There’s a humorous Get A Mac ad out. In the ad, PC (John Hodgman) promises Mac (Justin Long) that, unlike the previous version of Windows, there will be no problems with Windows 7. Then the ad does a flashback and, lo, it turns out that PC has always made such a promise.

Here’s a link to the ad if you have the time.

They say there is truth in humor, often a brutal honest truth. There is truth when Microsoft claims that a new version of such-and-such won’t have the same problems as its predecessor.

Well, that’s a given. I don’t know any manufacturer that claims their new product is simply a mediocre rip-off of its predecessor. Merely by having a Marketing Department, you know that a company will consistently claim that “newer” is equal to “better.” Yet Microsoft does have a curious track record.

For example, back when Windows Vista came out, the claim was initially made the Vista was outselling XP by a two-to-one margin. Here’s a quote from the Microsoft press release in 2007:

In the first month of Windows Vista’s general availability, sales exceeded 20 million licenses, more than doubling the initial pace of sales for its predecessor, Windows XP.

Now, flash forward to today, where Microsoft is, once again, crowing about how utterly awesome the sales are for Windows 7. Here’s a snippet from an article in the Wall Street Journal:

. . . unit sales of boxed copies of Windows 7 in U.S. stores were 234% higher than the sales for Windows Vista in the same amount of time on the market.

Oo! Déjà vu!

Yeah, I fell for this stuff as well, reading about the “strong” sales of Windows 7 and believing, for a nanosecond, that perhaps Microsoft has finally hit the ground running with a new version of Windows. I might be wrong.

One thing for certain: I haven’t yet seen the massive backlash and nastiness toward Windows 7 that I saw about Windows Vista. Perhaps the bloggers, pundits, and wags were just so vicious against Vista that they’re toning it down this time. Who knows?

I do have Windows 7 installed on two PCs and one laptop now. I’ve not had any problems with it. Then again, I didn’t have any problems with Vista, either. (Well, eventually I came to loath how long it takes Vista to start up.) Time will tell whether anyone turns on Windows 7, as well as whether Microsoft’s claims of outrageous sales prove true or not.

Trust me.