A lot of the awkwardness here comes from the simple fact that, for a long time, it wasn't clear how most people were going to end up using their computers. For the computer companies, there was this idea of limitless possibilities, but for consumers, those fantasies had to be distilled into something real and immediate. What, the advertisers were asking themselves, is going to excite people about computers?

It's interesting that, except for Apple, most manufacturers have settled on "nothing." Even Dell's cool graffiti campaign isn't really about their computers.