Microsoft's Land of Enchantment

Earlier today, the company launched a Web site telling the tale, "The Enchanted Office: Once Upon a User Interface." The comic tells of poor CEO Madeline, who weary from her dreadful day of work, snoozes at her desk. "As she drifts off to sleep, visions of bad software and dwindling revenue cloud her dreams," the story reads. I say: Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!

Madeline awakens as a fairytale princess and goes to visit the Wizard, who gives her a ribbon (In Office 2007, Microsoft finally exiled Wizards and replaced them with the new user interface element called the Ribbon).

I laughed loudly at Madeline, who looking down at this piece of cloth in her hand, remarks, "Wow, it looks so easy to use--and so professional!"

She later battles Inertia--"I don't like change!"-- by sending Clippy to his death (Am I the only person on the planet who liked Clippy?).

Later, in the forest, Madeline shares ribbons with the animals, which adorn them. A rabbit exclaims, "Does this make me look fat?"

When she comes to the "IT Dept." tree, the guy inside has turned into a frog. She exclaims--and clearly someone has been watching way too much "Battlestar Galactica"--"Great Lords of Cobol!" The frog later turns into a man (there are no princes in the IT department) after kissing the ribbon.

Naturally, there is a fairy tale ending, with the awoken CEO sending the IT guy to try Office 2007. Could this story be the real reason for the Halo movie debacle, that Microsoft had another story to sell Hollywood? Could Disney do better than this?

I'm not so contemptuous of the eight-page comic as my writing's tone seems. There is cleverness here and some good self-poking on the part of Microsoft. Sigh, but it's hard to dismiss Microsoft's recent advertising legacy: the odd Office 2003 "Great Moments at Work" commercials--the ones with people cheering for no apparent reason (I was OK with the funky dinosaur ads that came later).

The Enchanted Office is refreshing for Microsoft, but nowhere in the league the company needs to compete: Apple's amazing "Get a Mac" ads. Simple changes could have made a difference. What if the story had been drawn in Manga fashion with Chibi characters. Damn, a Chibi Clippy might even be cute.