Good day loyal reader.
You may notice that over the next few days there will be few, if any, posts on here. I have a full day tomorrow of packing and dismantling my gadgetry to take down to Reading ahead of starting University, and then I have a multitude of freshers events, nights out and the occasional form to fill out or meeting to attend to remind myself that I am still a student. I’m gathering up all the topics I want to talk about now so that I can get away with a few days of nothingness so excuse the somewhat fragmented syntax of this post, and also please excuse the poor previous post, I had spent a long time building up a very detailed analysis of my view on the Microsoft and Apple tablet computer rumours but my laptop crashed before I had time to save a draft, thus deleting a very big chunk of the post. When I got back on I was in a rush and didn’t manage to put back all the points I had made so just finished it up quickly, but I digress.
Another reason for a lack of posts, mentioned on the previous post (I think) is that I am in the process of moving this blog to matgreenfield.com/.co.uk. I have bought the domains and they are currently having their DNS settings transferred to Louis’ server, who has very generously allowed me to host my site on his servers and is also helping me translate my designs for the future blog into a suitable wordpress template so that I can continue all the functionality I have had here but under my own design/url and with the ability to customise and alter the site easily as well as probably putting in Google Adsense to get some cash out of it. I say that I am in the process of moving the site but I must confess that, seeing as I don’t own (nor can afford) a webserver and creating Wordpress templates is not my forté, Louis is doing most of the work for me so allow me to give him all the credit he deserves here.
Now to business, as I have repeatedly mentioned, Microsoft’s new interation of it’s highly popular (though less so in recent years) operating system Windows is about to be released, the bafflingly (and apparentely randomly) named Windows 7. Microsoft, as I have mentioned in recent posts, seems to want to reclaim that young user-base that has been damaged by the ‘Buy a Mac’ adverts, and so now they have said “well what do teenagers like? Parties, yes. Then let’s try and start a new meme of Windows 7 parties”. Eh…no.
Yes, you read correctly, Microsoft feel that the best way for people to get to know Windows 7 is to encourage early adopters of the new OS to invite their friends round and show off the new features of 7 to try and get them to buy it, they’re also giving examples, in the form of these excruciatingly bad examples -
Badly acted, badly attempting to aim at all age, race and gender groups, but to be honest I’m suprised that they included the african-american gentleman (that’s a reference to a recent Microsoft news story that I’ve linked to in this block of text so please read it or else you may think the worst of me). There are persistent rumours, as of yet unconfirmed, that Microsoft is planning to bribe persuade customers to throw their own advertisement launch party by offering the party host a free signature copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition and a party pack. If this turns out to all be true then I will undoubtedly be doing it, despite being open to the student discount, I’d much rather get it free, plus I can easily round up a few of my geeky techy friends to come. But I would like to add that there will be far more alcohol and far less mention of Windows 7.
For more information on the history of Microsoft’s marketing, check out this article from CNET UK, this site is my usual source of tech news and are far more thorough and journalistic than I can hope to be on my own.
This whole thing makes me wonder what the average age of someone in Microsoft’s marketing is! I mentioned earlier MS trying to grab the young crowd but this advert isn’t exactly a skins party nor is it a mature, cocktail party. With the “party pack, tote bags for each guest” and the balloons and activities seen and mentioned in the advert, I have to say it resembles more of a “cake and ice cream” five year old’s party. I can see absolutely no person, beside the socially inept, who this would appeal to (though I may go along with it just for the free 7).
Perhaps the socially inept thing has some merit, maybe they seriously think that computer geeks are still the obscenely overweight, pocket protector wearing, broken glasses sporting nerd of the nineties (or the opening ten seconds of that Beastie Boys video who could be persuaded that this is how a party should play out (there are very few of my kind left) when that stereotype hasn’t been true for years. Granted, there are LAN parties which is the closest thing to a computer-themed party, but even that’s a million miles from this.
Here’s the point, in the years that Apple were, for lack of a better phrase, in hibernation, Microsoft built up a nice niche for itself as the OS of choice for businesses as well as for the home user. Since the resurgence of Apple, Microsoft’s home user niche has been threatened by them as more and more people switch (I don’t see why it has to be one or the other but nevertheless) to Macs. The business niche however, multimedia companies notwithstanding, has remained almost intact, even with Vista’s pitiful attempts to copy Macs (I should note that I’ve never seen a company using Vista as it’s main OS, and rightly so, it’s not reliable enough) but maintain the original business functionality, and it failed, but Microsoft were saved by the fact that XP was still suitable enough to continue use in business. However, it remains that as things progress XP will eventually become too outdated to be used (now that they’ve stopped support and service packs for it) and when it does, companies will want to turn to a new OS that has the same reliability and business-suitability of XP, but whenever Microsoft tries another stupid marketing ploy or yet another gimmick to re-establish itself as a home user OS, it cheapens itself and no business would see it as professional enough to use, regardless of how stable it is.
Add to that the fact that as well as the student discounts, this promises everyone who is an approved host a FREE copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. In this economic climate, and with Apple snapping at their heels (actually probably their knees by now), how can they justify being so liberal with the cost of their product?
Just as a quick aside, something I found interesting is that if you go to the YouTube channel of Windows Videos and look at the comments, they all seem amazingly positive about every aspect of Microsoft and Windows. Now try writing a comment yourself, what do you get? “Pending Approval” – how many negative comments do you think they got and approved? If it’s swearing or unfounded claims then fair enough but I would be suprised if they’ve let in anything that so much as mentions another OS.
That’s “all” I have to say on that and I’ll keep you posted on whether I actually throw a “Windows 7 Party” or not.
Other announcements, hopefully quite soon I’ll be posting a video up on here that is Episode 2 (technically) of the podcast that I do with Louis and Paul called Tech-Squared (often abbreviated as Tech² but that’s harder to type). I’ve embedded the first episode (or I would’ve if Wordpress allowed embedding objects, ho-hum), which is audio only, below for your edification and general enjoyment. Subscribe to us on iTunes to get the latest episodes delivered straight to you. Instead of embedding, you can listen to the first episode by clicking this link.
Also, I borrowed one of Louis’ old routers to use to stream media at uni but I left it at his house after we finished filming yesterday, so I just went to PC World to buy a new one, seems easier than bugging him again but cheers anyway Louis. So I’ve gathered all my gadgetry for uni and hopefully will have no issues setting it up when there. Any earth-shattering developments that occur will be reported by me but for a little while, I will bid you a fond (and fleeting) farewell while I settle into a new life, and then I’ll be back.
Other variant is possible also