Someone had to do it, and it may as well have been me :etc:

That may be the case, but MS aren't exactly short of cash are they! I'm sure they could afford a couple more stock photo's. Instead they are marketing to the Polish using a man who's head and hands are different - his hands are indeed black. They're marketing at a modern "European" Poland with one of the healthiest economies of any post-communist country (thank you wikipedia), well aware of other nationalities and ethnic groups.

What I don't understand is why they didn't also change the head of the Hawaiian-looking guy on the left as well.

Their lack of attention to detail speaks volumes about their products.

Rubs chin,

Err, is that laptop with the logo airbrushed out a Mac I can't quite tell…

How so? I'm sure the people that design and QC the products aren't the same people that put together this ad. I think MS is a big enough company to have different departments for these things.

CC: Yeah, pretty sure that's a Mac lappy, which adds proof to the stock photo theory. Also (if you look at the full image) you'll see the monitor on the desk isn't plugged into anything.

I can happily say Marketing folk are very different to the development side

That's what I thought as soon as I saw it in today's newspaper, but I thought even Microsoft weren't that dense. It now turns out they are utter nitwits

Peter.

They would use outside companies for this sort of thing and they wouldn't give you the budget to take your own photo. Our biggest client had sales of $15.4 billion last year and they don't even have the budget to shoot pictures of their own products, let alone set up photo shoots. Virtually all of their marketing material is populated with shots from istockphoto.com.

In fact, as we speak, I'm photoshopping a chap downloaded from istock onto one of their products that I shot myself in our own studio.

I think it's an MSI Wind....

it is, saw this on guru3d a few days ago, someone spotted it over there aswell

This is what happens when you get agencies to come up with adverts and not have decent QC on the buisness side.
I have seen a product with white livery and the initails KKK on it and nobody twigged the potential problem. All the marketing guys were going "wow" what a great design.

If you haven't seen it before, you might enjoy this: http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com

This one is my favourite so far:


Eek, the fiiiiiingerssss! How many levels of wrong is that?

Photoshop is clever.

I like this example before and after (from the same site)

Calm down guys....

.... It's fixed

WAAASSSUUUUUUUUUUUUP

I see what you mean about the monitor, no leads needed there.

Great photo.