Picture says it all I reckon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Meter shows that your PC performance may need improvement!"

 ...may need improvement my arse!!!!1 I think their OS and browser detection algorithms may need improvement though :)

 

Link to site --> http://www.inklineglobal.com/adsales/pcworld/pcb_offer_728_2min.html?mcp=GB
 

Heh, it detects that I'm on a Mac and using Safari fine... though it says "Safari 4" when I'm using the latest, version 2.0.3... The slow meter is obviously there to sell you stuff to speed up your computer, though.

Looking at the source, the "performance meters" are simply one big animated GIF..

 http://www.inklineglobal.com/adsales/graphics/tuneup2.gif

 So although it gives you the impression it actually tests your machine, it does no such thing.  Here in the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority would probably have something to say about that.

Interestingly, tuneup3.gif is pushing "Security Booster and McAfee Virus Scan" using the same technique

 http://www.inklineglobal.com/adsales/graphics/tuneup3.gif
 

while tuneup4 doesn't apear to be bothered to offer a solution to the same problem

http://www.inklineglobal.com/adsales/graphics/tuneup4.gif 

Yes, its Sunday afternoon and I've got too much time on my hands...  

firefox is netscapish.  it probably goes like this.  IE is IE.  all other is netscape.

Yeah, it's not really surprising that it confuses Netscaper and Mozilla. Nor is it that surprising that it doesn't recognise Windows XP Professional x64 edition.

And the 'meters' do say "average PC performance", and in rather large letters too, so there's no case of false advertising.
 

hehe..... it detected my OS as Linux (correctly) but still insists that "Windows crashes" is a cause of LOW performance. Confusingly, it also says "Average performance" on the top.

Now that's one I've had as well, telling me I run Linux then telling me problems with my Windows Registry could cause slowdown.

I love clicking links on these things and trying to find versions for my OS (Ubuntu on home PC).

It's almost as much fun as clicking on those HTTP error pages IIS servers spit out by default and sending information to Microsoft support, or requesting support for IE 5 running on wine.

Some Idiot:

I love clicking links on these things and trying to find versions for my OS (Ubuntu on home PC).

It's almost as much fun as clicking on those HTTP error pages IIS servers spit out by default and sending information to Microsoft support, or requesting support for IE 5 running on wine.

I once tried one of those "free PC performance checks" with wine under Linux, and surprisingly it even managed to open one window before crashing.
 

m0ffx:

And the 'meters' do say "average PC performance", and in rather large letters too, so there's no case of false advertising. 

Ah, clearly an American, the only country where people are so used to being lied to day and night that they don't even understand why it's wrong any more.

In civilised countries like Britain, an advert doesn't have to be literally false to be illegal.  It merely has to be misleading.  While you are correct that on careful inspection it's clear that this advert is not actually making specific claims about your specific computer, it is equally clearly intended to give people that impression, and most people looking at it assume that it is talking about their specific computer.  Therefore, it is misleading.  Therefore, if the company doing it was based in the UK, it would be in deep trouble.
 

System Detected : Windows XP
Browser Detected : Opera Version 9

Seems pretty accurate to me.

if (checkIt('konqueror'))

{

	browser = "Konqueror";

	OS = "Linux";

}

 

Guess they've never heard of BSD.

iwpg:

Guess they've never heard of BSD.

I thought I'd seen that behaviour before, so I did a quick search, and found http://web.archive.org/web/20040409111318/http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html.  They have a newer version at http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html, but that one's even worse in terms of not recognising other *nixes - i.e. it doesn't.

m0ffx:

Yeah, it's not really surprising that it confuses Netscaper and Mozilla. Nor is it that surprising that it doesn't recognise Windows XP Professional x64 edition.

And the 'meters' do say "average PC performance", and in rather large letters too, so there's no case of false advertising.

hmmm And "Netscape Navigator version 5" ?? WTF ?

OK, I do have WinXP x64 and does know that it is not wel recognized : the french governement website for tax manging (declare, pay, etc...) say my system is not the minimal recomended system since I have Win64.

BUT who have Netscape 5 ? tell me... Remember : a classic versionning WTF is the number-skipping scheme. NS 4.75->NS6. DirectX 3->DirectX5. Winamp 3.x->Winamp 5 (the excuse for Winamp is that Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5)

More, an AMD X2 processor is not an "average performance" PC and "average" is standing here fore "I say that but I say nothing" since the gauge is showing pointing to the red.

So excepting Win x64 common mistake, this is a WTF ad.

As for Win64, History seems to repeat indefinitely : few year ago, when Win2k cames out, most of video games that was running on Win9x stopped with a "Cannot run on Windows NT" of the death. The WTF was those games were checking system name/version instead of checking DirectX version, which was there real concern. WTF games where relying on the fact that Windows NT doesn't came with directX, which was true until Win2k cames out as Windows NT 5 with a true DirectX...
 

<sarcasm>/me buys software.....</sarcasm>

 

Iago:

m0ffx:

And the 'meters' do say "average PC performance", and in rather large letters too, so there's no case of false advertising. 

Ah, clearly an American, the only country where people are so used to being lied to day and night that they don't even understand why it's wrong any more.

