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Microsoft is the anti-Apple. For years, Apple’s TV and online commercials have skewered Microsoft’s clumsy Windows, and PCs in general.

Now, Microsoft is firing back by perpetuating about the only myth left unbusted by the Mac’s recent market share growth. Macs are more expensive than PCs. For the same dollar you get a lot more PC. These new TV commercials are very good.

I’ve had a week long email debate with my Mac360 co-conspirator, the anti-diminutive Barbara Marie Brannan over how good these new Microsoft TV commercials really are.

I take the pro side, and she takes the con side. Apparently, Bambi thinks that Windows PC customers can see through Microsoft’s shell game of distortion, fact fudging, and general ineptness when comparing PCs to Macs.

For what it’s worth, it doesn’t matter to most TV commercial watchers because they don’t pay that much attention. All Microsoft’s commercials are doing is perpetuating the fact that Macs, in general, cost more than Windows PCs. In general.

{embed=“360admanager/content-rectangle-content-A-300x250”}For example, the first Microsoft TV commercial features Laurene who is shopping for a notebook under $1,000. At “the Mac Store” all she can find it a little plastic Mac with a little screen.

Forget the fact that Microsoft bungled the ad and that Laurene never actually went into the Apple Store to compare. It’s a commercial.

In the second TV commercial, Giampaolo confesses that he’s tech savvy and wants power, battery life, and portability in his next under-$1,500 notebook. He checks out a Mac and calls it “soooo sexy.”

Then Giampaolo ends up buying a honking luggable from HP which has less power, less battery life, and less portability than a lowly MacBook for under $1,500; not to mention the crummy screen.

Giampaolo is not so savvy after all. He didn’t buy what he set out to buy.

It doesn’t matter. All that the average Windows PC user who watches the commercial will remember is that “Macs are soooo sexy” and can’t be customized and cost more than Windows PCs.

The Mac can only be pegged as more expensive than an average Windows PC. PCs cannot claim to be faster, more durable, longer lasting, have higher resale value, easier to use, or more secure. All that Microsoft can find to challenge Apple is price.

Of course, even the pricing comparison is distorted, but that’s how Microsoft works. It’s high drama. It’s fun to watch. It’s wrong, but Microsoft’s customers don’t care.