Article by George Norman

On 04 May 2009

Microsoft is at it again with the latest offering in the Laptop Hunters ad campaign; with this 4th ad, Microsoft introduces Sheila, an artist and a film producer that wants to get a laptop for under $2,000. She says she wants a system with a big screen, a powerful graphics board and plenty of power to allow for seamless video editing. She says she is open to all laptop brands, but in the end she gets an HP HDX (surprise, surprise).

So where is the punch (line)? As we have grown accustomed so far, Microsoft has taken on some aspect related to Macs; this time Sheila looks at a Mac and with what I could identify in her look as disappointment she says the only Mac she could get in her price range only comes with 2GB of RAM.


What’s the matter with this latest Laptop Hunters offering? The ad is just as unattractive as previous offerings, and just as previous offerings, HP products are advertised, not Microsoft’s own operating system. To tell you the truth I prefer Apple’s recent Get a Mac series of ads, alongside the Get a Mac web banner and for one simple reason: Apple’s ad are simple and amusing. I don’t care much about the product that is advertised, I just care about an ad that can get me thinking, or at least put a smile on my face.

You might argue that the point of the Laptop Hunters ads is to showcase how PCs are cheaper than Macs. As Windows Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc put it when the ad campaign was released, Windows PCs offer more “bang for the buck”. But with this 4th ad, the price has gone up from $1,000 to $2,000 – not exactly cheap, and not exactly convenient if you consider the Apple alternative. Here is what I am talking about when I say “alternative”: Sheila gets an XP HDX with: 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB DDR2, max resolution of 1366×768 on a Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics board with 512MB of memory. An entry level 15-inch MacBook Pro, which sells for the same amount, comes with: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB DDR3 with the option to upgrade to 4GB, and a max resolution of 1440×900 on the same Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics board, only with 256MB of memory. So not only is she paying a lot of money, she isn’t even getting more “bang for her buck”, now is she? Keep in mind that the PC does not come with iMovie, a quite helpful video edition program that Sheila, as an artist, might make good use of.

If you would like to watch the ad, you can view it directly from Microsoft, or on YouTube.



Tags: Microsoft, Laptop Hunters, PC, Apple, Get a Mac

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