In civilised countries like Britain, an advert doesn't have to be literally false to be illegal.  It merely has to be misleading.  While you are correct that on careful inspection it's clear that this advert is not actually making specific claims about your specific computer, it is equally clearly intended to give people that impression, and most people looking at it assume that it is talking about their specific computer.  Therefore, it is misleading.  Therefore, if the company doing it was based in the UK, it would be in deep trouble.
 

 

Well there's something to be said for living in a world where *everyone* is lying to you.  At least then you know where they stand.

Lying's only a problem when you don't recognize it.
 

merreborn:

Well there's something to be said for living in a world where *everyone* is lying to you.  At least then you know where they stand.

Lying's only a problem when you don't recognize it.

Or have a use for the concept of "trust".

Iago:

m0ffx:

And the 'meters' do say "average PC performance", and in rather large letters too, so there's no case of false advertising. 

Ah, clearly an American, the only country where people are so used to being lied to day and night that they don't even understand why it's wrong any more.

In civilised countries like Britain, an advert doesn't have to be literally false to be illegal.  It merely has to be misleading.  While you are correct that on careful inspection it's clear that this advert is not actually making specific claims about your specific computer, it is equally clearly intended to give people that impression, and most people looking at it assume that it is talking about their specific computer.  Therefore, it is misleading.  Therefore, if the company doing it was based in the UK, it would be in deep trouble.
 

 

or maybe in america we believe that it's stupid to pass laws that can be applied with bias and prejudice and are open to extremely subjective interpretations.  

I think they have their bandwidth purposly throttled to make the page load slow.

 

Afterall, if a webpage is slow, it's clearly because my computer sucks, and not because of anything in between me and the source! 

 

Even more telling. "top of the range Pentium 4 3 GHz with 512 MB RAM". Right. That's what *I've* got. And this machine is 3 years old! And only cost $800 new! And I bought it from an actual STORE, not out of my 'friend's' trunk!

 

Lets not even mention that the page source has code for detecting my local currency symbol. Now, what was the exchange rate from british pounds to american dollars again? I'm not sure, but 44 pounds sounds like a lot.

tster:

or maybe in america we believe that it's stupid to pass laws that can be applied with bias and prejudice and are open to extremely subjective interpretations.  

What, like the patriot act?

ROTFLMAO

Iago:

m0ffx:

And the 'meters' do say "average PC performance", and in rather large letters too, so there's no case of false advertising. 

Ah, clearly an American, the only country where people are so used to being lied to day and night that they don't even understand why it's wrong any more.

In civilised countries like Britain, an advert doesn't have to be literally false to be illegal.  It merely has to be misleading.  While you are correct that on careful inspection it's clear that this advert is not actually making specific claims about your specific computer, it is equally clearly intended to give people that impression, and most people looking at it assume that it is talking about their specific computer.  Therefore, it is misleading.  Therefore, if the company doing it was based in the UK, it would be in deep trouble.
 

Oh, we know why it's wrong.  Problem: it would be too difficult to prove the company was being misleading, at least in an American court.  You would have to demonstrate that many people would be misled, AND that the company knew it was misleading people (eg, the company might argue they didn't realize the advert was of "poor design", and promise to change it to make it more clear)

Iago:

In civilised countries like Britain

Ah, such a refined and civilized insult. Why even post garbage like that?

 sincerely,
 Richard Nixon

 

Jojosh_the_Pi:

Oh, we know why it's wrong.  Problem: it would be too difficult to prove the company was being misleading, at least in an American court.  You would have to demonstrate that many people would be misled, AND that the company knew it was misleading people (eg, the company might argue they didn't realize the advert was of "poor design", and promise to change it to make it more clear)

Here in Austria, I think it would not be difficult to prove that this advert is misleading. Maybe the court would ask an expert or so.

On the other hand, there wouldn't be a punitive damage of 10^7 USD for that.
 

In general, the 'resonable person' test would be applied, I think. No reasonable person would conclude that this ad was anything but deliberately misleading.

<sarcasm>My goodness, it's as if they're trying to scam gullible idiots!</sarcasm>

If the person is running Linux, it's nigh guarenteed that they know that this kind of crap is made for suckers. The people that actually buy this are the kind of people that punch the monkey and click that link, the one their friend sent them in an email about "free anna kornikova pics!"

Besides, the ad isn't misleading. It does exactly what it says on the tin. It's not like "average" is in small print.

Caveat emptor.

Actually the number of Linux idiots is gromwing. I recently gave a couple of Ubuntu disks out, one to a freind who just bought a second hand PC without an OS and is definitely a non techie.

I get the distinct feeling that he could well be tempted to fall for crap like this, and according to a mainstream news story published in Australia recently, Linux is now ready for the mainstream. Numbers are growing.

I wonder if it's possible to sue them for insulting the intelligence? I know that it's possible to sue over gratuitous verbal abuse, why not gratuitous intellectual abuse?

I suspect the User-Agent string is being queried.  Gecko-based browsers apparently say they're Mozilla/5.0, since Gecko was successor to the older Netscape/Mozilla browser engines and that was the next version.  Many browsers lie and claim they're Mozilla.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

Microsoft started this when they introduced IE 1.5, apparently, and other non-Netscape browsers copied them.  Soon, it became a de facto standard, even though it's really stupid.