I’ve got a few things to say about that!

“It’s a laptop. They’re all portable.” – Try lugging around a 15.4″ laptop!

“Apparently the screen size wasn’t a big factor for her.” – Well, maybe Lauren was smart enough to realize that you need to strike a balance between portability and screen size?

“What is ‘do programs fast’?” – I guess something we tech-savvy people like to call “responsiveness”? You know, like when you launch an app, it launches fast?

“$970? Really?” and “They go way under the price limit…” – Don’t tell me you never tried to save money? Budgets aren’t ironclad you know, especially when you can get something you need for much less than what you allocated.

“For about $150, you can get a 1 terabyte external drive” – Oh, but I prefer having everything right on my laptop. An external hard drive is always a good buy, but not when your anticipating your everyday storage needs around it.

“Vista’s garbage” – No it’s not. Admittedly Microsoft dropped the ball upon Vista’s launch, but the updates made up for that, performance-wise at least. And guess what? If Lauren bought

“You don’t need 10 gigabytes of RAM to run it smoothly.” – Wait wait wait. You do know that the Vista on Lauren’s chosen laptop, can only support a maximum of 3.25GB? So 10GB is kinda pointless.

“I really don’t get what Microsoft is trying to do with these commercials, they’re stupid and they make no sense.” – They’re trying to appeal to a market eager for sweeping yet easy-to-package generalizations. You know, just like the I’m a PC ads.

“At least they had a cute girl in this commercial.” – On this point I agree!

The only point I concede is the Apple’s better battery life. Apple’s laptops do have better battery lives! But that doesn’t make up for the illusion of smugness some of Apple’s customers like giving off.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Video: Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13

Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion

Post from: The Gadget Blog

At least that’s the findings of a study done by BrandIndex, who asked 5,000 people whether or not they believe they get good value for their money from a PC or Mac.

Apple had its highest BrandIndex rating in late winter, according to Ad Age, with a score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (zero means neutral). Apple today sits at a much lower rating of 12.4.

Microsoft sat near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2 presently, noted the report.

However, as noted by Tom’s Hardware, it’s also possible that the PC’s lower prices appeal more to consumers during these relatively hard economic times. Turns out Microsoft’s campaign could’ve made its debut at just the right time.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter ads have attracted attention online for its subtle attacks on Apple, and as more proof that Microsoft is taking marketing more seriously. Personally, I can easily point out flaws in the Laptop Hunters’ messaging (which is not helped by its simplistic presentation of computer realities), but I doubt if anyone can. The fact remains that Microsoft is starting to become more concerned with appearances, rather than just the cold, technical specs.

Sure, Sheila glosses over the realities of her laptop hunt. But that was for the sake of cramming everything into a minute. Besides, how boring would it be for her to boast “Oh wow, it’s got workstation-quality dedicated graphics?!?”. This new appearance-oriented approach apparently extends even to Windows 7, with Gizmodo reporting in its Windows 7 RC 1 benchmarking post:

What’s really interesting is that in regular usage, Windows 7 still feels faster and more responsive than Vista, even though the objective numbers say otherwise. It’s more than just a simple “hey, it’s not Vista” placebo effect: It points to a slicker, refined user experience that makes you feel like the OS responds more hastily or smoothly to your whims. And that’s what really matters, more than the numbers.

Amen.

Post from: The Gadget Blog