I am a PC

Our recent marketing campaign with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld was a hoot! It was meant for a short run, and unfortunately, it is now over.

But we have a new campaign and I appreciate that Microsoft have taken the high road with it. After watching all of the silly Mac vs PC commercials from Apple for the past three years, what better way to respond than with real users, with real stories of how they are PCs, and how their PCs help them in various aspects of their lives.

Being a proud member of Microsoft Support Services, I am even happier about the new campaign because I support our friends and users for a living. No on calls me and says "Scott, SharePoint and Outlook are working great together; our SQL has months of uptime and our Active Directory and Exchange environments are functioning superbly". I get the calls when folks have problems, sometimes huge problems, and I am glad to work for a company like Microsoft that truly values our customers. And my first order of business every day is to be helpful to others, so my job fits me perfectly. My dad always said "if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life".

So as always, I want to thank all of you who use our products and support. You are my fellow PCs, and here is my evolution as a PC:

In high school, I was a BASIC on cassette tape PC.
In college, I was a FORTRAN on punch card PC, until a quarters game went horribly wrong.
I was an 8086 with an 8087 co-processor PC.
I was an 80286 PC when I got my first hard drive.
I was and 80386 and 486/100 PC so I could play Doom.
I built/was a dual proc 400 mhz PC running Windows NT 4 from the ground up - I did this so that I could have an affordable, maintainable server supporting a graphics group of Mac artists that could RIP huge image files in a hurry.
I was a Toshiba Tablet PC.
Currently, I am a Dell Inspiron laptop PC running Vista, great up-time and perf thanks so much!
I am also a Dell PowerEdge server running Windows 2003.
I am also an HP Server running Windows 2008 and lots of virtual, Hyper-V based baby PCs running everything from my own AD forest with multiple Exchange, SQL and SharePoint versions and clients for those servers in perfect harmony.
And to stay connected, I am a Windows Mobile 5 Motorola Q as well, upgrading this weekend to WM 6.1 on a new device (still undecided, but I have choices)!
And I am also upgrading from my PowerEdge to a 64 bit Vista Dell 740 with 512 MB dual DVI video card supporting two 22 inch Acer Monitors. One card, two monitors, 16.7 million colors and no waiting. Drool.
I am an Xbox
I am an Xbox 360 Elite.
I am a Zune.

I am not hidden in a pizza box to trick college kids
I am not a king with loyal subjects
I do not need calming teas, though some may argue less caffeine may be a fair option
I don't need a genius to transfer my files; I can do that myself. Perhaps I should take the MENSA test?
I don't have Vista blues, nor a tick hound that howls when I play my bass.
I am not secure because of obscurity, by rather because the ubiquitous enterprise usages of my kindred spirit PCs demand it.

I am not a PC because I have to be. I am not a PC to be different. If a better solution comes along, I will be that platform.

But for now, like the billion around me, I am and will remain a PC.

Quote for the Blog: Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

Bill Gates