From the linked site:
"We’ve been wondering how long it would take Microsoft to kick things up a notch with its responses to Apple’s I’m a Mac smear series. Times are tough these days and it looks like Microsoft is finally starting to target cost with its latest TV ad. Titled Windows Laptop Hunters, the spot features a young woman named Lauren tasked with finding a laptop that meets her requirements — “speed, a comfortable keyboard and a 17-inch screen” — for under $1,000. If she finds one, be it a Mac or a PC, Microsoft will buy it for her. You know as well as we do that the only way anyone is scoring a new Mac laptop with a 17-inch for under $1,000 is armed robbery, so you can imagine how the commercial plays out. Forgetting the fact that the Best Buy she was shopping in apparently doesn’t charge a sales tax, Lauren ends up with an HP Pavilion for $699.99; a price even the most modest MacBook can’t come close to touching. The model she walked with features a 2.1GHz AMD Turion X2 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 320GB hard drive, DVD-RW drive and of course a 1440×900 17-inch display — definitely a solid system.

No, we haven’t quite stooped to the level of a local politician’s attack campaign quite yet, but it’s good to see Microsoft finally showing a little spunk with its response ads. Considering the times, we imagine there are plenty more value-centric ads from Redmond on the way; at least, we hope there are. Hit the jump to watch the full commercial."

Well the good thing is that the balanced and appropriate reporting out at Gizmodo says this commercial is all wrong because some guy wrote in to Giz saying he'd give her his mac book for free. So see? All you have to do to get a sub $1000 Mac is have one given to you.. or steal it I guess. GOD M$ LIES SO MUCH! GAW!!

Sorry for the rant, apparently asking why there's so much Mac stuff on Giz all the time gets your post privileges taken away.

Hahaha, proof that Gizmodo is full of tech-bigots.

... or not? http://gizmodo.com/5065133/the-truth-about-the-apple-tax Interesting.

Seriously, I learned to compute on C64s, GUIs on a B&W Mac, trackballs on an ICON, how to suffer in DOS4.2, how to overcome suffering in DOS6.0, how to be tempted with throwing things out of windows with a defective 1st gen blueberry iMac, the glories of Linux with our webserver, the agony of said webserver being wiped out without a backup because my techie didn't have one for some reason, and the happiness of an employee-generated copy of Vista.

I've experienced the glory joy and pain of many different forms of tech. Bring it on moreso.

Why did she want a 17" display if she can only run it at 1440x900? That's the standard resolution for 15" displays. DDR3 RAM is also a better choice for laptops, due it's reduced power consumption (1.5V vs 1.8V for DDR2), resulting in longer battery use.

Obviously, I'm a Mac fan, but I have to admit, I've always thought Apple's unwillingness to offer a larger lineup of computers, or more configurability, was a marketing failure. It's hard to argue with their success, but they would probably benefit from offering a 15" MacBook on the low end. The only 15" model is the MacBook Pro. That's pretty silly considering how many users will want the extra screen space, but not really need the extra cpu power. A wider range of drive capacities, especially on the higher end models, would be good as well.

[edit] Interesting article at Gizmodo, Krupo. Some of the comments there are even more interesting. A number of people pointed out that certain features were completely ignored, like the new unibody construction, bigger glass touchpad, Leopard vs. Vista <snicker>, better configurations for Dells, etc.

Yeah. What I've personally found infuriating is the cost of adapters to plug in external monitors to the Macs.

I mean, I "get it" from a design point of view that they want mini-sized connectors to fit the form factor... but I still find it crazy you don't have something as basic as a VGA plug available (though I guess VGA connections aren't a Mac thing in the first place).

Moving this video to Krupo's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

I got this $330 laptop as my secondary computer. It's a good deal for most people's purposes.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9168143&type=product&id=1218041995463

*dead

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by Mordhaus.