All aboard, all aboard, it’s the Microsoft advert train again, next stop comedy.

That’s right, Microsoft has rolled out the second television spot in its Vista-marketing blitz, and good news comedy chums, it’s even more surreal than the first one. Again there’s no mention of Vista, but then there simply isn’t time as Bill and Jerry move into an everyday ordinary home to experience the life of normal people. Anybody familiar with the antics of shortlived Nickleoden wonder show Pete & Pete will feel right at home in this latest slice of Microsoft madness, in which cause, effect and logic are rather wonderfully torn asunder.

I blogged unashamedly of liking the first commercial, but this second one is utterly brilliant. There are some truly corking lines within its fractured whole, and I find myself thoroughly engrossed by the antics of television’s latest odd couple. Even Jerry Seinfeld, who I’ve never “got” is acutally making me chuckle, and ten years too late I find I’m no longer a social pariah.

In my earlier post, I argued that the early adverts aren’t so much an attempt to sell Vista as simply reshape the public perception of Microsoft as a company, and nothing in this latest ad convinces me otherwise. Bill Gates continues to play the buffoon to Seinfeld’s straight man, a role he is uniquely suited for due to his decision-making distance from the company but also immediate synonymity with the brand.

I’m also charmed by the bravery of heading in exactly the opposite direction to the one we all expected. It would have been so easy, and so futile, to have engaged in a tit-for-tat campaign against Apple’s incredibly smug, if succesful, Mac vs PC ads. And Microsoft would have lost, badly. I can’t help but feel that just a couple of years ago it was a trap the company would happily have fallen into, lured on by a lack of imagination and genereal fear of swimming in new water after years of playing it safe in the shallow end.

But something’s changed. Whether that’s Ballmer influence or Bill Gate’s new lease of life since leaving, I don’t know, but as an attempt to change the corporate status quo it’s one of the more remarkable I can remember. And made all the more enticing because it’s grown up. Scripted comedy displaying wit and imagination, rather than Apple’s now trademark brand of playground namecalling. In many ways it’s the best rebutall it could have summoned.

The Microsoft site claims that “very soon, the campaign will turn toward communicating specifically about Windows brand and the products that carry the Windows flag” which is undoubtedly the testing ground for the ads. It’s always awkward watching a celebrity flog something they know nothing about, and I very much doubt Seinfeld’s quiet years have been spent in pursuit of his McSe.

But I truly hope they pull it off. I’m enjoying my ride on the Microsoft train immensely and I really don’t want to see it come off the tracks.