There's no other way to say this: Microsoft paid a fortune for a dumb ad featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The first of an alleged series of brand new ads, part of the largest consumer marketing campaign in the history of Microsoft, was produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which is said to have won a $300 million contract with the Redmond company.

There are no real positive reactions to the Microsoft ad campaign so far. When I heard about the ad, and saw that nobody really liked it, I thought well, maybe they didn't get it, and rushed to contemplate it myself. And indeed all that was said negative about the Crispin Porter + Bogusky emanation is right. The advertisement is the stupidest one lately by any large tech company.

There are also other parts of the attempted mega-revamping of the Windows brand and image. Microsoft is to hire between 100 and 200 "Windows Gurus", who are Microsoft employees that will be positioned at retail stores to help customers learn more about the Vista operating system.

If you ask me, there's only one way to revamp the Windows brand: recall Windows Vista, replace it with the last good operating system from Redmond (Windows XP Professional) and put all the money behind developing the next operating system, which should be released in only two versions: workstation and server.