PC World ad... WTF?

[SleepyCaz]

Has anyone else seen the new PC World ad?

Male voiceover

"I'm going back to uni and need a powerful laptop to handle my work, blah blah... This mega big and powerful Acer-Whatever is perfect for all my studies and research... blah blah..."

Then ...

"...and when my girlfriend wants to go online, here's this pink mini netbook for half price!"

It might not sound that bad, but the whole tone of the voiceover is very sexist.

ha ha, there's already a (very short) thread on this. I haven't seen the ad yet but it sounds appalling!

"...and here's a pile of computer games to fill my evenings after my girlfriend dumps me for being a sexist patronising twat..."

they're just as sexist in the shops, tying to buy a new hard drive and bloke just talked over me to dp who has no interested in computers

And what about that ad (?for Intel) where we have two geeks huddling around some hardware. We see the two same blokes over the years, getting older but still getting excited about computers. Meanwhile, in each scenario there is RL going on in the background - as depicted by some woman wandering past, pointedly not part of the computer worship.
Are they telling us that computers were, are and ever will be only for men?

So is it a good or a bad thing that it was women who unleashed the power of computers by creating the early computer programming languages that enable the devices to actually do anything?

I just saw it. How utterly bizarre and annoying.

How on earth old is the girlfriend meant to be? Do they show the police dragging him into a car outside the store for attempting to seduce a girl only old enough to want a pink mini netbook?

I saw this too and couldn't understand it. Who on earth was this supposed girlfriend? A teeny, tiny girlfriend who just went online shopping? And it sounded like the amazing, super intelligent guy who was back off to uni to save the world was actually buying this teeny, tiny useless computer for his girlfriend, as she obviously was completely incapable of either using a big, manly pc or even paying for it herself! Drove me mad!

vesuvia - I thought the same thing, what would Ada Lovelace or Grace Hopper say if they were around to see this crap :(

To be fair, when I rewatched it, it was "when my girlfriend comes to visit" rather than just "for my girlfriend" so presumably she has her own decent computer at home and the netbook is just an extra so she can use the Internet when staying with him. Not sure why it has to be pink, though. Or why she can't bring her own laptop with her, given that they are, y'know, portable .

But the ad had already lost me when he ran through all the processing power that he claimed he'd be using for work but was clearly designed for gaming...