Want a "high-quality" machine that represents the "best of the best in laptops?" Microsoft's got your back with its all-new PC Scout, a Flash-based laptop recommendation engine whose delivery is unfortunately more than a little reminiscent of those misguided
Windows 7 launch party promos. Ah well, should you successfully navigate your way past bad jokes about space-cats and online dating, and on to the Selection section, you'll find a thoroughly decent laptop comparison tool -- with sliders for price and features narrowing or expanding your available choice in real time. With future plans to expand it to cover desktop hardware as well, Microsoft is making a commendable and seemingly rather useful effort to aid its users in picking out a new machine. Kudos for that, now how about hiring some real actors
for a change?
[Via
Ars Technica]
posted Oct 20th 2009 11:31PM
LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"misguided Windows 7 launch party promos"
you mean the 1 video which wasnt a promo or ad and was actually a tutorial video with jokes in it for houseparty.com? yea what about it. why would you compare a tutorial video to a tool that filters laptops?
After the new imac/apple releases today I'm sure every peasant out there is scratching their head asking themself: "Why do I stick with this windows POS looking computer when I could be truly cool and own a mac." Sorry, but look at that imac display and you know what I am saying is the truth.
Hey Microsoft, where is SilverLight?
You might not have noticed since you just unfroze yourself, but it's been out for a couple of years
Also I like how he didn't even click on the link (well to give him credit neither did Vladislav).
Microsoft should ask all it's OEMs to submit and maintain their machines on the site(if that's not what they already do).
not sure if I'd call it particularly patronizing, considering the people they're trying to target with this are the people who need help shopping for and comparing laptops, and if you read (or write for) engadget you most likely are aware of the various brands and price points already.
also, there's a damn link under that with the text "Know your way around laptops..." right above it that takes you to the comparison tool (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pc-scout/laptop-set-criteria.aspx?mode=landing). And it's not flash, it's javascript.
Same, I didn't think it was patronising, it did make me smile. I've never had a product comparison tool make me smile before! :) I like how the new Microsoft tries to come off as less "corporate" and more "fun".
The comparison tool itself is pretty good, it gets the important questions such as gaming, music/video editing and portability out of the way and makes a point to differentiate between casual flash games and demanding retail games. I've heard stories about people who've been sold computers with monstrous graphics cards because they played "a lot of games on miniclip"...
The laptop recommendation engine is not Flash. Is it that hard to right click?
Say goodbye to the legibility of your (soon to be transparent) posts :)
Do they include Macs too, since they (can) run Win7?
I would believe they would have to ship with Windows 7 pre-installed (which actually wouldn't be a bad move on their part since half of the Mac owners I know install it anyway).
Go home and think about your comment. Then come back and see if its still as stupid as I think it is
Sorry arcticpenguins, no can do. Had to sell my home to afford all the new Apple product updates :P
Pretty nice and easy to use tool, though the notebook pool is a bit low at the moment
Wow, I'm impressed. That tool is really powerful and finds some of the best laptops out there.
Wonder if they will add the same thing for desktops.
That's actually a pretty sweet little tool, and they luckily let you skip all the n00b oriented gum flapping with two clicks. Well done!
Careful, some manufactures try to cheat you out of your hard earned green i.e. lenovo if you navigate through microsoft's laptop search it directs you to the Lenovo IdeaPad Y730 - 405332U for $1,249.00. But if you navigate to the site normally and select the Y730 you instead get the 40532JU same exact specs for $1,099.00.
ugh, my mistake you get 4gb on the 2JU ($1100) vs 3gb on the 32U ($1250)
those are shoes you will never fill
Keep up.
PC Scout was up and running more than a month ago, if any of you had bothered to go to the windows website.
Although to be fair, I expect that Engadget prefers to get their microsoft news third-hand from an Apple fansite.
If you don't like Engadget's perceived Apple slant, why do you read it? Why waste your time posting a comment? Don't come to the site, or at least skip Apple articles.
@Lunch
Err... you do realise it's not an Apple article, right?
Well, that would explain why its talking about Vista rather than Windows 7, which I did think was kinda odd given that the new OS hits the street this week.
THIS IS EXCELLENT
It's pretty good after having used it.
i'm testing this thing now, first impressions are very good! It feels so natural!
Wow, its a very helpful tool, and my favorite thing about it is that it lets you be not sure about things and yet by the end their recommendations are still very in line toward what the buyer would find helpful. The narrator was like a salesperson at a retail store too....cept a lot more patient
I swear that guy sounds like Xbox's Major Nelson.
Word up - I used that tool and led myself to an Asus computer that I never would have bothered looking at...I googled a review which led me to a Windows 7 version of the same computer on the Best Buy website which i preordered with free shipping. I was going to buy a new laptop tomorrow, but hey... this works.
I think I hurt the guy's feelings though by skipping his intro.
Gotta love American instant gratification shopping!
I'm a PC. Woot woot.
Cute.
Skipping to the straight up browsing section, we find that the database contains exactly 45 laptops, of which all but 7 have screens 14" or more.
Not exactly comprehensive.
You could do much the same browsing and parameter selection at Newegg and have over 150 models to choose from in notebooks alone, with another 130 or so filed under netbooks. And the prices would be "street".
