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Microsoft's "Mojave Experiment" Teaser Site Goes Live
MojoKid writes "Earlier this week, Microsoft was reported to be arranging a kind of 'blind taste test' to get die-hard Windows XP users to try Vista. They were told that they were trying a new OS, called Mojave. The report went on to suggest that users liked the OS, though they were actually running Vista. Now it appears Microsoft has put up a
teaser site, with
plans to show the actual video footage next week. Though the footage should at least have some entertainment
value, it would be a bit of a reach to expect that the test methodologies were
real-world enough such that users had to deal with things like user account
control, driver updates, and broad application compatibility."
They were probably running on top of the range hardware as well, a grahics card with 1GB of RAM, system with 4GB of RAM and a Quad core processor etc.. most people accept that Vista looks nicer, but looks are not everything to those who have to use their computer every day for work.
Would have been funny if they tried to do this when Vista was first released and one of the tests was 'delete a file' :p
which is totally what she said
I think this is a bad move by Microsoft. It only makes them seem desperate. By making this viral campaign, they openly admit that vista so far has failed in the consumer market.
This campaign really focus on the wrong issues. The main complaints over vista has never been that it isn't shiny and dazzling enough. The problems was that it makes older hardware painfully slow, the UAC annoyance, incompatible drivers etc. These are not things that a user notices in a 10 minute demo. This campaign shows nothing.
Why didn't they give the users multiple flavors of the most colorful operating systems they never tried (Vista, OSX, Kubuntu, etc) and ask them which one they liked best?
Why? Oh I don't know really.. Maybe because Microsoft doesn't want to publish something that says that users like Mac OS X best?
You just got troll'd!
75% of the whiners haven't ever installed it, and the other 25% tried to put it on a 6 year old budget "Dude I got Dell" computer the first month after it went public.
I don't even think there is even a dead horse anymore to beat. You guys are just masterbating now.
(with each driver being run having been fully audited by microsoft, and everything tested beforehand to make sure it works)
So kind of like an Apple? Do something that everyone raves about, but get put down for it. Sounds fair to me.
yet my powerbook G4 from 2003 can run an OS with all the features of Aero, shadows, full screen , semi transparent menus etc just fine. You could install ubuntu with full compiz functionality on the same hardware as you have now.
Aero shouldn't require a third of the resources that it does, and should run just fine on your laptop. The fact that it doesn't is indicative of Vista's poor design.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Are you suggesting that Microsoft would actually go through the trouble of "stacking the deck"? The very same Microsoft whose presentations are famous with the likes of Bill Gates plugging in a scanner and getting the BSOD in front of the whole planet? To suggest this would suggest that Microsoft has learned from their mistakes which I find unlikely. In order to learn from your mistakes, you have to first admit to yourself that you even MADE a mistake which is not something Microsoft is known for doing. In fact, this whole exercise is about trying to say "you guys are all just prejudiced against Vista! You never gave it a fair chance!" rather than admitting to themselves that Vista is a mistake and that cutting off WindowsXP is an even bigger one.
Having a hands-off experience with an OS is like examining a car in the showroom: its mileage is just great as long as you don't start the engine.
In addition, my guess is that that Microsoft ensured favourable test conditions (top-of-the-line hardware, plenty of Ram, hardware graphics acceleration, and a nice clean install without crapware).
This "Mojave" demonstration might be good publicity though, but only as long as people don't start to question what exactly was shown and whether or not Microsoft provided unrealistically favourable test conditions. For one thing seems pretty obvious: Microsoft didn't use a $498 Dell computer from Wallmart as a test platform.
Because that question is irrelevant. This isn't about trying to convince people who don't use Windows to use Windows, or about trying to convince people that Windows is the best OS ever. The message Microsoft is going for is simple: "If you like XP, you'll like Vista too."
(And I happen to agree with them: I'm not particularly fond of Windows, but having used Vista, I can't see where all the hate is coming from. My personal ranking is Linux > OS X > Vista > XP.)
You remember the coke ads where the "randomly selected" participants invariably chose coke over the other brand? No, really? What did you think you see, a "representative average"? Or just the ones that actually chose coke, no matter whether that was 90 or 10 percent of the people "tested"?
It's like those "interviews" where they try to show just how dumb the average Joe is. Go out on the street with a world map and let people point out Iraq. Sure, 90% might find it, but when you only show the 10% who search for ages and finally point to India or even Florida, you "show" just how dumb the population is.
But let's for a moment assume that yes, 90 percent of their participants said that Vista is nice. Ok, it is. Hey, it sure looks great. Especially when you offer nothing to compare it to. Give someone who's hungry a Hamburger and he'll tell you it's great. Especially when you don't offer him some steak at the same time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I just did another downgrade from Vista to XP this week. A friend bought a brand new PC from Wal-Mart with Vista on it. He couldn't stand the fact that his 5-year-old machine at work running XP was more responsive than his brand new Vista box.
He wanted the downgrade bad enough that he traded me several XBox games to do the work. That is saying something right there. When I asked him if he liked the features on Vista he looked at me quizzically and scratched his head.
Never let bling interfere with usability. The "ooh, shiny" of fancy graphics and widgets lasts only a moment. On the other hand, usability issues will become increasingly frustrating over time.
Vonnegut was right: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
My (limited) Vista experience is on a laptop with Celeron CPU, 1Gb RAM and Intel graphics.
It seemed to run just fine to me, Aero included.
I wounldn't have Vista for other reasons but maybe Microsoft is right - people like you need to take a second look.
No sig today...
