The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you have one. The only way to read this campaign is that Microsoft considers Vista's failure to be due to customer ignorance rather than failings of the product itself. When you replace a reliable product with a more expensive offering that offers no added value to most customers you are going to get hammered. Either fix the product, or lower the cost to make it a justifiable purchase.

I think in the grand scheme of things Microsoft have acknowledged where they stand in terms of public perception and what kind of company Microsoft now is in it's old age by signing up with the ad agency that has worked on turning around the perception of the likes of Burger King and Coca Cola... That's a good start.

However, quite a few negative vibes come from the vocal IT community that has issues with Microsoft way way way beyond Vista or even Windows. And that's not going to go away in a hurry...

Other problems are hopelessly underspecced workstations that have been returned or been torturing real-world non-geek users to tears. They are a voice that can and will drown out any marketing in their respective areas of influence.

I have begun using Vista on several machines. Other than a few driver and program issues (USB wireless network card only worked with XP, not Vista and some other programs had to be updated, i.e. newer versions purchased), I find it more aesthetically pleasing and am beginning to really enjoy the system.

Yes, I got a new machine that had more memory and a faster processor. My others were five years old. I never expected to be able to move everything without a problem.

I think all the people who are incensed over Vista because they have to purchase new programs, get new drivers, etc. are forgetting what it was like 10 years ago with all the multiple formats and version updates. That was a real mess.

I finally gave up on Macintosh computers years ago when every new system update required me to purchase new versions of Office and just about every other program I owned. And Apple was making these kinds of changes every year or so.

Microsoft has retained backwards useability far longer than Mac ever did. Even when Microsft changed formats in programs like Excel and Access, it allowed the user to convert files to the new format.

No software company in today's world will exist very long just putting out the same program every version. Sometimes, hardware improvements and changing user demands force software companies to make major format changes. And that will force the kinds of issues that came with Vista.

That's the marketplace.

The problem isn't with five year old PC's. "Vista Capable" anyone?

Vista Capable -- Has at least 3GB of RAM, a large HD (much of which will be taken up by the OS), and requires you to verify everything you try to do three times before doing it.

XP Capable - 1GB of RAM will do nicely, though 2 is preferred, lives well on an 80GB HD, and understands that yes means yes.

whatever - Yep. And John Sculley was a great CEO for Apple, too.

Telling the customer that they have been stupid is a great way to get business. Especially the customer who then goes to her Corporate IT department and says, "Gee, I see people saying Vista is a great OS?" and is then told that there are no plans to roll it out this decade.

Microsoft wasn't telling the customer that he or she was stupid. Microsoft was refuting the perception--driven by an anti-Microsoft media--that Vista was the worst thing since Windows Me. Microsoft was merely putting an operating system in front of people who had unreasonably negative opinions of it in a way that would allow them to set aside their misperceptions.

And guess what? It worked. If anyone should feel anything from having taken part in the program, they should feel anger at the press (and bloggers, etc.) for painting such a ridiculously negative version of the OS.

This was ridiculous in the extreme. Showing a canned demo that was highly tailored is not *USING* an OS. I don't think anyone seriously complains that Vista doesn't look good; it's a usability nightmare.

Now, if if the purpose of Vista was such that people were going to just watch a movie of it at home then this "experiment" might have some value.

This experiment is awesome, and should be a wake up call to MS to get confident, know the Vista OS is good, and start affirming that.

A few cool commercials from Apple should not define the OS Vista. It's great.

I was working with a customer yesterday, and she saw me hit the Snipping Tool in Vista and said "Wow!".

Get the facts, because i make no apologies nor do i work for MS or make money off of them, but Vista Rules, Linux drools, and Apple well i do like my Macbook, but it runs Vista with BootCamp.

Scouts out!

> Microsoft wasn't telling the customer that he or she was stupid. Microsoft was refuting the perception--driven by an anti-Microsoft media--that Vista was the worst thing since Windows Me

Are you counter-asserting that it isn't? I don't remember the timelines, but I think only Microsoft Bob has been as bad as Win ME.... until Vista.

Joe,

More and more I come around to some of your points about Vista. My experiences with Vista are on customer computers, and have been more extensive than I like it to be. I will never buy Vista, as I evaluated it and longhorn beta's before that, before Bill Gates switched the code base of Vista from XP (and the name change) to Windows Server 2003.

At first reaction, to Vista, I was impressed with the menu's and the eye candy, until it came time to actually do something under the hood or install 3rd party software. These are where the major problems with Vista start to become evident.

