Vole needs history lesson
MICROSOFT'S BID to win people over with its latest Vista campaign is not likely to win over any history buffs.
The advert shows a 19th century sailing ship with the motto "once people thought the world was flat".
Perhaps the implication is that once people thought Vista sales were flat. Another interpretation is that once human thinking was so constrained people thought Vista was pants.
However there are few things wrong with the campaign. The most obvious is that people knew that the world was spherical during Plato's time and Eratosthenes correctly estimated the Earth's diameter, around 220 BC.
When Christopher Columbus sailed to America the reason that people didn't think he would make it was not because they thought the world was flat, they thought he would not have enough food or water to last the trip.
Certainly by the 19th century, which is when the picture in Vole's advertisement appeared, people not only new the world was round, ships like the good ship Vista were going around the world all the time.
With that bit of information, it is clear that Microsoft is saying that everyone is misinformed and ignorant about Vista, including us.
You can see the advert here. µ
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Given that sailing around the world was a considerable hardship with new hazards at every turn and likely to lead to the blue sea of death, Microsoft's metaphore seems all too appropriate.
It's an indication that once you use VISTA on your laptop you'll get a flat battery in minutes lol.

Or?

You flatten your laptop with your car because of VISTA!

I have shed loads of these you know!
"Get the facts about Windows Vista -->"

If I remember correctly:
It are the facts that make them not sell it and it are their lies that make us believe that they sold it.
This speaks more to the general ignorance of the advertising Exec that approved this Ad. 

But in general MS Marketing department are History Challenged, often claiming they invented things like 'Distributed Computing', and such.
Blue sea of death! ROFL! omg I've fallen off my chair. Genius.
I think what Microsoft are trying to get across here is quite sensible. When the winds blowing with you vista might run for whole days but when it turns you end up with a storm that could sink it very easily. 

I feel considering how difficult it was to navigate and sail in those times and the amount of work required by so many people to achieve it. Maybe they are saying you need a full crew to keep your computer running?

Jokes aside by now the people who need to know the facts about vista have tested for themselves and it came up short.
The metaphor is all wrong as the latest research soon to be released will show. The wind doesn't push sailing ships, it creates a low pressure area just ahead of the sail; therefore the ship is sucked along.

And apparently M$ thinks Vista is the powering wind.....which as we now know, sucks

And contrary to popular belief there is no gravity at M$ headquarters. It place just sucks too.
As a Mac and Linux user I have to admit the last gaming rig I put together has Vista on it for DX 10. I used XP for years and do find Vista annoying with it's zealot permission to run application requests. I have found it to be stable and runs old games fine as long as you tell it to run in XP compatible mode. I was getting allot of blue screens of death due to memory dumps (I have 4Gb on 32 Vista) but fixed it with a ram drive.
How to work around the 4 gigabyte barrier for 32 versions of windows.

I found this out on a hunch after building a new gaming rig and it seems to be working fine. I see no reason why this would not work on other versions of their operating system (OS).
The OS used is Vista Home Premium 32 bit (Referred to from now on just as Vista)

Most informed users know Vista only recognizes 4 gigabytes of ram including the video ram.
Example 4Gb of system memory and a 512Mb video card puts your total system memory at 4.5Gb. Since windows will only recognize 4Gb of this I believe it gets confused. My system was reporting a total of 3.5Gb before I did my work around. I was getting an occasional blue screen of death due to memory corruption during gaming sometimes but now I don't.

I used rramdisk.sys from here. Thank you to the nice work on this below:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/
The only thing I found out is it does not want to uninstall but thats OK I don't want to remove it. I could take it out manually though.

Here is what I did.
I put a permanent RAM drive on it of 512Mb. 
This takes away the .5Gb of my total of 4.5Gb leaving my rig with exactly 4Gb.
Windows now reports a total of 4Gb and I have had no blue screens of death.
I use my RAM drive as a Reedy Boost drive and Windows has no problem with it.

Vista os okay, and it certainly runs well on the right hardware, but if you old "vehicle" still gets you around fine and you generally have no complaints, then why switch?
The beghosted derelict M$0$ Volista is humpbacked flipping whale tale. Ishmaels funny to me. "Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any, No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any – good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all." Listen, Fedellah, I'm taking me Flask and going to Starbucks, and I don't want to hear a Pip about it. thanks regulas. There. She blows!
There are still people who think the world is flat, last time I checked:

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

I doubt MS is gonna win anyone over by making ads about how ignorant they think we are.

I paid for XP and it still does it's job quite well. I need a more convincing reason to buy Vista than the Vole's desperation to sell it to me.
Each Voyage Brings in New data. Relatives from Liverpoole, named Poole(what Else?) Did Sailing races to Do Fastest Circumnavigation of Globe in 17th Century. establishing Ports worldwide in Process. Theres Pooles Boatyard & Pooles Corner in Prince Edward Island, yet NO More Pooles there. So times change.

Ultimate has Year to Clear hurdles of Old xp engineering & Stand up Properly. 

We Love Hubble Space Telescope Wonders, Microsoft has FREE Space Telescope You Can Download, Intrest in Newness is Great. Next: James Webb Space Telescope will bring US 50% further Back in Time. expected in 2013. Its Mirror is twice size of Hubble. It won't Be Glitch free, yet it will Come into focus from Hubbles Data pile.

Regularus has looked about & finding Vista better, Now. XP will Never change Nor Grow. Vista Ultimat is Still Future of computing, Unless you use 5 mb/s cable, where Home Server Might be better if You Outfit it. Server 2008 is Fine addition, yet bit narrow in home entertainment, yet learner for Computing Information /Specialist to learn upon.
Ultiee' NOT something You Can Just YELL Into Existance, Its Complex 
Task, Headed by Worlds Gratest Information Specialist: Ultiee'_Tom.
drashek
If any of the above love and believe the lies of the "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" commercials, they should kindly remove themselves from criticising any microsoft commercial.

"There are still people who think the world is flat, last time I checked..."

You're very clever, young man, but it's no use you know: it's Windows all the way down.