Microsoft obviously believes that the audience for Windows 7 have been preserved in a state of cryogenic suspension in Poughkeepsie or Peterborough or Potters Bar since 1977.

Back in the 1970s, the typical packaged goods commercial was affectionately referred to as TCK (two [pithy epithet]s in the kitchen). The scripts were interchangeable: Woman ‘A’ whinges on about some domestic disaster to Woman ‘B’. ‘B’ retorts with a sententious diatribe on the marriage preserving merits of [insert domestic cleaning product]. ‘A’ (who has apparently been living under a rock for the preceding three years, having missed the 500 weekly GRPs of network television advertising targeted directly at her) responds as if she’s been told her cancer is in remission.

Eventually, the sages at the sugared foods/powdered soap/dodgy dessert companies acknowledged that perhaps they were being a tad patronizing to the target and their ads shifted focus to the confused and emasculated spouses of a newly emboldened army of working moms.

And now in the enlightened age of the internet, marketers find they must actually acknowledge all their customers as sentient individuals rather than statistical stereotypes.

Unless that is, you’re Microsoft who appear to be pitching the Tupperware party for the 21st century, the Windows 7 launch party. But now, thanks to the free-wheeling ways of the internet, what used to be confined to a mercifully brief 30 or 60 seconds, can be drawn out for 6 excruciating minutes.