Microsoft Tricks Vista Haters With "Mojave", But Does It Really Mean Anything

Microsoft's "Mojave Experiment" was a marketing idea that Microsoft put into action about two weeks ago. The experiment has recently received a huge amount of coverage, mostly due to the fact that Microsoft duped people into believing they were using a new OS rather than just using Vista.

Over the course of three days, Microsoft showed 120 Mac, Linux, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 users in San Francisco an HP Pavilion DV 2000 with 2GB of RAM that had on it a "new" version of Windows, codenamed "Mojave."

When asked about their experience with Mojave, over 90 percent said they were impressed with what they saw. That's when Microsoft told them they had actually been using Windows Vista all along.

Currently very little is know about the projects participants, their previous experiences with Vista, amount of computer knowledge or why they had a negative perception of Vista. But the question remains, does duping people into liking the "flash" that Vista has to offer really mean anything?

If you hand select a PC install only a limited amount of programs on it and sit an average user in front of it they probably would be "wowed" by Vista. After all how many home users really look under the hood of the systems they are running. We don't know what types of tasks the participants were asked to do nor do we know how much control over the PC they actually had. But I'm guessing they were limited to basic tasks.

Now the argument can easily be made that despite early technical challenges, of which there were many, Vista's biggest problems today are primarily ones of perception. Users that tried out Vista in its early stages saw numerous issues many of which most likely have been fixed.

This however doesn't mean that these perceptions are wrong it simply means Microsoft should have worked hard to put their best foot forward and put together a better OS to begin with. I'd never completely write off using Vista simply because I had issues with it in the beginning if I did I wouldn't be using XP or any PC for that matter, once I build a system that I know will be completely Vista compatible and capable I'll probably try it again. The fact that I have 2 free copies sitting in my desk and XP is going to be getting harder to buy helps that decision a little!