The Mojave Experiment is Microsoft’s latest marketing ploy. Participants—who are said to have never used or apparently even seen Vista—are asked what they think about the operating system. Afterwards, they’re shown a 10-minute demo of Microsoft’s “newest” OS, codenamed “Mojave”. It’s only after the presentation’s done are the participants told that Mojave is actually Windows Vista. They’re asked once again to rate Vista.

The campaign makes use of videos, which show with full detail the reactions of most of the participants as they’re wowed by what they’re seeing. It’s clear that Microsoft thinks that the numerous challenges faced by Vista aren’t caused by real issues, but by a widely held perception that the OS is plagued by bugs, slowdowns, and incompatibilities. Not surprisingly the experiment paints a very positive picture for Vista.

A New Approach for Microsoft

Mojave represents a new step for Microsoft, in terms of marketing. Its personal approach and reliance on traditional customer testimonials is very different from the software company’s usually business-like methods. At the very least, it attempts to address the widespread view that it’s simply not worth upgrading to Vista, and the relative popularity of downgrading to XP.

Vista is Still Vista

Granted, recent experiences have shown that Vista features a lot of improvements that make navigating and browsing through your information a lot easier. A wonderful example is the “breadcrumbs” explorer address bar.

And of course, you also have the vastly improved eye candy. The problem with Vista has always been its performance—how fast it does things. Recent experiences have also shown that even relatively powerful computers, advertised as designed for Vista, don’t really let users maximize their computing experience.

Microsoft Needs to Get its Act Together Fast

It’s easy for Microsoft to blame customer error, the failure of hardware vendors to provide the proper hardware, and even Apple’s Mac OS X advertising campaigns for the negative reputation Windows Vista suffers today.

The fact remains though that Vista represents a step backward for Microsoft, and actually threatens to weaken its dominance in the operating system industry, as frustrated users look for alternatives from competitors. It’s good that Microsoft is trying to craft the presentation of its message to be more relevant to John Q. Public, but it needs to back-up this with action. Here’s to hoping that the Windows Vista SP2 upgrade really fixes things.

Post from: The Gadget Blog