Oops

We thought we’d share this little gem with you that’s been doing the rounds around our office (or should that be “Office”?).

As you may or may not know, the new Surface Pro 2 is out now and Microsoft has been going full tilt with the marketing campaigns, viz.

A cursory glance may just see “another advert for a tablet”, but take a closer look as Excel takes centre stage:

The advertisement depicts a spreadsheet of various expenses, but all is not as it may seem. The creative accountants, analysts and those with imminent tax returns may love the apparent new feature: FudgeSum.

When we were at school, $2,500 + $4,000 + $500 + $1,500 + $500 + $200 + $300 = $9,500, not $9,000 as displayed. The eagle-eyed may spot the formula bar is blank for the selected cell – it looks like they have decided to “hide” the car expense. Cool feature!

Conspiracy theorists will realise that the missing $500 is approximately what you need to buy one of these Pro’s.

You can read the full story on Quartz’s web site: Microsoft advertisement howler.