 7 reviews that point out how comfortable Mac users will be in the new UI but I haven’t seen any that say XP users will be comfortable there.

If the following events do not occur in the cartoon, they should be in the parodies:

- someone buys a $299 PC with basic Windows and pays $399 to Microsoft to upgrade to Ultimate

- someone upgrades existing PC from XP to Windows 7, requiring a complete backup and restore plus manually moving documents to new locations, and reinstalling all applications over a 20 hour period (a 20-hour real time parody of this would be brilliant)

- someone identifies all of the makers of the various components of their existing PC and visits dozens of websites looking for “Windows 7 drivers” and creates a checklist so that they can see if they are ready to upgrade, then after upgrading (20 hours) they have to downgrade because their new video driver keeps crashing the box

- someone calls Microsoft support

- someone gets a virus

- someone has their bank account cleaned out by Windows malware

- someone buys a Mac, connects it to their Windows XP PC, installs Parallels or Fusion on the Mac ($50), and imports their functioning XP installation with all apps and documents into a window on the new Mac, in about 1/1000th of the time it takes to upgrade the original PC to Windows 7

- etc.

But Family Guy? I’d just as soon have a root canal.

That’s probably funnier than the show will be. Ultimate sell-out. Embarrassing for MS and McFarlane.

Based on the description I’d rather watch the Windows 7 Party Video for laughs.