I’m a PC, and I don’t necessarily like Microsoft

After the annoyingly strange Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates commercials promoting Microsoft, a new batch of adverts surfaced featuring the slogan “I’m a PC.” It goes something like this: Microsoft employees and users are meshed together in a montage of “I’m a PC and I [fill in stereotype of your choice here]” in a battle against Apple’s commercials portraying a PC negatively. Because, as they say in the ads, a PC is not a stereotype. But grouping all PC users in as Microsoft supporters is not?

Well, I’d like to go out and say I’m a PC, but I can’t give Microsoft all the credit in that decision.

By the way, why is Microsoft able to benefit from the term PC? Last time I checked, PC stood for personal computer and Wikipedia defines that as “any computer whose original sales price, size and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator.” So regardless of the operating system, aren’t we all using PCs?

Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t I just as much as PC user with my Linux operating system as you are with your Mac operating system? And, no, I have not forgotten that MS-DOS was the catalyst making the personal computer a reality. But nowadays, Windows is just one of the operating systems that make our PC world go ‘round.

Do you automatically associate being a PC user with Microsoft Windows? If so, is it because we’ve been trained to think PC = Microsoft? Maybe. Look at the constant barrage of ads we’re faced with. It happens every single day with everything. We automatically call all tissues Kleenex, gelatin of all brands is Jell-O and no one flinches when asked to “Xerox it.”

Is Microsoft playing into our ad vulnerability? Worse, are we falling for it? Let me know what you think.