Bob Caswell

So I’m walking back to the office (work for Microsoft in Bellevue, WA) after meeting my wife for a nice dinner out. And I’m wearing a black t-shirt that says “I’M A PC” in white letters across my chest. I’m half way through crossing the street and a guy runs up to me, whips his arms around, points his two index fingers an inch away from my chest, and then yells loudly: “I’m a Mac!”

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The Microsoft Games for Windows team working with the SideWinder (gaming hardware) team put together a fun event a few days ago. Of course, I may be saying it was fun because I won third place in one tournament and first place in another.

Winnings included everything I needed for a lazy weekend: Fallout 3, 007: Quantum of Solace, SideWinder Mouse, SideWinder X6 Keyboard (won two!), and a LifeChat LX-3000 headset (see picture above or see an unboxing video here by a fellow winner).

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Meet Lisa and her son Jackson, who’s looking for “speed, big hard drive, and a good gaming computer” for under $1,500. After a quick look at some PCs, Lisa says, “Let’s go see the Macs, they’re kind of popular at this age.” But then, Lisa points out that “…these are way more money, dude” quickly followed by Jackson saying (about a Mac), “It’s a little too small.”

So back to the PCs: We’re shown how you can use a PC with a remote and then we see both Lisa and Jackson get really excited about none other than “Bluuu-ray!” And, of course, Blu-ray is missing from Macs. For me personally, not a huge selling point of the PC. But for others like Lisa and Jackson, it seems pretty cool. And that’s the point being made here: there’s something for everyone.

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Microsoft just came out with its second Laptop Hunters video. Personally, I think this one is better than the first one, but you decide (embedded below).

We’ve got a guy with a $1,500 budget looking for portability, battery life, and power. And he says he’s “technically savvy” and knows what he wants.

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So Microsoft put together an ad (embedded below with more to come apparently) that does what Apple started (comparing PCs and Macs) only from Microsoft’s perspective. That is, when either side plays this game, they focus on the pros of their team while pointing out the cons of the other side all while conveniently forgetting to mention their own cons.

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So in case you missed it, Apple responded to Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC” ad campaign. You can watch the ads on Youtube via Gizmodo and TechCrunch (or a whole bunch of other places). I was discussing this with a friend / coworker last night and thought I’d share my thoughts here:

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Sony and crapware have a special relationship, so much so that it takes over two minutes for its laptops to boot into Windows (compare that with 30 seconds for a MacBook). The company has even issued press statements explaining its reasoning: “The programs are carefully selected and provide benefits to many consumers, up to 30% of whom act on the offers.”

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Starting within the next few weeks, Dell computers (notebooks and desktops) will be for sale in more than 900 Best Buy locations in the U.S. After this move, Dell’s products will be available in almost 10,000 stores worldwide. This seems ironic considering Dell pioneered the low cost, online, skip-the-middleman model. But the company lost the “world’s largest computer maker” trophy to HP, and the retail distribution channel is one area where HP shines.

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