Software incompatibility is the number one problem plaguing Vista. Its perhaps ironic that Linux with Wine, Crossover, and or Cedega, most likely has less problems running most former windows software and games than Vista does. This was the main strength of Windows, that it could run legacy apps and games, but no more. Its why Vista is being shunned by corporate enterprises as well.

So the question is why the Software incompatibility with Vista with old windows apps (legacy) and games? Yes the UAC is responsible for most of that, I would agree partially with your assessment of that. One just has to set up and run an limited user account in XP and try to install software as administrator, and then try to run it in XP as a limited user to find out its about as borked as Vista is. But not quite. The DRM that was so thoroughly embedded into Vista, cause the audio and video subsystems to be so totally rewritten and to require new drivers for Vista. This broke a lot of additional software as well, and caused many game glitches in addition to other software incompatibility problems of Vista.

I do see where Microsoft was trying to go with Vista, with the UAC. Sadly it was poorly done. The limited user account in XP is still the better option for security, which can also be done in Vista, to be fair. I criticize Microsoft a lot for its lack of security, and rightly so.

Increasing security for Vista by braking so many legacy apps and games, is not the way forward. Joe's idea of running emulator software to run these old legacy programs would be a stop gap measure, but would require that Microsoft actually writes something that users would want. I doubt they are going to do that, as MS has basically decide that their monopoly can, for the most part, just force its software down users throats.

Joe, you raise a very good point in this article which I was about to comment on your prior post. The lack of a control group is very disturbing. Without it and without a long term exposure to "Mojave", this looks like the BestBuy experiment. You know the one in which you walk into a store and somebody shows you how wonderful this and that laptops are then takes your card and swipes it. End of BestBuy experiment. Then comes the slow and painful OS rot over the next 3 to 6 months.

Speaking of stores and retail I noticed we are failing to see the irrelevance of the Mojave Experiment. Simply put there are no XP machines on the shelves. As far as consumers are concerned, as of June 30 Vista is the only choice.

Sure companies can use XP, but if someone in charge of Vista deployment buys into the "Mojave Experiment" advertisement he/she should be fired on the spot. Hardware and inhouse software compatibility are key issues here. You mentioned Ausralia and HP. Added the point that bad perception is a factor in business choice, but software either works on Vista or does not. Mojave or no Mojave that's going to cost someone. So that's a real stopper.

Speaking of firing people I think the Microsoft marketing team should be fired on the spot. Either that or they are implicitly acknowledging the huge advantages Apple has over Microsoft.

Like you mentioned they've stayed quiet for over a year then all of a sudden come to life after XP goes out of market and Vista is the only option. WOW!! Launch a campaign to promote Vista once the only purchasing option is Vista. You either get Vista with your new laptop or get whatever the IT gives you at work. The later quite probably being XP.

So either they are totally incompetent and are trying to bill Microsoft for something that will happen anyway. That is Vista will gain market share since it is the only consumer option. Or Mac is a bigger threat than we perceive. The fact that the only option being Vista may be moving people to Apple seems very real.

Businesses choose between XP and Vista based on needs and installed software. Not based on "Mojave Experiments" Consumers have no access to choice with Windows, period. They lack the XP pressure valve businesses enjoy. Its either Windows or Mac and more are choosing Mac. Why? Because Microsoft isn't changing the cause of the bad perception. It isn't changing Vista back to XP. Other companies that have had bad perceptions have worked on the root cause and then cleaned up the image. Microsoft thinks it can get away with a cleaner image while preserving Vista. Don't think its going to happen.

The "Mojave Experiment" brought to you in ....... wait for it......Adobe Flash. It's a shame they aren't showing off their own Silverlight. I understand that a very large portion of web users are using Flash and not Silverlight, but I'm pretty sure my browser is telling the world I have Silverlight. So much for dogfooding your own technology. Makes me wonder if they compiled the website on a Windows Xp machine..:-)

Kudos to Adobe.

Here we go again. Microsoft tries to use lies and illusions to make Vista look better. Why they don't try to fix the damn thing instead of making more lies. I hope Windows 7 fails even more miserably, if that is even possible. As long as Steve "The Monkey Boy" Ballmer is in charge, all Microsoft can produce is endless series of failures.

I hope people are smart enough to see through this Mojave bullshit which proves again that Microsoft isn't software company but marketing company.

Hey Phil,

Shut up...

So the website promoting Microsoft Windows Vista is using Adobe Flash, and it's hosted on a Linux Server.

