Those of us who have been using Vista pretty much since the start already knew this, but there has been so much bad publicity around it that it’s hard to separate myth from reality anymore. Well, Microsoft recently decided to try a little experiment to see if Vista haters and skeptics really, truly didn’t like Vista, or if they were just being dragged along by the anti-Vista bandwagon. (Thanks in great part to Apple’s brilliantly executed Mac vs. PC ad campaign.)
The experiment was simple: Invite a group of Vista skeptics to test drive a new OS code-named “mojave,” without telling them that mojave was actually… you guessed it: Vista.
As it turns out, over 90% of the testers (who thought Vista sucked before coming in for their mojave sneak peek) LOVED Mojave. You can check out their reactions when they are told that Mojave was in fact Vista.
Wow! Vista actually rocks! Who knew. ;D
The blind test is nothing new in marketing circles, but what sets this apart from the old Coke vs. Pepsi blind test ad campaigns is that the question here isn’t one of preference. Coke isn’t better than Pepsi, and Pepsi isn’t better than Coke. People prefer one over the other because of their taste buds, mostly. As powerful an ad campaign as it may be, you might as well have folks do blind tests comparing Methodist and Presbyterian doctrine. Which do you LIKE better? Which do you PREFER? The “Mojave” experiment doesn’t address preference or taste: It addresses perception vs. reality. Vista had (and to some extent still has) a pretty poor image in the marketplace because very few . This is in part due to a) driver incompatibility issues early on in the OS’ release, b) the fact that many “legacy” PCs aren’t powerful enough to run the OS, and c) a very aggressive campaign to discredit microsoft by its longtime rival Apple.
Fact: The driver compatibility issue is pretty-much ancient history.
Fact: Computers are pretty cheap these days, so while some businesses may not want to allocate the funds to upgrade their hardware or consider virtualizing their PCs, consumers should be able to upgrade their laptops and home PCs to a Vista system without too much trouble.
Fact: The Mac vs. PC campaign may have been fresh and cool and based in truth a year ago, but it has now slipped into the realm of disinformation. In addition, many of the so-called “crapware” that bogs down new computers has nothing to do with Microsoft or Vista. (If your new Vista PC is loaded with stuff you don’t want, the system builder installed it on your machine, not Microsoft.) Sony recently released a crapware-free PC that actually allows users to enjoy a pure vista experience right out of the box, and it pretty much rocks.
Anyhoo. The Mojave experiment is clever, honest, simple and effective. It is what it is: A series of videos showing real people being blown away with how great Vista actually is, after having so brainwashed by 21 months of negative messaging.
Kudos to Microsoft for having taken this approach to bringing the reality of Vista forward with people like you and me rather than an expensive round of corporate messaging. Very clever. You can check it out for yourself here. Hat tip to Steve Clayton for the link. Other articles on the subject at Microsoft Sherpa here, here and here.
have a great Tuesday, everyone. 😉
Transparency: I manage US Microsoft distribution for SYNNEX, a global distributor of IT and Business processes. Though the job doesn’t skew my opinion of Vista one bit, it’s worth mentioning.
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
your point isn’t really that valid because they didn’t get to test the product, as in the infamous coke vs pepsi one. Rather, they were given a 10 minute presentation of vista’s oh so amazing features (some of which were the media center which even xp had with some versions, and some which were misleading – showing media center and talking about easily editing images, which are not related).
also, the issues with vista are real. driver incompatibility means that I cannot connect my sony camcorder via usb since there is no driver for vista. also, I cannot use my IRDA remote, my webcam, the creative drivers for my soundcard suck, and basically anything pre-vista doesn’t work. the issue with performance is also real, you need a powerhouse pc, and for what? I disabled all the visual features and vista still takes up one gig of ram, all the time, for no reason. as for mac vs pc ads, they work on mac’s intended audience, people who don’t use computers, because otherwise everyone knows macs are crap when it comes to apps and games.
anyway, the mojave experiment was very much rigged and the opinions were not all that good. (some people had little to say about it)
also, the people were probably chosen to have no ideas about the shortcomings of vista.
Thanks for your opinion. I’m sorry that your experience with Vista hasn’t been positive. I personally haven’t had any issues with games, hardware or software since switching to Vista. (And I switched well over a year ago.) My printers and cameras have worked with Vista from Day one.
You might want to contact the folks at Microsoft (there’s a Vista help line) and see if they can help you find the right drivers and fix your issues. Maybe the folks at Sony as well.
