Pulling on the heart strings of 90's kids it seems like an attempt to take them back to their PC childhoods as many are now becoming apart of the Apple/Firefox generation. I have entered both of these areas! Many years ago, while I was still on PC my brother (AKA my computer technician) told me if i used explorer and ended up with virus after virus he wouldn't help me out with my problems anymore.
As someone who lived her best, responsibility free, innocent years during the 90's, and someone who still has her Spice Girls t-shirt this ad certainly did the job. Even if I have a Macbook Pro and won't be heading back to Internet Explorer the ad certainly restored my faith. If I was still a PC user this would have been advertising at its greatest work!
Nostalgia is a strong way of evoking emotion, it's certainly something that makes for strong effective advertising and marketing.
The other part of this I liked is the idea that fixing something and improving on it doesn't have to mean completely changing it. The classic example here being the Facebook transition to timeline. Making something unrecogniseable doesn't make it great, it makes it new. Change is a scary concept.