Where do I begin? Modded "interesting" because the poster has no clue what he's talking about or because there are so many lemmings on Slashdot? What else would they do? Do a test where it was going to fail?? The upcoming SP1? If you're going to bash something, at least have a clue first. Install the OS themselves? How many normal people are really going to do that? More than likely, they're buying a new computer and it will come with Vista. Which, by the way, will probably be well tested so that there are no driver issues. Is selling a computer with working Windows also considered stacking the deck in your world? I hate going on the offensive, but some of the Vista talk is just... stupid. Do you people really expect MS to just roll over on this? If you do, you're more than just a little naive.
I have a lot of difficulty matching my Vista experience with the meme. People seem remarkably enthusiastic to dismiss the OS and complain about lack of compatibility and sluggishness in particular. My impression was going 64 bit bordered on masochism.
Having started out on SP1 with common, modern hardware, I have none of these apparently certain problems - indeed the reverse has held true. Vista boots noticeably faster and is much more snappy in use. All of my hardware had Vista drivers. I can't see why MS bothered with the 32bit version since 64 happily runs everything I've thrown at it. UAC was a nuisance for the first week but experienced users can revert to a proper account management and novices can get some of it's security from UAC.
I can see why businesses are sticking with XP. There isn't justification to risk any headaches. There's not enough value for home users with XP already on their machines. Advanced users may have specific reason to avoid it even on new machines.
It's fully justified to critisise MS for releasing a product that fails to push us substantially further forward than the 5 years+ since XP. But for Joe home user buying a new PC, I think the tech enthusiast community are doing them a disservice with our Vista vitriol. We encourage them to decide between Vista or XP, and to pick the weaker of the two. The choice should be Vista or Linux.
Ah, but industry rejection does not equal product failure. OSX seems pretty nice, with enough of a user-base to continue to exist, even if the industry rejects it.
This campaign has two problems:
1. It wrecks the illusion that Microsoft believes "Vista is the most successful Windows release ever". Have you seen them talk about Vista in public? They cite sales statistics and call it their most well received release ever. Why then do that campaign in the first place, and that late into the cycle?
2. Microsoft underestimated the power of technical users forming the opinion of their less technical friends, clients, family. The marketing of Vista (the "wow" begins now and so on) was targeted to the non-technical folks, while ignoring to address the concerns raised by the more technical people they communicate with on a daily basis. This campaign fails in that as well, so it'll have a very minimal effect on Vista's PR.
The biggest problem with many discount PCs is that they typically come with very small amounts of RAM, 1 GB (sometimes even 512MB). The difference in Vista between 1 GB and 2 GB is pretty dramatic. There is some difference between 2 GB and 3 GB as well.
"I see that you don't use any windows boxes yourself. That in itself should disqualify you from judging the merits of Vista."
Just because I personally don't use any windows boxes, does not exclude the possibility I support and fix messed up windows boxes, I have personally seen computers that, for example, could not play the built in windows games when music was playing in media player, and needless to say lots of other weird ass crap. All of which wound up being drivers (primarily) or vista's fault.
In regards to people's boxes eventually getting hosed, I agree, some don't, however of the techies I know, all of them reinstall every year to two years, because it slowly degraded with the crap being installed etc. The last xp box I fixed was not 'dead' however took 20 seconds to load the start menu after the os was fully loaded... with a core 2 duo. admittedly it's usually nowhere near that bad though.
"Are consumer-grade computers even built to last 5 years without experiencing some kind of trouble."
You'd typically lose a hard drive and disc drive by then, otherwise yeah.
"What about driver support? Can I use any scanner I want in linux? Or this no-name wireless card that works just fine in Vista?"
To that I say, can you use any scanner you want in vista? if you answer yes I'd call bullshit, I have a scanner here that xp or vista wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, as for no name wireless cards, last two random non checked cards worked perfectly fine in linux, I know there are still unsupported ones out there, but they are becoming fewer and fewer.
But still, that is not the point, no os (no matter how much it tries) will support every piece of hardware in existence
"If so, how do you think people would react if they had been given a shiny, new OS that, for instance, does not support Itunes?"
depends on how it's handled, on insertion of ipod, if they are presented with gtkpod or some other such program that will handle their ipod needs when plugged in and still complain, then they are being bitchy.
If they want it for the Itunes store, then they have obviously used it on another platform before to get hooked, why not let them continue to use it on that platform, nobody is forcing them to change (though lots of people I see only use itunes for ipods).
I just think you assumed too much about me, which is fair enough considering the amount of idiots on slashdot is non trivial. Linux is not without it's problems, anyone would be insane not to say that, however they are a different set of problems, and ones that can typically be resolved by the user if enough attention is paid.
It was probably an HP.
My HP tablet running Vista took at least 20 minutes to be usable the first time it booted. Wiped it, installed Vista again (from a Dell disk, ironically enough; Dell doesn't ship crapware), and suddenly it's a great little machine.
You can't blame Microsoft for the crapware HP puts on the machine, especially if you were one of those protesting when Microsoft tried to gain more control of the end-user experience.
Comment of the year
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The $349 Vista Basic desktop at Walmart.com ships with 2 GB RAM
Walmart.com has 30 Vista desktops and 20 Vista desktops that ship with at least 2 GB RAM. 3 or 4 GB is not uncommon. 64-bit Vista is gaining visibility as well.
The 512 MB PC runs XP Home or - wait for it - Linux.
This follows a depressingly familiar pattern. The moment OEM Linux begins to gain some traction, hardware prices fall and the Windows system with eye-popping specs becomes suddenly very affordable.
What's your point? That's the way unix is supposed to work. Many isolated processes communicating over pipes. That's why it's so stable compared to windows. If one piece fails, it just restarts, and everything is back to normal. Even when OS X locks up, happens once in a blue moon, it's usually only the UI, the unix subsystem keeps on trucking.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato