MORE SERIOUS MICROSOFT NEWS:

's resurrection of advertising character "Tad" - a mustachioed 1970's lounge lizard stereotype who is a salesman for "VMlimited" - is an attempt to paint VMware as expensive and outdated. The new series of "Tad Talks" (get it?) depict the character giving fatuous answers to enterprise IT questions posed by brow-furrowing tech professionals.

"Use more plus pay more equals good Karma!" Tad tells us, in a jab at VMware's per-VM pricing scheme. "Some say it penalizes you for using more VMs, but to me, it's just good Karmic practice."

Microsoft even included Tad (who debuted this summer in a similar video) in a spoof of a recent ZDNet debate on the relative merits of Hyper-V and VMware. Whatever else the campaign is, it's tough to argue they don't have the character's voice down.

While the spots are quite well-done - little touches like Tad drinking from a mug decorated with its own mustache and the "now available on VHS!" banner on the campaign's web page were particularly good - they don't seem to cover any particularly new territory as far as criticism of VMware is concerned. Videos bashing the company's pricing structure and ostensible lack of interoperability might be clever, but they're well-traveled ground in terms of strikes against VMware.