I don't think that's unusual - the ads really made a bit of a celebrity out of John Hodgman. In addition to his charm people may have identified somewhat with the put-upon PC character for several reasons, not least of which would be that over nine out of ten people who watched the ads had and would continue to have most of their computer experience with Windows-based computers.
It's interesting to see the Brit versions of these ads - never seen them before. Some of them are really good and wish they did versions like those here in the US, but I think the Mac vs PC trope has been decommissioned by Apple. Haven't seen one of those in a while.
I imagine Apple wrapped up the versus campaign once they introduced dual-boot Intels. And yeah, just occurred to me that anyone outside UK probably hadn't seen Mitchell-Webb ads . I wonder if they did similar versus ads with region-specific celebs/comedians in other territories?
I remember searching through the windows 95 disc and finding this, it was like a little free present. [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kemivUKb4f4[/yt]
Yes, I'm sure your dad mostly wanted it for himself -- it was marketed pretty much as a business computer and, at least new, was expensive. I still remember going into Radio Shack to ask some question, and the sales guy insisting that I must have a Tandy 1000. Seriously, he argued with me that of course I didn't have a 2000. <still shaking my head in amazement>
I loved Netscape and was kind of sad when they stopped making new releases. It had the little email icon in the corner, and when you got new mail it would make a "bonk" sound and show an exclamation mark next to the icon! I would get so excited because this Internet thing was so new to me! And I really enjoyed experimenting with HTML back then with one of my buddies (a fellow Trekkie)! Before that computer, we had one of those computers with the floppy discs and a dot matrix printer. I remember playing King's Quest IV. "Please insert disk 3." LOL! And before that one, my dad had this computer that only did one thing - it showed a Christmas Tree in letters or numbers or something. I was never sure why we had that computer? Anyway, that first video reminded me of this video: [yt]http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI[/yt]
I first touched the internet in 1996 in the school library when I was 16. The first website I went to was Michael Jackson's official website. <3 Ah memories! The first time I went into a chatroom(don't remember which), I used the screenname DaBorg16. *gigglefit*
I'm a little surprised no one has brought up Compuserve and those blazing fast 300-baud acoustic coupled modems.