Cheers.
Great post.
Regarding your first point, eventhough the driver compatibility issue might now be ancient history, I think the damage has already been done and the perception of Vista as a bad OS is so firmly implanted in the conumers mind that it’s gonna take a lot of work by Microsoft to overcome that.
I think the second point you made has had the most detrimental effect on Vista. The problem, from a consumers perspective, is that why should they have to pay (a minimum) of $120 for Vista and then have to pay even more money to upgrade their computers to be able to run Vista when XP was basically getting the job done? Is the added value of running Vista that great that consumers would be willing to spend a couple hundred dollars more just to be able to use it? Microsoft either failed to take into account the power of the average person’s PC, or assumed that people will be willing to upgrade their PC’s to have the pure pleasure of running Vista. Either way, they overestimated the desirability of their product or the tolerance level of their customers (PS: I’m one of those people who at one point upgraded to Vista than went back to XP).
The crap-ware that comes with a PC is also astonishing, and it is surprising companies have taken so long to respond. Even the Sony crap-ware computer that is being released is still a half-hearted attempt to put an end to this frustrating practice. According to the article, people have to basically indicate that they want a crap-ware free computer at which point Sony will remove any unnecessary software. The fact that they initially wanted to charge consumers $50 for this “service” is a testament to their lack of desire to seriously improve the customers’ experience with their product.
On your last point, I do not think Apple would have been able to discredit Microsoft had there not been any problems with Vista in the first place. What Apple did so brilliantly was exploit the pre-existing problems with Vista and propel them into the forefront of the consumers mind. Had Microsoft released a good product, and consequently, consumers had had a positive experience with Vista, I do not think any number of cute Apple vs. PC ads would have been able to convince consumers that Vista was a deficient OS.
Also, Apple was not the only group discrediting Vista. A great many independent sources, and more importantly, Microsoft’s own customers who had purchased and used Vista (and experienced some of the aforementioned problems), did a splendid job of airing their grievances (on youtube, blogs, etc…).
Wow. Another great comment. Thanks for taking the time to write all this stuff, guys. I appreciate it.
Salam, the driver compatibility issue was a problem, and yes it did give anti-Vista advocates a good deal of ammo against the OS. No question. And that story is still alive today even though the issue has been all but resolved. Could the driver compatibility issue been addressed better or faster? In an ideal world, yes. That being said, the burden doesn’t fall squarely on microsoft there: Hardware manufacturers/vendors could have responded more quickly as well. 😉
Personally, I probably wouldn’t have upgraded to Vista if I hadn’t been ready to upgrade my laptop to begin with. In other words, my Vista user experience is limited to starting out with a Vista-ready machine. I have never tried to upgrade an XP machine to Vista. I’m not sure that I would have bothered trying to run a Porsche engine on a toyota chassis though. 😉 I would recommend upgrading hardware and software together in this case: Zero headaches.
If Vista’s features (security, ease of use, speed, etc.) don’t make it worth your while to upgrade, then don’t. No big deal. Loads of people are happy with XP. It comes down to a question of choice, I guess. I’ve had no issues with Vista, but if you prefer XP, that’s cool. 🙂
The crapware issue on computers is kind of tricky. On the one hand, there are cool pieces of software that come with PCs that users might not otherwise discover. We can use crapware loosely to describe any pre-loaded software that isn’t the OS, or we can divide that pre-loaded software between extraware and crapware. Everyone is different, and that makes things complicated: AOL might be extraware for my father-in-law, but it is complete crapware for me. It’s tough for system builders to figure it all out. They look at it as an opportunity to a) sell more software, and b) add value to their machines by loading them with “free” software. It’s kind of a catch 22: System builders are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. What i can tell you is that microsoft is actively trying to convince system builders to eliminate crapware and reduce the extraware footprint so that a) their OS and apps will run faster, and b) the user experience will be a lot more pleasant, right out of the box.
Apple’s campaign was brilliant. In the beginning. Not so much anymore. But hey, it’s still entertaining.
Your final point: Yes. And you know, that’s the beauty of social media. Microsoft learned a lot from the Vista launch. It probably accelerated their response as well and will hopefully ensure that Windows 7 will see a much smoother release when it eventually comes out. Ultimately, I’m not sure that any OS releases can be entirely successful right from the start and on their own. The XP release was also a pretty rough ride in the first 18 months, as I recall. People had a really tough time with it when it first came out. Those adoption pains may never completely go away.