Why not take it to the logical conclusion and have Microsoft host a site extolling the virtues of Apple's Mac OS X.

This is a study of people who are too thick to be able to tell if they're using Vista or XP.

This reminds me of the Folgers commercials.

You just had a free meal in a good restaurant. Someone asks you a bunch of questions about various aspects of the meal, and slips in a question about the coffee. You're not thinking about the coffee, you've been saying "it was great" over and over again. What the hell do you think you're going to say? THey could have used ground oyster shells and dirt and a lot of the people would say it was great.

Doesn't change the fact that Folgers is really lousy coffee.

"We just replaced your operating system with Folgers Crystals, how do you feel?" "Buzzed!"

What's really absurd about this "experiment" is that the OS these folks are being shown is on Microsoft-picked equipment and installed by Microsoft employees. It's the best of the best, and tested to make sure there are no failures.

If they had the test group install "Mojave" on their own PC, I'm sure they'd get a much different result.

Quote: "Good marketing is about appealing to people's emotions, which Mojave does through embarrassment. "I was wrong" isn't the best way to sell a product"

Hmm, so Apple's messages, arguably that:

"I have absolutely no coolness nor creativity in my body", or,

"You're so wrong to get Vista", or quite blutly,

"you're really stupid not to know that VISTA is crap"

...becuase I'm "PC User" are also just "bad marketing" tactics eh?

Here's my message to Joe, you're not a marketer, don't quit your day job. Leave the fluff to fluffers! :)

Clever campaign, and I think it is quite radical for Microsoft. That said, what concerns me is that the campaign pitches at home users. What about all the IT managers who have been very vocal about Vista adoption? I suspect the average IT manager is far more aware of the advantages and drawbacks of Vista. Sure, with volume licensing, Microsoft wins whether or not the corporate customers move to Vista or not. But from a perception perspective, Microsoft needs to convince more businesses to migrate to Vista.

This is great - Mac vs XPS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMSAG5kUTlA

Lilly :"What's really absurd about this "experiment" is that the OS these folks are being shown is on Microsoft-picked equipment and installed by Microsoft employees. It's the best of the best, and tested to make sure there are no failures".

"If they had the test group install "Mojave" on their own PC, I'm sure they'd get a much different result."

--------------------

Excellent point.

I don't see why Microsoft has to convince people that Vista is a good OS. Won't folks figure that out for themselves? Our IT department, after trying to make Vista work for two weeks, wiped it off a thousand laptops and re-imaged them with XP. I kept telling them Vista is better but they wouldn't listen.

"If they had the test group install "Mojave" on their own PC, I'm sure they'd get a much different result."

Most average users wouldn't have the need to install "Mojave" or any other OS (except for Linux distros) on their computer. OEM computers come with the OS and all hardware drivers preinstalled, remember? It's like walking into an Apple store or Best Buy. Does the customer have to install the OS everytime he/she wants to check out the computer? This is advertising, not some scientific study.

"Mojave experiment" isn't a home run, it's a swing and a miss.

Your statement, "I wonder what these folks' reactions to Windows Vista would be after using it for a week or a month? I suspect that 10 might lower to a six or seven."

is right on the mark.

My first experience with Vista came along with my recent purchase of a gaming laptop. UAC popped up all over the place so I turned it off. And then ... bliss.

Honestly, I was completely apprehensive about Vista after reading all the reviews and I'm typically not an early adopter (took me 3 years before I installed XP at home), but I am very happy with Vista on my personal machine. Quirks? Sure, every OS has them and I've used every iteration of Windows, multiple versions of Mac and OSX, Linux (Ubuntu mostly), Solaris, NeXTSTEP. Christ, I even did my internship project on the Xerox Star.

You get used to it that's all. If you can't get used to new things, then get out of using computers altogether.

This will likely go down in history as one of the greatest experiments in human psychology. NOT!

They're trying to prove that Vista doesn't deserve the widespread negativity it is receiving in society. Vista is not a piece of merde. If you simply give it a try, you will love it.

Yeah, right. The problem is, people *will* love it...initially. I did. So did Joe Wilcox at eWeek.

But familiarity definitely breeds contempt in the case of Vista. The longer you use this sad afterbirth of an operating system, the less love you feel. Its wireless network stack, for example, is unreliable (take my word for it).

It saps CPU and memory capacity like there's no tomorrow (I introduce as evidence my Dell Dimension 9200 Quad-Core PC with 3GB of RAM).

