The Microsoft PR machine

It’s interesting how PR companies can spin around people’s words. Last week, I came across a number of articles in the press about how the Isle
of Man government
is taking the Microsoft route.
What I found particularly interesting was the way each of the articles was positioned
in different publications and how the language of each article was toned to the different
audiences that read each website.

For example: Computer
Weekly
is quite conservative and says:
The Isle of Man government is to standardise on Microsoft technology to make the
most of its skills and limited IT budget.

ZDNet takes
a more aggressive stance saying:
The Isle of Man is ditching Unix and shunning Linux as it moves its infrastructure
from a heterogenous environment to Windows

and The Register is
a bit more subversive, choosing to quote the press release for the most part but dropping
comments like:

Paterson is “blessed” with not having to consider open source as an option

It was interesting that after noting all those, I came across a quote by Bill
Gates
, which read:

If I were down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on PR

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