Windows Gurus to infiltrate retail stores, tell you why Vista rules

In case you missed the completely baffling Gates / Seinfeld ad, here's the skinny: Microsoft is getting serious about polishing the tarnished Vista brand (its words, not ours). According to new reports, that aforementioned spot is just the beginning of Redmond's costly push to "change consumers' perception of Windows," and soon you'll be seeing Microsoft Gurus in your favorite B&M locations. These so-called experts will be there to "explain the benefits of Windows," but we're not sure if they'll only be around to answer inquiries or if they'll be actively approaching you in an uncomfortable attempt to talk about Aero and ReadyBoost. We're hearing that some 155 representatives will be deployed before the year's end at stores like Best Buy and Circuit City, so at least you now know where not to shop if you're terrified of confrontation.

[Via Electronista, image courtesy of StarBulletin]

[Graham Stevens @ Sep 6th 2008 12:00PM]

That photo is in serious need of a caption competition.

Lets go.....

[Richard Lai @ Sep 6th 2008 12:01PM]

"Buy Vista and you will get another free bottle of water!"

[mahmud @ Sep 6th 2008 12:03PM]

You can't break these cuffs.

[v3xx @ Sep 6th 2008 12:05PM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZIvgQ9ik48&NR=1

[BigD145 @ Sep 6th 2008 12:08PM]

"We accept her! We accept her! One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble! One of us! One of us!"

[Pius @ Sep 6th 2008 12:13PM]

Bitch has you heard of Vista!?!

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 6th 2008 12:08PM]

"YOU'RE SOFT."

[ericdano @ Sep 6th 2008 12:10PM]

"Look, Ponies"

[Bobby @ Sep 6th 2008 12:10PM]

So ... HOW ABOUT SPENDING SOME MILLIONS SO WE NO LONGER HAVE F##&*$#*

BSODs ??? !!!!!!

[Carl Vitullo @ Sep 6th 2008 12:23PM]

Wow all of those are terrible.

[Jon2309 @ Sep 6th 2008 12:29PM]

[url="http://img29.picoodle.com/data/img29/3/9/6/f_lolm_466b341.png"]Hmm.[/url]

[Flashpoint @ Sep 6th 2008 12:50PM]

I ONLY NEED TWO REASONS TO BUY VISTA OVER osx.


#1 CRYSIS

#2 CRYSIS: WARHEAD

[The Dude @ Sep 6th 2008 1:01PM]

Pius wins.

[iEye @ Sep 6th 2008 1:06PM]

ok, first im an apple fanboy, however, i cant afford an imac yet, i run vista. Now vista is a good OS, thats not where microsoft messed up, they messed up by making Vista so big and bloated that it takes a powerful computer to run it. The average computer cannot run vista easily, nor without crashes. Apple OS on the other hand, runs fine on all of their machines, that is why people are leaving MS for Apple. They really messed up, and better re-think their strategy. And this Mojave experiment? Yes they ran vista on really good computers, no wonder they liked it.

[jed @ Sep 6th 2008 7:04PM]

Yo yo yo holla holla ho-dup. You ain' hurd ma hole storay. Then, afta ah got mah diabeetus, they tol' me ah caint eat no mo' Mikkidees, but ah was lak oh no yoo di in't! Ah be wurkin' fo mah Benjis, an' ah get paid. You betta bulleedat ah use me dat Vista, it BE SHININ', it be SHINAAAY...

[Timothy Sottek @ Sep 6th 2008 1:14PM]

"WOULD YOU LIKE A SERVICE PLAN WITH THIS WATER BOTTLE?"

"SERVICE PLANNNNN!!!?!?!??!"

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 6th 2008 1:22PM]

@iEye

Holy shit, seriously? Your comment was so insightful, I'm surprised Engadget hasn't let you write a full on editorial on the subject. I've never heard anything quite like it before.

