While I was out and about in twenty  degree below zero weather tonight with a couple of close friends of mine we decided to go and see a movie at our local theater. The movie we saw was none other than Untraceable and while I wont go in to detail about the movie because I would hate to spoil it for those of you whom haven’t seen it, I will say it was interesting.

To a degree, Untraceable is a formulaic crime thriller. The unique spin put on the story is the method the killer uses. In essence, he sets up the scenario for the murder and starts streaming video on his website. The more people watch, the faster the victim dies. If no one watched, nothing would happen. It’s an interesting commentary on the voyeuristic nature of our society, given the rise in popularity of reality-based shows and online video. The message in the movie is that watching makes you an accessory to the crime.

Now, while I was watching the movie and when I first caught a glimpse of Jennifer Marsh’s (played by Diane Lane) computer monitor I couldn’t help but notice the operating system that was clearly identifiable as none other than Windows Vista. If you go to your local theater and see this movie you will notice a couple of times during the movie when they show the actor open an internet browser (presumably Internet Explorer). The first time you see the actor open web browser you will see a familiar home page, it is none other than an  older rendition of Microsoft’s Windows Vista home page, it says "The ‘WOW’ Starts Now" and with an over sized Windows Logo.

The first time I saw Windows Vista running on the desktop in this movie I was a bit surprised to see it, and only once did I see Windows Sidebar running on of the desktops. Windows Vista makes an appearance several times during the movie, and for obvious reasons. I would have liked to get a snapshot of the movie showing Windows Vista, but then I would have gotten kicked out of the theater and we don’t want that now do we? I didn’t think so… However, I did manage to grab a couple of snapshots from the trailer hosted on Youtube.

Finally, I think Microsoft is taking a new initiative to advertising by having Windows Vista used in a movie like this one, or any other movie. This brings a whole new meaning to advertising for a product, if you make it prominently known as it is in this movie then it is a great marketing scheme, I applaud the Windows Marketing team on their efforts in this and I hope they do more of this in the future.

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