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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!
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.
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...
Ok, I'm going to call you on these - but first, some background.
When Vista came out, I didn't immediately jump onto it - I had no need, I was using Macs exclusively at home and XP exclusively at work, I had no spare time to 'play' with an OS.
In the past year my work role changed drastically - I was no longer the legacy systems developer that I had been for 5 years, I was moving into infrastructure support - so I decided it was time to buy a Windows laptop (Windows on bootcamp is not really decent for heavy usage, Apple haven't done a stellar job with the drivers).
So I went out and bought an XPS M1530 - 2GB ram, Core2Duo T7500. It came with Vista Home Premium. SP1 got put on as soon as the laptop hit my desk.
My first thought was 'Ok, get the drivers for XP and lets install XP Pro'. Only I didn't have the time, so I put it off. And then I kept finding other things to do, so it kept getting put off.
Until, eventually, it was several months later and I realised that Vista wasn't living up to its Slashdot hype - it wasn't getting in my way, I didn't have a slow system, it wasn't crashing, none of my apps were having issues, UAC was staying out of my way and only making an appearance when I *expected* it to make an appearance etc etc. In short, I sat back and realised there wasn't any reason for me to actually go back to XP Pro.
So here I sit, XPS in front of me, iMac on its pedistool over on one corner of the desk, Macbook Pro on another pedistool on the other corner of the desk, and a Dell Vostro 200 sat under the desk running Windows Server 2008 Standard. And I couldn't be happier.
Now, to address your points:
So, sorry but your assertion that 'Problems with Vista that you notice very quickly (but not in 10 minutes)' haven't yet applied to myself after several months of usage.
Now, its sad but all I am expecting in reply to this is the standard 'M$ shill' response - I'm no shill, just someone that hasn't had a problem.
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.
.
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