Jerry Seinfeld plugs Windows Vista...for $10 mil

Television spots featuring Jerry Seinfeld kidding around with the Microsoft founder Bill Gates are ready to go live when the campaign starts next month, part of a $300m marketing blitz that will be the biggest in the company's history.

There's a simple aim: to stop Microsoft's troubled operating system Windows Vista from being a laughing stock. If the mooted slogan for the campaign is anything to go by – the rather clunky "Windows, not Walls" – Microsoft is going to be making heavy weather of it. And as news leaked yesterday, opinion was sharply divided about whether Seinfeld has the comic kudos to halt the advance of Apple, whose Macintosh, iPod and iPhone brands have become bywords for cool.

Microsoft will never be cool in the same way that Apple is cool," said Henry Blodget, the Silicon Valley blogger. "Companies with 90 per cent market share are almost never cool. Sorry, but nine out of 10 kids in the class can't be cool. The good news for Microsoft is that being cool has never been a part of its success formula. Microsoft's real problem, which has nothing to do with perception, is that its monopoly is eroding. Even Seinfeld won't be able to change that."