Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...myself on the bed and kicked and thrashed for a while, I consoled myself by enumerating the various pros and cons I had experienced while using the phone, which runs on AT&T's superfast 3G data network. Because the latest iPhone, which went on sale in July, supports Microsoft Exchange--the industry standard for synching corporate e-mail, calendars, contacts and so on--Apple is pitching its phone to business users as well as to consumers. So, aside from cost--AT&T's rates for the iPhone are way steeper--how does it compare with my old workaday BlackBerry...
Perhaps I'm crazy, but I think Jerry Seinfeld might well be the perfect pitch man for Microsoft's Vista. Quit smirking and look at the evidence: twenty-four hours after the Wall Street Journal broke the story, which said that Microsoft was paying the vintage, 1990s-sitcom star $10 million to plug its beleaguered operating system, the story was referred to more than 650 times, from one end of the media spectrum to the other. You can't buy publicity like that, which, of course, wasn't lost on Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the all-kinds-of-awesome ad agency...
Either people still love Jerry, or they're slowing down to rubberneck at a terrible mishap, I guess. Either way, the first ad, which debuts Sept. 4, is already working. Seinfeld, reportedly, will appear along side Microsoft founder Bill Gates in ads that will try to counteract the ultra-cool Apple ads (featuring Justin Long and John Hodgman). Gates can be hi-larious in videos, and I guess, if you can't line up Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder, Seinfeld is the next best thing...
Still, online and elsewhere, the news was met with derision. Why, the armchair analysts wonder, would Microsoft turn to a guy who was a hit as recently as, er, 1998? (And who ruled the airwaves for the decade preceding that?) Is Microsoft indeed trying to harken back to a time when Windows was king, Google was a nonsense word and Apple was on the verge of extinction? And doesn't this show that Microsoft is out of touch with today's culture...
...Bill Gates can fix capitalism but he can't fix Microsoft Vista? Give me a break! James K. Millard, Lexington, Kentucky...