Microsoft Windows Vista excitement
Earthy green polo shirt guy
“Glass-like interface elements that you can see through.” Green is their favorite color.
Microsoft is working to put out a new version of Windows, called Vista (incidentally, the Icelandic word for “Save” in computer programs).
It probably costs millions of man-hours and billions of dollars to create.
And this “features” page is supposed to sell it to us.
It appears that Vista’s most significant feature is a trendy-grey-haired guy wearing an earthy green polo shirt and a toothy smile.
He looks friendly. I think I’ll buy it.
It will be worth it, not only for earthy-green-polo-shirt guy, but also for the “spectacular visual effects such as glass-like interface elements that you can see through.”
Whoo.
Where do you want to yawn today?
January 17th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Hæ Gulli. Skemmtileg síðan þín. Og skemmtileg saga um innilokaða mannkind sem þú bentir mér á :o)
Bæjó
January 17th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Well, I hate to dis your rant, especially as it is about a Microsoft product, but I’ll do it anyway. I agree that the green polo shirt guy is really ridiculous, but the focus on the look and feel of Vista isn’t. It will probably be the single biggest selling factor for Vista (except for the fact that it will be sold with almost every PC). Look and feel is important to people. It sells cars and mobile phones and is probably (I’m just guessing here) at least as important as features when selling technology to the ordinary customer. For not so ordinary customers (developers and IT-professionals in this case) you would probably want other sales arguments. Incidentally Microsoft provides this info on separate pages, devoid of green polo guys. Not that I have bothered to read it. I’ll probably upgrade to Vista because of the “spectacular visual effects”. It’s really pretty cool and gives Vista a nice look and feel. Well, at least compared to XP.
January 17th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
I will almost certainly upgrade too, and I will probably like the look and feel and think of XP’s look and feel as inferior, and I will probably be all nice and pleased about it, especially since my employer pays for the frills.
The point remains that the “features” page did not show me any exciting features, and it “features” a silly smily marketing image that is bigger than any of the features.
Maybe that works to get some people excited about buying Vista, but not me. It just puts me off. And this blog does not attempt to represent anyone’s opinions other than mine.
(Although it might sometimes represent my opinions on other people’s opinions.)
I very often find marketing material silly, not just Microsoft’s. I often feel like its design is a cheap mockery of my senses, like some cheesy stripper shaking her goods at me.
“Hiya! We put this green polo shirt guy here to smile at you and make you feel liked, even though he has no discernible connection to what we are peddling here. This is done simply to subconsciously manipulate your gullible soppy rag of a mind into buying our stuff. Thank you, and have a nice day.”
So you are perfectly right, and that has no bearing on my reaction to the features page. :-)
January 17th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
The green polo shirt guy really is ridiculous. And the whole feature page really is crappy. It’s quite obvious that Microsoft doesn’t have to rely on marketing any more to sell there products. Or features for that matter. So much for your beloved… no I won’t go there :)
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:06 pm
In a class last semester we were told that over 7,000 developers are developing Vista…. and have been for 3 years. That is 21,000 man-years — or 33 million man-hours.
Since Microsoft has delayed all the advanced features, such as a new filesystem — this must be the most expensive green color in the history of mankind.