And another thing…

“It features four actors – carefully chosen for their racial and age profile – pretending that they’re actual real people preparing to vote Labour”

I’m sure that’s what you meant to say, isn’t it? )

I’m on the same laptop they’re using in the video…

That said, nothing more telling than the line “Install if a few days before. Call customer service…”

Any chance this could be an ingenious marketing ploy? i.e. make a deliberately awful video that people blog and twitter about and thereby spread the word of your new product

Brooker is a genius, thanks for the link. You use a Mac, Tom? Still, we know you’re not a monk, you’re quite normal really. For a Leftie.

It wouldn’t die.

Time for a ‘comic life’ treatment methinks . . .

Personally, I split my time between my Windows XP (note: XP, not Vista or 7 – I only upgraded from Win98 SP2 because I had to) PC for entertainment purposes, and my laptop, which runs Fedora, for my internet shenanigans. It works well, but I’d never even consider a ‘Bring your own OS’ party. I could only watch 30 seconds of that before I had to stop that video. One more second and the Linux laptop would have been out the window.

I think this might be up your street: http://xkcd.com/528/

Only lasted about one minute thirty seconds before I wanted to smash my computer. You couldn’t make a spoof that cringe worthy.

Thanks for the warning Tom. I did not bother.

I upgraded to XP when it came out: Vista looked it would be a disaster – and was – so I am still on XP.

When Microsoft produce an OS which means I can do more with less, I will change. As it is, I think the rule of diminishing returns applies.

In real time XP thrashes Vista. Says it all.

But this is just a piss-take, right ??

I think what you are forgetting is that this must just be some post-modern irony on Apple’s ‘I’m a Mac, your a PC ads’ and that the real ads will say ‘That ad was old Microsoft – THIS is Windows 7..’ and have spent the GDP of a small country doing something like paying for the Rolling Stones to perform “I can’t get no satisfaction..” on the moon while Barack Obama performs Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” on the White House lawn with the Revolution as backing band.

At least, that is what you have to hope. Or that this is a spoof trailer for the new series of The Office ??

No Pollwatch post?

Labour are one point behind the Lib-dems according to the beeb.

Ouch!

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade…

Tom, you should be writing the next Emmy award winning telly pilot / Toni award winning theatre production.

Imagine the scene.. Post Credit Crunch a group of chums are actually desperate enough to respond to a friends invite to one of these launch parties.

The evening starts well enough, but by the end friendships have been wrecked, relationships busted, tempers have been frayed and misunderstandings result in the tragi-comic death of the protagonist.

Pitch it as Coupling meets the IT Crowd meets Pulling meets the Office and you may never need to work again.

Especially if you can turn it into a musical featuring the ‘Hits of ELO!’

Cabel Sasser fixed that Microsoft video. http://www.cabel.name/2009/09/windows-7-party.html

Much better now

Please tell me that’s a spoof video.

Did I tell you about our new Mac store in Norwich, yes Norwich. You must watch the opening Norfolk style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SDPB_1d_L0

Does the black guy have to Photoshop himself white if attending a Polish Windows 7 launch party?

OT but did you watch ‘Flashforward’? I thought it was brilliant. If you did, what did you think of it?

“Make sure you know what your guest want”.

I want to jump off a bridge. Where’s the nearest one?

I’m sticking with Linux. The laptop might wear out, the hard drive go bang or the screen pack up, but I’ll never have a problem with the software.

And with the KDE4 desktop, it makes Vista look positively quaint!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dXHewNVnCo&NR=1

(it’s a bit loud…)

Mac users represent!

As a matter of fact, I’m also a bit of a Mac Developer (I make iPlayer Downloader for Mac), as well as a Graphics Artist where I mostly make icons, logos & artwork for Mac & iPhone applications. We’re a small community in Scotland, but we are here!

Microsoft just keeping going from depth to depths here. Just when you think they can’t get any worse, along comes something like Vista.
7’s “not bad” according to some, but having used it a fair bit, I can say it’s absolutely awful. Only when it’s compared to Vista is it not so bad; hardly a great selling point that.
Really, when you compare it to real OS’s out there, like Apple’s Snow Leopard, or Ubuntu, it really shows up how dreadful it is!

Pet hate: when you plug something in, a little box pops up, often causing a game to crash/minimize from full-screen, telling you “you just plugged x in!”. I KNOW I DID!! I plugged it in!! What the hell point is that?! If i plug something in, I don’t need told I just plugged it in. If I plug something in and it’s working, I’ll know, ’cause my headphones work, or my scanner’s on. If it’s not working, I’ll also know!! Completely superflous “feature” that oft times breaks things and in general just annoys me. Microsoft all over really.

I lasted until about 1.22. It is truly emetic.

I am now going to poke my eyes out.

Tom if you read the replies to “Can Gordon Brown’s fight-back succeed?” on the BBC have your Say. You will need that direct dial telephone.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=7055&edition=1&ttl=20090929083140

And then the first guest turns up and it’s David Mitchell, ‘Peep Show’ stylee…

I have now watched about 2 minutes of the spoof: which is pretty abysmal.

The original? Like being seasick in a force 10 gales north of Aberdeen, I guess. (yes I have been there, not nice at all ).

If that summarises Microsoft’s outlook to OS systems, no wonder Vista was so bad.

I hope Microsoft wasted huge amounts of money on that ad, because they deserve to suffer eternal punishment for it.

A desperate attempt to manufacture the sort of community that exists around Free and Open Source Software. Totally bizarre.

Why don’t they play to their strengths, they have huge resources, unrivalled market position, massive influence amongst hardware and software manufacturers and vendors, and yet they are trying to promote themselves by copying the frankly slightly embarrassing (from the perspective of a non-geek) launch parties of Linux distributions, KDE and GNOME desktop environments etc.

Well the ad is terrible, but MS are serious about this. they’ve even gone to the trouble of buying a cafe in Paris and renaming it.

Silly waste of money; those on Vista will upgrade can’t be any worse than Vista was, those on XP likely won’t as (unless it has changed recently) there is no direct XP to 7 upgrade available.

Watch me not buy Vista and Windows 7, XP is working just fine.

Next PC scheduled for 2010 sometime will come pre-loaded with Windows 7 I suspect.

I might change my one Vista laptop over to 7, after Win7 SP2 comes out.

The faux hand-held camera shake gives it away – definitely a split-screen trick.

Seems to have acted rather as garlic flowers reputedly do though . . . .

I may graph the link onto the wall of the local Tory Club . . .