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Comment by kyro | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a sign of Microsoft's desperation to stay relevant.

Most of the Surface reviews have spoken poorly about the device. Windows RT hasn't been well received. They've tried to revamp their entire image -- with new hardware, software, and extensive marketing -- with limited success. "Look at how cool our product is" hasn't worked for them, so they're resorting to "look at how terrible their product is." You can tell they've been trying incredibly hard to stay fresh, but nothing has really taken off for them. I've yet to see a Surface in the wild.

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"Most of the Surface reviews have spoken poorly about the device."

What reviews have you been reading?

Edit: Regarding the actual topic, this is just "normal" PR it's a way to scare people into swapping from gmail to outlook.com unfortunately it works better than many might think. Microsoft aren't the only ones doing PR like this it's a lot more common than you might think.

I think PR like this _can_ be good for two reasons: raise awareness of the issue that Google scans your e-mails and make people aware that there are other worthy alternatives to gmail.

I noticed that in one of the "cases" listed on the page by Microsoft one e-mail is about a credit card debt where someone might have overused their credit limit and might be in trouble. The ads that pop up from this is such ads giving advice on how to get new loans to cover the credit card debt which is really not a nice way of helping someone that is already in trouble.

I think that Microsoft could (and maybe should) have less aggressive PR about competitors and just focus on the good parts about outlook.com.

Anyways, I'm probably biased because I love Microsoft and whatever they do and I own all their awesome devices.

All of the original Surface reviews were negative. The Surface Pro reviews seem to be mostly positive.

"All of the original Surface reviews were negative"

No they're not? Then you haven't read ALL of them, mine weren't negative and most of the ones I read weren't negative either.

I don't think you want to remember the positive ones, but there are a lot of them.

I'm referring to the ones I saw on the HN front page, not some kind of logical for-all statement. And it's true, I didn't go digging around for other points of view, but I read three or four and they all seemed to say the same thing: an interesting idea with inadequate execution. They were negative in the "promising idea but don't buy this until they get these issues worked out" sense, not in the "what a stupid idea, burn them at the stake" sense. Now, if you want to interpret that as a positive review, be my guest. The reviews I've seen (one or two that made it to the front page) about the Surface Pro seem to be saying "hey, they got the issues worked out" or rather "the issues with Surface and RT don't exist with the Surface Pro" which turns a negative review into a positive one.

Well the good ones that made it to the front page were down voted off with in hours so maybe you should use other sources. I don't have any idea how the surface is but unfortunately hacker news might not be the best place for balanced information.

How much time do I have in a day, that I need to go hunting down unbiased information on an expensive toy I have no reason to buy? How many tablets or laptops do you think I need?

Way to completely change the point of the discussion.

Even if the reviews are positive, I've spoken to many people about the Surface (techies and not) and very few spoke well of Windows 8/Surface.

I have both iPad and Surface and I've had the iPad for years. I've asked my girlfriend if she wants an iPad and she told me that she didn't because she didn't really find a use case for it.

When I brought home the Surface she said: "Wow, this I can use . Get me one!".

I don't really know why but she likes it and everyone that I've show Surface to and that have tried it out do infact like it, a lot.

That's some pretty anecdotal evidence. Just as anecdotally, I have heard to the contrary.

How many had a Surface? I know lots of people who pan the Surface, but don't actually own one.

That's a good point. Almost none actually owned one. But public perception is often what decides if a product is successful.

I agree with you about microsoft.

But what I did not know is that google shopping was not on my side. I used that many times to find better prices, but it turns out the results are completely manipulated. You will find those who paid more in an ad auction, not really the best prices. In fact, they restrict price comparison for just a list of websites and are passing parameters about the click to that website, which obviously is an active actor in this process, read: it paid.

I feel betrayed by google, really.

You point about desperation to stay relevant may be correct, but I don't think this has anything to do with the surface reviews.

This campaign launched last year before the poor surface reviews came out. http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-attacks-google-with-sc...

> Most of the Surface reviews have spoken poorly about the device

Ohh so this is what happens when all the pro Microsoft news gets flagged off from the frontpage. That aside, the Surface reviews have been fairly mixed, from biased journalist on both sides to Jeff Atwood seems to either hate it or love it. I like to think of it as a niche product (that is still in beta) than a competition to Ipad or the Ultrabooks.

>so they're resorting to "look at how terrible their product is."

I'll presume you must have felt the same way about Apple's I'm a Mac/I'm a PC series of ads? Since all they really did was try to paint a picture of how terrible PCs were, and since Windows is the dominant PC OS, how terrible Windows was.

I felt that way about the ads. The idea that Macs were immune to virus infection was laughable.

Until very recently (2010, maybe?) there was virtually no Mac malware in the wild.

Spot the fallacy:

  X doesn't exist for Y, therefore Y is immune to X.

I think the only goal is to show more advertisements, especially shopping advertisements. It's nice having more than one big company for search/webmail/etc.

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