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The funny thing about this commercial, marketing-wise, is that it isn't making fun of older IE versions. It's making fun of us geeks who hated older IE versions

The funny thing about this commercial, marketing-wise, is that it isn't making fun of older IE versions. It's making fun of us geeks who hated older IE versions. The primary message is: "you geeks who hated us, give us a chance!" But I get the feeling the subtext is more important: "normal non-geeky people have always preferred IE, and now all you normal non-geeky people have an excuse to ignore all those silly geeks who tell you to uninstall it." Edit: one other thing - This commercial has the anti-IE guy trying to "uninstall" older versions of IE. It looks like he's dragging the icon to the trash bin. That bit was interesting primarily because, as I recall, you couldn't uninstall IE before Windows 7, particularly not by doing anything as simple as dragging it to the trash bin. I guess he's just doing what a lot of us have done: trying to make sure an unsuspecting family member doesn't just have the icon there to reflexively click on.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
We're doing that geeky thing now where we're delving too deep into minutiae, but: > as I recall, you couldn't uninstall IE before Windows 7, particularly not by doing anything as simple as dragging it to the trash bin. Sorta, kinda. In XP, you could "uninstall" IE by going to the "Windows features" part of Add/Remove Programs. This would make IE no longer the default browser on the user's system, and make it slightly harder to access, but it was still there. Dragging the desktop icon to the recycle bin would trigger some warning I don't clearly recall, but would still leave IE as the default web browser on the user's system, available at the top of the Start menu.
- politician 15y ago
  The best way to remove IE on older machines was to re-purpose the icon to open Firefox or Chrome.
  - daemon13 15y ago
    The best way to remove IE is to install Linux :-)
ZeroGravitas 15y ago
From the rest of the page (references to PBR, fixies, moustaches etc.) it appears to be attacking hipsters and accusing you of being hipster if you still don't like IE, because it's not "cool". So they're implying IE has always been good, it just went out of fashion amongst a certain set of people, (that no-one on the internet seems to like).
drostie 15y ago
Well, maybe. There is a very clear admission that yes, IE5 did drive us crazy. At least, that's how I see it.
brudgers 15y ago
>"It's making fun of us geeks who hated older IE versions." It's also making fun of people who are still ranting about browser wars in the post-LoLcat era, e.g. all those people who used IE to download other browsers. At a deeper level it reminds me of the WP7 "Really?" campaign by the contrast it draws between obsessive behavior in regards to technology and life away from the screen. It even shares the motif of a woman in bed being ignored.

thaumaturgy 15y ago

We're doing that geeky thing now where we're delving too deep into minutiae, but: > as I recall, you couldn't uninstall IE before Windows 7, particularly not by doing anything as simple as dragging it to the trash bin. Sorta, kinda. In XP, you could "uninstall" IE by going to the "Windows features" part of Add/Remove Programs. This would make IE no longer the default browser on the user's system, and make it slightly harder to access, but it was still there. Dragging the desktop icon to the recycle bin would trigger some warning I don't clearly recall, but would still leave IE as the default web browser on the user's system, available at the top of the Start menu.

politician 15y ago
The best way to remove IE on older machines was to re-purpose the icon to open Firefox or Chrome.
- daemon13 15y ago
  The best way to remove IE is to install Linux :-)

ZeroGravitas 15y ago

From the rest of the page (references to PBR, fixies, moustaches etc.) it appears to be attacking hipsters and accusing you of being hipster if you still don't like IE, because it's not "cool". So they're implying IE has always been good, it just went out of fashion amongst a certain set of people, (that no-one on the internet seems to like).

drostie 15y ago

Well, maybe. There is a very clear admission that yes, IE5 did drive us crazy. At least, that's how I see it.

brudgers 15y ago

>"It's making fun of us geeks who hated older IE versions." It's also making fun of people who are still ranting about browser wars in the post-LoLcat era, e.g. all those people who used IE to download other browsers. At a deeper level it reminds me of the WP7 "Really?" campaign by the contrast it draws between obsessive behavior in regards to technology and life away from the screen. It even shares the motif of a woman in bed being ignored.