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"...announces the Hope'N'Change Operating System. "Only 30% chance of crashing!""

It is obviously another Mojave experiment ;-)

If you're an investor, owning shares in a company that has almost all of, but a shrinking share of a shrinking market isn't a happy place to be, especially if they have no room for growth and are trimming their failed attempts to find new markets. Add that their flagship product is running in the single digits, their Marketing efforts are the not only the butt of much comedy but may cost more than the GDP of Haiti and you have the perfect storm.

It's more fun to be holding a company that's growing share, sales and profits too. A company that only holds 10% of its target markets. A company that can report record profits in a bloodbath holiday quarter in the middle of a dire recession? A company whose advertising is so enjoyable that it's viral. A company that's innovating and inventing new markets. That's more fun. That's a winner.

And that winner isn't MSFT. Their stock is where it was 10 years ago. Over the same period Apple is up 1000%. Unlike Microsoft they have 90% of the established market to get yet, and the prospect of undiscovered country.

/14 links? That's informative. Pretty sure you regret posting that now. Let's go again.

To get the full functionality of this site you need silverlight.

But you can click through to use just the limited flash version. Does that count?

the hype that's "affecting" me is the hype of people telling me just how much they like it.

Then this is for you

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

At least their new message is not "our product doesn't suck as much as you've heard -- as witnessed by these people who saw somebody else use it".

On a related note, the mojave experiment website now almost requires Silverlight. Whodathunkit? Is there a good slashdot word for compound failure? Maybe fail++?

[sarcasm] No, M$ is definitely not behind this when Windows Vista/Mojave is doing so well! [/sarcasm]

Vista "outsold" both Teh Lunix and OSX -combined- during it's first week of commercial release.

I'd say that sounds like a success. Of a sort, anyway. It must be nice to be Microsoft- the only operating system they need to focus on competing with is the last version they released. As for any "complaints" about Vista... maybe people should try out Windows Mojave before they consider a new computer purchase.

I think he means the Mojave Experiment, proof that, in a setting they control, showcasing what they want you to look at, Microsoft can convince computer illiterates that Vista is a sweet OS.

They aren't even that coy about it; they admit they've been doing some market research.

"If Vista is so good, why are you being $20/hour to stand around and tell me how good it is?"

It's actually a really good question.

The answer is, in my opinion that Microsoft is currently making a classic marketing mistake. One which, from what I understand, I'm not an expert, rarely pays off.

It's the one where essentially the seller is in denial, and starts blaming the potential buyer for not understanding how fantastic their product is.

Apparently, to Microsoft it is inconceivable that people don't want Vista. And now they start blaming 'us', that we just don't understand.

I realized that when I saw this ridiculous website.

On top of that, they are dissing their own products! They literally say "PCs with Vista are 60% less likely to get infected than PCs with Windows XP SP2". Heh. How do I know you are not going to say the same thing when your next product comes out?

If all this stuff wasn't so arrogant, it would simply be pathetic.

they are telling their potential customers that they are ill-informed, don't have the ability to evaluate a product on their own terms and they can't make the decision about what they want themselves. This product can't be bad, the customers are just wrong!

I hope the customers will prove to be not gullible and understand that and reward them with what they deserve.

(this btw from someone that chooses to mainly work on Windows XP, not Linux or Mac)

IBM at the end of business today had a 174.60B market capitalization - more than HP and Dell put together and within reachable range of Microsoft's 239B. IBM's trend is up (just off the 52wk high) while Microsoft's is, well, to be kind, not. Microsoft nearly killed them -- by 1994 their value had dropped to 1/10th of what it is today. For the past twelve years however IBM's stock has been as good or better as an investment than Microsoft's. IBM's value today is more than five times what it was when Microsoft was knifing their OS/2 love child in 1990. And IBM didn't just spend 7B engineering a product so abhorrent it needs this kind of "no matter what you've heard, our product doesn't suck" kind of marketing.

I hope the tide is turning. Maybe this will help.

Check the website: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

They used an HP Pavilion DV 2000 with 2GB RAM.

I'm sure they picked a system that set them up for success, but, do you think that anyone doing the same type of experiment wouldn't? When you see a Big Mac in pictures, it looks nothing like what you're going to get in the bag... You might still like it after you bite into it, but, it's not what was advertised.