Laptop Hunters Take Two: More Microsoft Dissing Apple, More HP Hardware

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 06 Apr 2009

For those of you that do not already know this, Microsoft has launched an ad campaign entitled “Laptop Hunters” which features “real people as they go on a hunt for a new laptop.” These “real people” are told they are taking part in a market research, not a Microsoft ad, and are invited to search for the perfect price/benefits combo; if they find the laptop that suits them best, Microsoft will pay for it.

The fist ad featured Lauren (who as it turns out is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, but Microsoft says it recruited her off Craigslist) as she takes $1,000 and after much toil ends up with HP Pavilion with minimal screen resolution and running on Windows Home Premium (quite a poor choice according to Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin). The second ad has now been released and it features Giampaolo, and his take on how users are better off with a PC rather than a Mac.

“I thought it would be nice to highlight the next ad in our Laptop Hunters series. This time we’re introduced to Giampaolo, a recent college grad and engineer. Giampaolo is looking for a laptop that has portability, battery life, and is powerful – for under $1,500” says Windows Communications Manager on the Windows Client Communications Team, Brandon LeBlanc.

Just as Lauren, he ends up with an HP product, mainly am HP Pavilion HDX 16t, but not before claiming that “Macs are more about aesthetics than they are about computing power. I don’t want to pay for the brand, I want to pay for the computer”. It’s not strange that the “real people” in these ads would take on Apple and claim it is this and the other; the strange part is that Microsoft is spending a lot of money on a series of ads that promote HP hardware and not the Windows Vista operating system. Microsoft is in the business of selling operating systems, not hardware, and until Windows 7 comes out, the Redmond company’s main product is Windows Vista.

Want to know what the even more interesting (read weird) part is? That Giampaolo did not get what he wanted. He said he wanted the following:
- Portability: he got a 16” wide model that weighs 7.3 pounds (a MacBook weighs half that).
- Battery Life: according to HP, the built-in battery lasts for about 3 hours (a MacBook lasts about 5 hours).
- Power: he got a 2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo P7450, 4Gb of PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM (which is worst than what Apple was shipping a couple of years ago).
- He said that he did not want to pay for the brand, he wanted to pay for the laptop – but he bought an HP.
The one thing he did get was the price. The only Apple laptop he could have gotten for $1,500 is a 13-inch white MacBook or a 13-inch aluminum MacBook.

If you would like to check out the ad for yourself, you can do so here (YouTube link). Just let us know if you think the ad has any effect.


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