Microsoft makes Internet Explorer 8 unboxing parody

Here’s a fun video Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team has produced and recently uploaded to Facebook as a promotional video for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. The video is a parody of the popular gadget unboxing videos featuring a fictional techno-critic and professional unboxer by the name of “Roland Wacker” who has a rather sophisticated taste. He however does get a little emotional with his nemesis Eugene.

[flv:ie8-unboxing.flv 600 340]

In the spirit of fun, there is also another video parody of a classical documentary on the subject of “slicing” which serves as a analogy for WebSlices. Even features “awesomeness of samurai words”.

[flv:ie8-webslice.flv 600 450]

Finally, they’ve also published a series of showcase videos which demonstrates how Internet Explorer 8 can be used in various scenarios. In comparison to most “product demos”, they’re quite upbeat with a pretty out-there rock soundtrack. This one is titled “Keeping up with the Election 2008”.

[flv:ie8-election.flv 600 340]

The Internet Explorer 8 is definitely on a roll with this second beta.

19 insightful thoughts

  1. Hahaha, cool stuff! Interestig how they were trying to give same amount time for Obama and McCain so you cannot see if they were republicans or democrats behind this video 🙂

  2. Just bad that on my Vista machine with the UI scaled to 120dpi, IE8 feels and looks horrible. It is sometimes unusable slow.

  3. I’ve bugged the 120 DPI issue tino, it is a step back from IE7 no question, if you’re on Connect do a search for it and vote for it.

    Other than that looks good, I’ll be removing it from my Tablet PC, where I use 120 DPI, but its installed everywhere else now.

  4. Roland’s unboxing was fun and funny. Microsoft should air on telly the “slicing” clip, it is very good and I think it shows MS’ “cool side.” I hate product demos with all music soundtrack.

    And the Smart Address Bar is “awesome”.

  5. Except for the cheesy music on the last video those are extremely well done. No smiling stock photo people and swishing letters to be seen anywhere.

  6. @Sterling – I totally agree. Microsoft needs to air products on the television more often, and not just Windows or Office. If they weren’t doing CP+B soon, I would post to Microsoft to advertise their features constantly, in the vein of the Slicing segment.

    Imagine it now, mini-documentaries on:
    Panoramas (Windows Live Photo Gallery)
    Movies (Windows Live? Movie Maker)
    DVD Burning
    Journalism and Blogging (Windows Live Writer)
    Space (WorldWide Telescope)
    Wonders of the World (Photosynth)
    Sharing (Mesh)
    …and much, much more! (sarcasm on emphasis)

  7. @Yert – Yeah. I don’t know how Microsoft can make cool clips like the the “unboxing” and “slicing” and the go hire Sienfeld to hawk Vista under “Windows not walls”, which I still don’t understand what that means. And frankly, I don’t think Jerry Seinfeld is going to make me want to buy Vista (though I do want to upgrade to that OS).

    The “slicing” mocku actually made me re-enable the RSS/Web Slice icon in IE8 Beta 2 — and I’m not big on RSS! That’s how good it is 🙂

  8. go on, go, download it for yourself, quick, go like bunnies, go

    That guy was is a bit too weird for me. What a character.

    Eugene fan here.

    sean

  9. I have a problem… I’ve installed IE 8 Beta 1 and when I downloded Beta 2 it asked me to uninstall beta 1…BUT how?….There is no uninstall file….not in Add or Remove programs…HElp///how to uninstall?

  10. I thank your Internet Explorer 8 sucks I’m having all kinds of trouble with the information bar . Tried to shut it down, but it kept coming back on

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