Microsoft looks to 'Mojave' to revive Vista's image | Beyond Binary – A blog by Ina Fried – CNET News.com An interesting story over News.com. Apparently Microsoft recently traveled to San Francisco and videotaped a bunch of Vista skeptics about Vista the OS. Then they showed these skeptics a “new” operating system code named “Mojave” and got their feedback on it.
What the skeptics didn’t know was that they were actually being shown Windows Vista. Surprisingly 90 percent gave positive feedback on the new OS.
From CNET:
“In the weeks ahead, we’ll launch a campaign to address any lingering doubts our customers may have about Windows Vista,” Ballmer wrote. “And later this year, you’ll see a more comprehensive effort to redefine the meaning and value of Windows for our customers.”
What gives the Mojave project its power, though, is the fact that it isn’t Ballmer or someone else at Microsoft saying that Vista has gotten a bad rap. It’s everyday people.
With scenes reminiscent of both Apple’s “real people” campaign of a few years back as well as classic commercials from Folgers and others, the Mojave project could prove a formidable weapon.”
Personally this reminds me a bit of Pepsi’s “Pepsi Challenge” PR campaign where they tried to get people to blind taste test Pepsi vs. Coke.
If Microsoft is right and Vista has gotten a bad rap mostly from a very clever and pervasive anti-PC Apple advertising campaign, then taking it to the streets and getting people to experience Vista first hand might be a valuable tool.
For what it is worth, my own opinions on Vista are largely positive, although with a caveat. When Vista first came out I upgraded one of my old PCs from XP to Vista. The experience was not good. In large part I think that my bad experience was due to the fact that Vista did not play so well with lots of the old hardware, drivers, etc.
When I bought a *new* PC from Dell with Vista installed (a relatively moderately priced PC at about $1,100) my experience was vastly different. I had a far improved experience over XP and thus far I’ve been very impressed with Vista vs. the old Windows XP.
My advice to anyone wondering if they should upgrade to Vista would be this. Don’t necessarily upgrade your current PC, but when you decide to upgrade your current PC to a *new* PC, this would be a great time also to upgrade to Vista.
Certainly Vista is not error free. But either is my Mac. Nevertheless, Vista produces 90% less errors for me than XP did. I rarely have to reboot my PC. My PC tends to start up every time now. Windows Media Center works far, far, better and seamlessly handles my large 100,000 plus mp3 library.
Microsoft’s “try it, you might like it” campaign is probably smart. Vista has largely gotten a bad rap. In part from early adopters upgrading on existing PCs and having poor experiences and in part from Apple capitalizing on the instability of previous versions of Microsoft’s OS that still very much resonate with users.
So maybe now is the time to move to Vista if you haven’t already. Not only is it a better OS than XP but pirates are pretty cool and lots of pirates use Vista, or so I’m told. 😉