Look at the problem this way: First, Apple owns the OS and the hardware. Microsoft doesn’t own the hardware. That puts Microsoft at a pretty serious adoption disadvantage right off the bat. Second, Apple owns what… 8.5% of the global OS market? Versus what… 70%+ for Microsoft? Take point #1 and then think of the scale that microsoft has to deploy to: Thousands of different computers built by other companies, tens of thousands of auxiliary hardware like printers, scanners, routers, servers, modems, cameras, etc. It’s a compatibilty nightmare if you really lay it out. Microsoft works on a whole different level from Apple: Apple has a pretty closed and manageable deployment loop. Microsoft works on a planetary scale, with client/user technology that might be 10-20 years old. It’s hard to make everyone happy when your user community is THAT diverse and THAT large. That Microsoft pulls it off at all is pretty astonishing. I can’t think of another company that is able to scale the way Microsoft does. So yeah, while their releases aren’t always smooth as butter, when you put it all in perspective, it isn’t quite as simple as pushing a button and saying “okay, everyone switch to Vista now.” (I wish it were that easy.)
Hopefully, Mojave is a sign of things to come for Microsoft. I am looking forward to see what their CP+B partnership is going to come up with over the next year. What they have coming down the pipe in terms of apps is pretty sweet, so the folks in Redmond are going to have to make sure that future releases are a little more pain free than Vista. Believe me, they’re working hard toward that end. Looks to me like they’re on the right track.
Thanks again for the comment! 😉
Thanks for your response Olivier.
I completely agree with you on the differences in the scale of operations between Apple and MS. At the end of the day, Apple is still minuscule compared to MS. However, from the consumers’ point of view, it really doesn’t matter to her/him how many steps MS and Apple have to go through in order to put their products in his/her hands. Consumers only judge the product by what they finally see in front of them, and in that regards, MS failed with Vista.
On a similar but different topic, its amazing how a strong brand can save a company when it messes up. When Vista was launched, Apple also launched its new OS Leopard. While everyone knew about the problems with Vista, what many didn’t know is that Leopard had some serious problems as well. I upgraded my Mac at the time to Leopard and was so frustrated with it in the beginning that I actually wanted to downgrade (like I did with Vista). Leopard constantly froze on shutdown and in sleep mode, bluetooth was not working properly, wirless mouse stopped working, etc… For some reason, these problems never received anywhere near the kind of attention that Vista’s problems did. Obviously one of the explanations is that many more people are invested in MS (as you mentioned), but I also think that Mac users are so passionate about the brand that they are willing to forgive mistakes here ann there. MS on the other hand, although they have a significantly stronger brand awareness, do not command the same passion and therefore have very little room for error. It really was interesting to see Vista take a beating while Leopard (and its problems) flew under the radar. Apple did a good job though of quickly fixing the bugs in Leopard, I’ll give them that much.
I forgot to ask: do you think it is a viable option for MS to acquire hardware manufacturers? That way they can take full control of their product and, more importantly, the customer’s experience with it, and thereby eliminate all the problems that arise when you have to deal with disparate 3rd parties?!?!?!
Interesting discussion all around.
Salam–
I don’t think MS wants to add another “hardware” element to their portfolio due to the fact that margins are brutally miniscule. MS hasn’t made a dime on a single XBoX or XBoX 360 hardware unit sale since the day they left the production line and went retail. I’d be surprised if they actually wanted to take that on.
As for the Vista debate–
You know, I’m really really torn about Microsoft. They have to walk an incredibly fine line between meeting their interests as a business, and doing right by the customer.
It’s interesting that all of MS’s major OS releases since DOS–Win95, WinNT, Win2K/XP–were all widely regarded and praised in most circles, while their “incremental” OS releases–Win98/ME, Vista–are widely regarded as inferior products designed to be money grabs (in the case of ME, the OS was literally broken out of the box).
Now, some might say that Vista is hardly an “incremental” OS. It’s been 7 years since XP was released, shouldn’t it be time for a new OS?
If anything, I think Microsoft’s biggest problem is that to a certain extent, they’re burdened by people’s own expectations, and their image that that they dictate to EVERYONE in the industry what should happen. Microsoft’s product roadmap pretty much controls the fortunes of the entire tech sector, with very few exceptions (Cisco, telecom, Apple, PDA/Mobile).
