Years ago, whilst at secondary school with far too much free time on my hands, I got my first printer. The printer was a huge clunky white piece of junk, which actually quite nicely complemented my big bulky cream, windows 95 PC. This monstrosity of a printer was bought by my parents with the idea that it would assist in my education. Of course this didn't end up been the case, unless my education into the art of using microsoft paint counts.
I would waste ridiculous amounts of time and ink creating posters which incoperated solid black backgrounds with "LeW's RooM" scralled across the page in red. Anyway, many months and ink cartridges later, I got a scanner! I was amazed by this crazy device that could magically teleport a real life image into the cybersphere. I started screwing about scanning allsorts in, magazines, limbs, pets.......the list continues. This is when I had the idea to scan in a game cover, edit it and create my own. In retrospect I realise this wasn't all that creative, but at the time it felt as though I was the first person to even concieve the idea. I grabbed my new copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 for the Playstation 2 and into the scanner it went. I then used my refined microsoft paint skills I had gathered over the year, to edit away the content of the cover and create my own.
"Metal Gear Solid Dance" a revolutionary spin-off in which Solid Snake shimmies away the possibility of nuclear holocaust. I spent days screwing with the cover art, trying to find the perfect snippets to use on the front cover. Anyway after many hours of wasted time I finished the covers and finally printed them out. I have to admit I was quite proud of myself when I put the covers into the case. This seems pretty run of the mill, easy peasy, boring now, but at the time I'd never seen or heard of anyone my age been able to do something like this, so I thought it was fairly revolutionary.

I'd actually totally forgotten about all of this until a few weeks back when I cleared out my room and found MGS dance under my bed, buried beneath a load of old pc games, covered in dust. So I thought I'd clean it off and put some pics up as digital proof of one of my very first geeky achievements!
More Pics on my [Flickr]

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Microsoft has just released the second installment of its ad campaign in which "normal people" have a set budget to get a new PC. The ad bashes Apple for been overpriced and underpowered, with Giampaulo heading into an electronics store and stating


"Macs to me are more about aesthetics than computing power. I don't wanna pay for the brand"


Giampaulo ends up choosing a HP - HDX16 for $1,099 and walks out a happy man.
I think Microsoft has created some very affective ad's, highlighting the premium price Apple is charging and presenting the question "Is it really worth spending more purely for the aesthetics and the cool factor?" In the current economic climate I'm sure many consumers will answer "no" to this question, and this is exactly what Microsoft is hoping to capitalise on.
I can admit that Apples products are priced at a premium, and you are paying extra for the fit and finish, but I'm happy to do that, as are many others. This is no different to people choosing a pair of Nike trainers over a pair of lesser brand trainers for a tenth of the price, even though they both do essentially the same thing.
I think that if these ads continue they will almost certainly begin to embed the idea that Macs are unnecessarily more expensive than their PC counterparts into the collective conscience of consumers, something which could really hurt Apples growth. It should be interesting to see the ad campaigns impact over the next few months and the big question is, how will apple respond?

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