The second 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.

During its unabridged version, four and a half minutes long, Gates and Seinfeld are pictured while spending their time at the house of a typical American family, in an attempt to show the viewers that Microsoft is more than eager to communicate and connect with ordinary people.

Gates plays some video games with the teenage son of the couple in whose house he and Seinfeld are featured and the latter plays ping-pong with the mother, the two end up being thrown out for having stolen a toy giraffe from Mexico. The ad ends with the tagline "Perpetually Connecting,” which appears after Seinfeld and Gates are shown dragging their luggage down the street. But not before the Microsoft tycoon stops for a while to do the robot dance.

There are no real positive reactions to the Microsoft ad campaign after the first ad, released a few days ago. 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 first Crispin Porter + Bogusky emanation is right.

However, after this second spot some have started to "get" the campaign. People are starting to see where this is going, but I still think it's pretty awkward, and not in a good way. It seems desperate, or something of the sort. Putting Seinfeld and Gates together in a commercial is pretty dumb and just makes Gates look bad, more or less confirming all the criticism surrounding him.

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'll 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.