And certain applications, such as Deskshare's Video Edit Magic, trip over Vista again and again.

So, yes, you *will* be seduced by Vista's pretty face in the beginning. But just like a blonde bimbo of a gold digger, you'll very quickly grow tired of her and want to kick her out of the house and onto her sweet little ass...

I wonder how many people they had to reject for the "survey" because they saw through the mirage of the "Mojave"

Reflections:Does the customer have to install the OS everytime he/she wants to check out the computer?

No. It does the OEM with the result that all know (real world not advertising).
It seem at the end the thing finish where all started (Vista rubbish).

"This will likely go down in history as one of the greatest experiments in human psychology. NOT!"

Oh, Richard, Richard, poor little Richard. How can you confuse an advertising campaign with a human psychology experiment, man?

"The longer you use this sad afterbirth of an operating system, the less love you feel."

OK.Fair enough. That happens with all OSs, actually, but ... fair enough.

"...take my word for it."
Or ... try it yourself. Why take Richard's word for it when you can try it yourself? Boy, am I glad I didn't take someone's "word".

" introduce as evidence my Dell Dimension 9200 Quad-Core PC with 3GB of RAM."

So, if I I have a desktop with just 1GB RAM and a an AMD dual core processor, which actually runs Vista fine. Now if I had taken your word for it, I would have never even tried installing Vista n this comp. But I did. And it works. So, the "blonde bimbo" (talk about sexism) continues to stay at my place.

So? What other "evidence" can you provide? I'm sure you know an admin who's struggled with Vista before finally giving up too. Heck, everyone seems to know one these days.

Peace out!

Will Ms. Vista always be a slut, or will she reform? Will she accept who she is and become a porn star, or will she experience transcendence and become religious? Stay tuned--same Bat time, same Bat channel.

Will Ms. Vista always be a slut, or will she reform? Will she accept who she is and become a porn star, or will she experience transcendence and become religious? Stay tuned--same Bat time, same Bat channel.

Wayne says:
"My first experience with Vista came along with my recent purchase of a gaming laptop. UAC popped up all over the place so I turned it off. And then ... bliss.

You get used to it that's all. If you can't get used to new things, then get out of using computers altogether."

@Wayne:
Yeah, you're right. It just amuses me no end that over the years I hear:
"Linux is different, and people shouldn't be expected to learn something different."

And now I hear:
"Vista is different and people need to step up and learn something different."

I don't avoid Vista because it's different, and I don't embrace Linux and Mac because they're different. Linux is freedom from the Microsoft revenue drain, and Mac is where video production just works more smoothly than on any other platform.

(Yes, you can get Windows to produce video, and you can also just walk across the US to commute from coast to coast too, if you really want to.)

So? What other "evidence" can you provide? I'm sure you know an admin who's struggled with Vista before finally giving up too. Heck, everyone seems to know one these days.

Et Tu, Intel? Chip Giant Won’t Embrace Microsoft’s Windows Vista
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/et-tu-intel/index.html?ref=technology
Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system
said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.
----------
Although I am waiting that Intel will be changing its attitude, there is so much bad advertising and remember that Intel is something like MS' partner.

I meant that Intel not using Vista is excessively bad PR for MS. Ms would do anything to get Intel to change its mind. However, this proves that not even its 'partners' are capable to use Vista-it's just that bad.

therefore:
How I got a Windows Vista refund.
http://equiliberate.org/?q=node/3
"So, world, it CAN be done - this is ~34% refund bringing the total cost of my laptop to $399.99+tax. Don't take NO for an answer. Know your rights and enforce them, or you may one day no longer have them."

"This will be my last HP product - I have read Dell customers get OS refunds in a matter of days

I think Microsoft really is in need for some positive news about Vista. So it produced it by itself. Because people set up in an laboratory would believe a lot of things.

Why is Microsoft for the Mojave site not using Silverlight instead of flash?

Q: Why is Microsoft for the Mojave site not using Silverlight instead of flash?

A: Because their goal is to reach the growing numbers of Mac and Linux users instead of restricting their message to the loyal already-converted locked-in crowd. (Just a guess, but it seems pretty obvious.)

Wow two articles on the same subject? Maybe it's time for Joe to pass his column on to someone with more of an open mind.

Do you have a personal vendetta against Microsoft? As much as people piss and moan about M$, tell me what company has brought "productive computing" to everyone's home and office?

I'll give you a hint it's not Apple or words that rhyme with "inux"

Vista is junk..I run vista and i thought i was
back on dial up. So iam back on XP pro.