In my opinion, the entire personal computing industry has been in a bit of a rut since about 2001, across all spectrums. Productivity apps, games, user interface, you name it, aside from the advent of high-speed Internet, we’re essentially having the same computing experiences we’ve had since the turn of the century–and I think we as consumers recognize this. Vista doesn’t change our computing experience, it only costs us more to have it. THAT is a bad PR combination, if you ask me.
Good point on the Leopard issue. Very interesting observation.
As far as Microsoft looking at acquiring hardware manufacturers, I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around that option. Sounds great in theory, but in practice… Eh.
I guess it’s up to us PC users to tell our favorite hardware vendors (HP, Sony, Dell, etc. what we like and don’t like).
Thanks, Salam!
Vista is an OPERATING SYSTEM!!! Why does it require 4GB of RAM to run the operating system? I won’t switch until someone can answer that question for me.
Who says that an operating system HAS to have a small footprint? As hardware allows us to pack more punch in smaller and smaller packages and at much more affordable pricepoints, the relevance of an OS’ gig requirements decreases.
As long as my hardware can handle it, I don’t have a problem with an OS requiring 4 or 8 or 16 gig. It really doesn’t matter to me. As operating systems become more sophisticated, get ready for their requirements to also increase. It’s just part of the OS’ evolution.
My Vista laptops and PCs run fast, quietly and without issues. All I know is that when I turn my computer on, Vista launches in 21 seconds. I don’t care what goes on in the background as long as it works.
Your comment made me a little curious, so I ran a little diagnostic on my laptop and here are some stats. (Compare them to your XP machine if you want.)
Boot-up: 21 seconds.
Full boot: 49 seconds.
Idle: Vista only takes up between 6.48% and 14.2% of my CPU usage, depending on what apps I have opened.
Suspend + Resume: 9 seconds.
Shutdown: 12 seconds.
Smooth like butter. I haven’t tried this with my XP machine, but I’ll guess that it takes at least twice as long to do anything. I always have to wait for it to do stuff, while my Vista laptop is lightning fast. Maybe XP has a much smaller footprint (which is nice) but when it comes to performance, it isn’t even in the same ballpark as my Vista system.
My point is: I totally understand why people love to get under the hood and debate why this piston is better than that, but most users (like me) are drivers, not mechanics. I don’t really care what things look like under the hood. I just want to have a great driving experience. The 4 gig requirement doesn’t even come up on my radar when I’m behind the wheel with a big grin on my face. Know what I mean?
I could probably get those numbers down if I got rid of ‘non-critical’ softs like paintshop pro, world of warcraft, firefox, and my twenty-thousand Canon drivers. I have gotten rid of every bit of crapware my computer came loaded with though. I suggest doing a clean Vista install on every new computer anyway.
I’ve said it before: If your hardware can’t handle Vista, don’t drive yourself crazy trying to make Vista work with it. Maybe you’re better off sticking with XP until you’re ready to upgrade your hardware. Ideally, you want to grab yourself a new computer with Vista already installed (or do what my wife does and build one from scratch).
Thanks for the comment. 😉
my experience with vista started when i bought my laptop. i wanted to see if it worked so I booted it up at which moment it thought it was smart to start installing vista. i had to hang around the store for one and a half hour while it installed and it gave me no possibility of pausing.
and vista is a memory hog. it uses one gigabyte of ram, all the time. and for what? i disabled everything that technically consumes that and still i get one gig full.
also, when i right click on some icons, explorer crashes.
sometimes when i copy files, it crashes. sometimes, copying files takes ages ( i use a piece of software that takes care of that now, and i get much better times). sometimes, vista decides to pop up some essential windows while i’m typing a document, and forces me to say no to saving some crucial work. without me even knowing what i;ve done. there are so many bugs in vista, and that;s why people hate it. you can’t use it, and to most it’s not a choice.
installing xp, then all the software is a hassle. then all the settings, passwords, and so on and you’ve got yourself weeks of work until you find out you forgot some important document on the vista partition you just nuked.
and trust me, this isn’t where it ends, not by far. usability is lower than poor with some annoying features in xp made even more annoying here. i want to find out my ip, i can’t right click my connection and go to properties, i have to enter a million windows, accept my own actions a few times, and then get to the same bloody window which was in xp. identical. so why bother?
as for hardware, not everyone can upgrade. think laptops, i have mine with vista basic, but i upgraded to ultimate just to see the difference. it’s crap, it uses heaps of resources to perform menial tasks. and it has memory leaks, when sometimes you right click and windows takes away all your resources to show one single pop-out menu..