It didn't find a single laptop with my specifications, but I found at least four name brand computers that did down at Best Buy. I suspect laptops have to fit into a number of MS precepts in order to qualify to be listed, or it's more of the 'does not work outside the US' bs. Either way, I don't see that it will do much good for anyone other than mom and dad, or anyone too lazy to do a bit of research.
Granted I haven't had any virus issues with my Mac, but no crashes and stability? HA!
God damn it... Safari locked up again.
::force quits::
damn it, that's not working
::holds down power button::
damn it, that's not working either
::unplugs and removes battery::
wait, I can't remove the battery. what the fuck am I suppose to do now!?!
And you're both right.
Why did we bring up Mac vs Windows again?
Bratty little nephew staying over. Wants to use the "cool" computer, the iMac.
No way I'm letting him near my files. Better make a guest account for him.
Just as a precaution, better back it up on my Time Capsule.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/rage%20guy/BobAsh_album/RageGuy.jpg
@Vlad, is this more or less patronising than those creepy bastards in black turtlenecks who show you how to use the iPhone (despite it being intuitive obviously)?
Just askin'
@ 10minutehobo
You don't have a Mac nor a TimeCapsule.
Yes, Windows is a failure. Let's look at some numbers:
Last quarter, Apple sold 3.05 million computers. That is a good number, no doubt about it - I wish I sold that many copies of my software. But then I am not a huge, multi-national corporation.
Last quarter, there were (averaging IDC and Gartner numbers) 79.48 million computers sold.
79.48 + 3.05 = 82.53 million total computers sold.
79.48 / 82.53 = 96.3% of all computers sold were PCs (PC == computer not Apple computers)
1.00 - .963 = 3.7% of all computers sold were Apple computers.
Yep, 3.7% vs. 96.3% means that Apple is a wild, wild success. Let us compare some percentages:
A baseball player has a 3.7% batting average. How long do you think they would last in the Majors, let alone in the Minors?
A politician has a 3.7% favorable rating. How long do you think they would last before they were voted out of office?
A mortgage broker has a 3.7% success rate of selling mortgages to people who do not go bankrupt. How long do you think they would last before they were fired?
A surgeon has a 3.7% success rate of saving the lives of people who have simple surgeries such as appendix removal. How long do you think that surgeon would be able to practice before his insurance is revoked?
A lawyer has a 3.7% success rate of defending his clients. How long do you think that lawyer is able to continue his practice before he no longer has any clients?
A mailman delivers 3.7% of the mail to the correct address. How long do you think that mailman is able to keep his job?
An investment banker loses all but 3.7% of his entire portfolio. How long until the people withdrawl all their money and go to another fund?
A person gets sick and loses all but 3.7% of their body weight. How long until that person dies?
A construction worker build 3.7% of a house. How long until that person loses his license?
A computer salesman sells to 3.7% of all the people who are looking to buy a computer. How long before that salesman loses his job for having a sad, pathetic, sales record?
@NoHone
That 80 million includes the Mac sales so you're seriously understating their market share - it's actually a might 3.9%.
Awesome.
It's probably because I'm not American but the presenter is certainly annoying and the jokes aren't funny. However, beyond that I can safely say that the service is pretty useful and I'll be directing my sister to it since she is currently looking for a new laptop. I just hope that at least some of these laptops are of good quality since our last search for something suitable was very depressing and the new Dell Latitude I received from work a couple of weeks is, frankly, utter crap with the exception of a nice battery life.
Ugh, well I guess my entire argument is incorrect.
;)
I got nothing against those letters, I use them every day at least once. Your post still sucks though.
@NohOne
Best well thought out and funny argument i've read on here in a while.
Nice one.
It took a whole 3 seconds for this selector to fail to be useful. You can filter on screen size in inches, not on screen size in pixels.
An 18" screen with only 1366 x 768 resolution is just not something I'm interested in and want some way to filter those out short of looking up every singe model individually.
@NohOne & MarkAnderson
Your numbers and deductions are perfect for the OS X operating system. But, if you take Apple the computer maker, shouldn't you be comparing them to other brands such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.?
Also, does anyone have the numbers of the Win/Linux split among the rest?
Talking about Lenovo, M$'s scout doesn't even list any of their T series models :(
Raghu, this is an article about PCs. The numbers I gave were for PCs - which include Windows and Linux computers. We also know, as the Linux folks keep telling us, that everybody is ***forced*** to buy Windows on PC computers. But, if you really wish to bring Linux into it, ZDNet (http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2179) put the Linux marketshare at less than 1%. These figures are from a year ago, so it could be different now but do you think they would have changed that much in that time?
But even if we gave 50% of the PC sales to Linux, how does that change my analysis? How does that change the figures for Apple? They would still be at 3.7% (or 3.9% as Mark commented). But Linux does not have that per centage. I will be generous and give Linux the same amout as Apple, and so that leaves Windows with a 92.6% share of computers sold. That loss of a (hypothetical) 3.7%, I guess that means Microsoft is even closer to collapse as compared to the 3.7% owned by Apple (which people claim is a wild success) and the 3.7% (hypothetical) market share of the other OS that is a wild success - Linux.
I tried the pc tool... it was soooo helpful.
"We're sorry, but we don't have any PCs that match the exact criteria you selected. To see PCs that meet your needs as closely as possible, click the "Back to search results" link to the left and adjust your selection criteria."
The voice and the company that did the presentation are the same as the old "You Don't Know Jack" computer game... I kept wanting to hit the "Screw Someone" button.