[Lesbotroll @ Sep 6th 2008 1:24PM]

"C'mere.. I gotsa serprise in mah vajinnah fer yoo"

[Sam Zebian @ Sep 6th 2008 1:30PM]

"Alright, you see that weird looking dude standing by the pole? I think he's with the feds. He's eyeballing you and we've got to get out of here before they find out about us upgrading all of the XP machines to vista without charge... If they find out, Vista will have no future!!"

[Sam Zebian @ Sep 6th 2008 1:31PM]

"Oh and don't forget to act casual.... smile nice and big now!"

[Greg @ Sep 6th 2008 1:34PM]

@iEye
It's not just that it's bloated, it's that what it's been bloated with isn't good. The 3d program switcher looks neat, but it's not that useful. Not to mention it's unreliable on even the fastest of computers.

As for their new ads, the Mohave one was probably the best. Although they took a bunch of people who never used vista or saw vista to do the tests, and used MS's own computers. Sounds to me like they would have been even more impressed by this new OS, called Windows XP. =\
Focus groups are notorious for people giving the info the company wants in this sort of test. Good focus groups hide their intentions, this one did not.

MS just isn't used to having real competition, and people just gobbling up their stuff.

[The Dude @ Sep 6th 2008 1:37PM]

@iEye:

I've installed Leopard on old iMacs...the ones with the round base and the LCD on the metal arm. 1GHz PPC, 1GB RAM. There is noticeable lag and I definitely wish I had slapped in Tiger or Panther instead. There's no way in hell Leopard is a wise choice for old hardware. Even the more recent releases of popular Linux distros have become more demanding. Thank teh LAWD for xUbuntu and Arch Linux. Any Linux distro used to do get the job done when I was trying to breathe life into legacy hardware that was just sitting around. Now I have to go searching for specialized distros that have trimmed the (unnecessary) fat.

[Mark Anderson @ Sep 6th 2008 1:42PM]

@Greg

MS not had real competition, eh?

Quick question: Which was incorporated first - Apple or MS?

[white_ultras @ Sep 6th 2008 2:18PM]

===GOD IS MACINTOSH AND STEVE JOBS IS HIS PROPHET===

FINALL MESSAGE TO ALL VISTA INFIDELS

[G-Money @ Sep 6th 2008 2:20PM]

We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile

[iofthestorm @ Sep 6th 2008 2:29PM]

@ iEye: Well, the thing is, there is no Mac that costs less than a grand. Any PC worth that much will run Vista much better than fine, hell even the $600-700 PCs today should run Vista fine. A lot of the problem is bad OEM installs, which I think Microsoft is working on for Windows 7 to make sure that stupid OEMs don't make it take forever to boot. I built my desktop and it has a clean install of Vista and it boots to desktop in around 45 seconds, but my OEM laptop (building a laptop is not worth it) takes 2-3 minutes to boot sometimes despite having similar specs and more RAM.

[CowBell @ Sep 6th 2008 3:07PM]

Have to have that Cow Bell in there baby!

[Rogue_Genius @ Sep 6th 2008 3:23PM]

I'll bet you could use some water to wash down that computer, I mean cake!

[Apple Rep. @ Sep 6th 2008 3:46PM]

@iofthestorm

i paid 1,200 for a nice pc, couldnt fin vista worth crap

[Abuzar Baloach @ Sep 6th 2008 4:09PM]

Then you got ripped off. I built my PC for 800 dollars. A Intel quad core at 3.6Ghz, 4GB of 1066Mhz DDR2 ram, ATI 4850, etc. It raped Vista.

[illicit @ Sep 6th 2008 5:52PM]

I'm not your buddy, guy.

[Quix @ Sep 6th 2008 6:41PM]

"I built my PC for 800 dollars. A Intel quad core at 3.6Ghz" - Abuzar

Meaning you bought an Intel quad core at 2.4 ghz and overclocked the crap out of it. Not something the typical consumer targeted by Vista is going to be doing. At all. Nor will they even be building their own machines. At all. So your Vista dollars-to-performance experience, while accurate (maybe), is not relevant to the broad Vista-using market. At all.

