See – Vista doesn’t Stink
Microsoft released the results of their Mojave Experiment today. Microsoft rounded up 120 non-users of Vista who had a negative view of Windows Vista. They were given a 10 minuet demonstration of the newest Microsoft Operating System “Mojave”. Mojave reception was very positive and after the demonstration many of the respondents were surprised that this new OS was actually Windows Vista.
This is a more aggressive break from Microsoft’s normal marketing practices (which generally include creating a new logo for the packaging). An interesting aspect of the methodology is that each 10 minuet demo was tailored to the interests of the individual. For example, if someone was concerned about security and Viruses the demo was geared more towards items such as IE 7 Phishing filter and bit-locker drive encryption rather than stuff like media center and desktop gadgets. According to the Official Vista Blog this was not part of the Microsoft’s new $300 million advertising campaign for Vista.
Microsoft is getting some criticism from this experiment. Blog Headlines Read “Microsoft tricks users into liking Vista”. However that kind of analysis misses the point. Mojave reveals a lot of the Groupthink surrounding Vista. Millions of people have computers that run Vista and their experiences are generally positive. I’ve been running Vista since the day it was released and I like it. It’s not to say that there weren’t issues with its release. I had software which didn’t work with Vista and was never made compatible with Vista (incredibly irritating considering the software was published by Microsoft). People did have problems with Vista just as people had problems with XP when it came out and their pain shouldn’t be ignored. I’m stuck with a bad Intel graphics driver for Vista that always crashes and gives me a back screen for a split second while it recovers. It’s annoying but it’s not driving me to back to XP. Vista has been out for over a year and a half and most of the issues at launch have been fixed (well not my issue but that’s not the point). Mark Twain once famously said “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” On the same note, the bad things said about Vista have also been exaggerated.