and the compatibility, that’s just a joke, with manufacturers and microsoft blaming each other. i used server 2003 on my desktop and it’s basically a better version of XP, but since it normally powers servers some app manufacturers don’t want to put their software there for fear of crashing. i called logitech support and they told me, after i had bought a very expensive mouse, that it is beyond their scope to design drivers for server 2003. which is basically XP.
and to finish this off, i will tell you what i read somewhere about mojave: testing an os cannot be done in 10 minutes, and it cannot only comprise of banal tasks like photos and movies. and he’s right, because the issues happen in time.
PS: the main reason for vista being slow is that it was built before the technology needed was available. silverlight will change that for blackcomb, but vista was built as flash upon C programming, a very poor performance mix
Uncle! Uncle!
Again, I’m sorry that you guys haven’t had good experiences with Vista. I don’t know what to tell you other than what my experience has been so far:
No issues with performance.
No issues with speed.
No issues with CPU usage.
No issues with memory.
No issues with hardware drivers.
No issues with software drivers.
No issues crashes.
I spend half my day on a computer for work and other projects. I play games on my Vista system. I do A LOT of high end photo editing on my Vista system. I use tons of different apps and hardware accessories. I liked XP and really like Vista. It all works for me.
I switched from Mac to PC because my Mac was too restricting. Mac simply didn’t support all the apps I needed and didn’t talk to all my hardware. Do I miss the glitter and elegance of the Mac? sure. But Vista gets me a lot closer to that user experience than XP.
I don’t know guys. I’m not saying you’re wrong. Your experience is your experience. I believe you. And your opinions are your opinions. I totally respect them. All I can say is that even if I didn’t have ties to Microsoft, I really have had a 100% positive experience with Vista, and I find it to be far superior to XP.
If you guys prefer a Mac OS, if you prefer XP, if you prefer Linux or some other type of open source OS, that’s cool. It’s a free world, I say. It’s all good.
Just don’t hate me because I dig Vista. ;D
Certainly don’t hate you but with no Vista issues you must live a charmed life!
2 perspectives:
As an consultant:
On new systems (including peripherals) has been reasonable but:
Is definitely resource hungry- i wont supply a machine with less than 2 GB RAM. If you think Vista is faster than XP you are dreaming.
Endless supply of updates and then SP1 (despite our local MS contact saying SP’s were a thing of the past)!!
2 machines have deactivated themselves and the supplied tool to fix was useless- had to call MS.
Networking is torture- particularly in domains. 3 more steps to do what you could do in XP and endless ridiculous sub settings. (There’s no way i’d roll this OS out to the 100 or so corp PC’s i admin as i really like my sleep).
Personal:
I have used Vista Ultimate on my new machine for about 6 months (XP on 3 other older machines).
Reinstalled once due to mystery corrupt boot files (tried everything).
Machine has 4GB RAM and a T9300 processor and is nowhere near as quick as lesser machines with XP.
Smartphone sync software has deleted partership and synced data on phone 3 times so far- never had a problem with activesync.
UAC poorly thought out- a bit more intellect would have made it a powerful tool.
A lot of “not repsonding” messages never previously seen in common applications (with that bloody blue circle- guess that shows what is happening in the OS)- waiting sometimes helps but why should i have to? 20% of the time the app crashes regardless.
“Need admin approval” messages followed by dear UAC for some inane tasks like moving menu items which is crazy as i am local and domain admin.
There’s more but you get the picture- could have done a LOT better MS-you’s better give Vista buyers a decent discount on the next major revision.
I give it 6/10.
Hey Jonathon,
Thanks a lot for taking the time to write all this. What can I say? I’ve been lucky with Vista so far.
Dunno about the networking angle. You might have some solid points there. Guys like you who really get under the hood of an OS have a much better view of what works and what doesn’t. Ultimately, if Microsoft cut some corners, you’ll be the first one to notice. Let’s hope the folks at Microsoft listen to what you guys have to say and build an even better OS next time around.
In the meantime, I’ll be counting my blessings. 😉
I would be!
Re the corner cutting- from memory the release date was pushed back a couple of times.
It’s my guess that eventually (as is so often the case) the marketing people got their way so the engineers probably ended up doing a lot less than they would have liked.
This would explain the never ending stream of updates in the early days.