[Mr Cool @ Sep 6th 2008 8:12PM]

Timothy's post is so much full of win.

[Will H. @ Sep 6th 2008 9:51PM]

Caption: "Omm Nom Nom Nom"

[kingu @ Sep 6th 2008 10:40PM]

Join the dark side and get a , eh... i have this water bottle, but I see you have already got one of those. No. i still wont let you go.

[XGM @ Sep 6th 2008 11:51PM]

"Extended warranty, now we got ya"

[majortom @ Sep 7th 2008 10:25AM]

OMG!! I'm touching J-Low!

[Liam Parkinson @ Sep 7th 2008 12:39PM]

...flashpoint...
anyone else finding the crysis comments a lil tiresome? its on par with the doom and blend thing now.
before you cry flashpoint i do run windows as well as osx and my machine is more then capable of running crysis.. but lets face it the games not actually that good, its kind of like the monalisa, looks good but theres just no point to it.

[Matt @ Sep 7th 2008 3:08PM]

OM NOM NOM NOM!

[patricio @ Sep 6th 2008 12:02PM]

You guys are such pricks, I mean at least make some effort to hide your obvious bias.. WOW, this site has really tumbled.

[Eric @ Sep 6th 2008 12:06PM]

I agree, if these guys were working for Apple you probably treat them like the Messiah.

[Chris Macdonald @ Sep 6th 2008 12:08PM]

I agree, this is rediculous. All this is is overt microsoft bashing. I'm not even going to read this blog anymore.

[Carl Vitullo @ Sep 6th 2008 12:18PM]

I agree, lately especially articles have stopped being "articles" and started being press releases copypasta'd. Maybe this'll stop when there aren't as many things being released, but seriously? Do we need to know about every single blu-ray player being released this week? I would've preferred a well thought out comparison of Chrome to other browsers out there, with things like loading times, Acid3 scores (which happens to be 73-79), boot time for the browser, etcetera. But instead, we didn't even hear about its release. Engadget seems to be slipping in my opinion.

[Dr Zoidberg @ Sep 6th 2008 12:21PM]

Yes, how dare we be so bias, by the way patricio where did you get that display pictuere?

[inno8sky @ Sep 6th 2008 12:27PM]

All I can tell you is, these guys/gals do a better job. .
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/

At least, they're not an apple zealot glee club like engadget are.
At least they balance their opinions with the actual news. This s**t rag never seems to do that.

And at least CNN can from time to time write a story that isn't entirely positive about apple
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/08/29/apple.loyal.ap/index.html

[Chris Macdonald @ Sep 6th 2008 12:30PM]

I totally agree with you carl. For example, why do we need two articles about an obviously fake ipod?? I liked the days when I could load up engadget and see innovation and cool new stuff. Now all we see is every single shitty little netbook and how much vista sucks and a post about every square millimeter of the new iphone.

[Jack Storm @ Sep 6th 2008 12:35PM]

lol Apple already does that, theyre already in BestBuy!

They did a good job though, he sold me the Mac told me everything about it and even helped me put Vista on it!

[Apple Rep. @ Sep 6th 2008 1:09PM]

@patricio

Really? biased? i see no bias... its a regular news story. Which part is biased, i would like you to tell me, because it looks to me as if your defending microsoft after all this crap they are pulling

[Tony @ Sep 6th 2008 1:13PM]

Joshua Topolsky concerning Google's Chrome browser:
"We're not in the business of covering software...unless there's a gadget angle."

Where is the gadget angle here Engadget?

[Mark Anderson @ Sep 6th 2008 1:14PM]

@Apple Rep

Possibly because they're not having a go at the shambling fucking Neanderthals that populate the Apple Genius (oh the irony!) Bar to balance things out?