Microsoft promoting Hewlett Packard - Why?

Why has Microsoft made a 60 minute advertisemnt showing someone buying a Hewlett Packard Notebook?

Windows Laptop Hunters $1000 - Lauren "Not cool enough to be a Mac"

If I was CEO of one HP's competitors, say Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc., I'd be screaming down the phone to Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer.

On the surface, the ad appears to be a clever retort to Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads, but digging a little deeper reveals a lot of murky issues:

• Lauren will have to live with Vista;


• Lauren could save even more money if she didn't have to pony up for a Vista licence. If she wanted to install Linux, or dare I say, turn her laptop into a hackintosh, that Vista licence is a double-waste;


• MacBook Pros are arguably better machines, and come with an arguably better Operating System;


• Sticker price always neglect the total cost of ownership, where Macs are generally considered to provide better long term value.

Of course, other people have already commented on these and other issues: e.g. that "the ad was staged", and that the theme of the commercial seems to be “PCs: Computers for Losers”.

Another thing this ad shows is that Microsoft willingly ignores generally accepted rules of advertising. For example, according to the panel of The Gruen Transfer, the acknowledged leader in a market should never mention lesser rivals by name in its ads. Doing so lends credibility to the the challengers. That explains why Pepsi (number two cola maker) refers to Coke (number one cola maker), and never the reverse. And Telstra (number one telco in Australia) never mentions its rivals by name, whereas Optus (the second biggest telco in Australia) deliberately compares itself to Telstra in its ads.

Not Happy, Telstra!

As a backup for my broadband internet access with Internode, I had maintained a prepaid dialup account with Telstra's BigPond. The service was ok, but fortunately my broadband service was reliable enough that I hardly needed to make use of the BigPond dialup account.

Recently I had forgotten to renew my prepaid dialup account in time, and the account became locked. This is fair enough, my bad. But my desire to unlock the account has been doused by some examples of poor service from Australia's largest telecommunications company, Telstra. Hence the motivation for this blog entry.

My first disappointment came when the BigPond member web site failed to provide any information about how one was to go about unlocking a locked account. The web site merely presented the following message when I attempted to log in:
"Your Account is either Locked or Pending Activation. Please try again in 24 hours."

I spent some time using the online Help Centre to see if I could get information about unlocking my locked account. The FAQ facility did not return anything useful.

The final disappointment came when I visited a Telstra Shop. The first person I spoke to was a junior staffer, and he was polite and replied honestly that he did not know. He asked me to wait while he asked someone who did know. Unfortunately this person was not as helpful as I'd have liked. He seemed to be a bit distracted, initially reeling of a phone number to call about my problem. The number must have been incorrect because the junior staffer reminded him that I was a BigPond prepaid dialup customer. Then he started reeling off another number, but I asked him to please write it down for me. He reluctantly did jot the number on a scrap of paper and gave it to me.

I guess I could now ring the number I was given to ask about unlocking my account. But given the level of service I've received, I'm not sure the company deserves my continued patronage.

The sad thing is: I am a Telstra shareholder. I'm also a Telstra mobile phone customer. It is arguably in my interests to use Telstra as my Internet service provider. However I will probably not bother unlocking my dialup account. As I said at the start, I'm a happy Internode broadband customer, and the dialup account was only a backup.

Bye-Bye Ziggy

Yesterday it was made public that the CEO of Telstra, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, would be leaving the company. As a shareholder I will be happy to see him go.

Telstra CEO out ahead of full sale

"Dr Switkowski will stand down by July 2005, two years before his contract was due to expire. He will get a payout of at least $2 million."

In the past few years the Telstra share price has fallen about $3 per share (almost 40%), reducing the total value of my direct shareholding by almost $2500.

As if this was not bad enough, one of Dr Ziggy's (failed) deals back in 2001 ended up costing the jobs of myself and many colleagues. In the process a once-thriving South Australian company was reduced to a pale shadow of it's former self.

The doctor will get a golden handshake of $2 million. I wish I could get a job where failure is so well-rewarded!