Friday, July 25th 2008
Microsoft Spins Over a 'Mojave' Approach to Grow Vista User-base
Choice is a wonderful thing. Informed Choice is even better, where you choose something after knowing its inside-outs. The very opposite of informed choice is dogma, where you rigidly oppose something and stick to your beliefs. Incidentally, dogma seems to be one of the significant factors keeping users away from embracing Windows Vista OS, of what can be inferred from an experiment by Microsoft in San Fransisco, United States. A group of Windows XP users having negative impressions on Windows Vista were introduced to a "new" operating system they referred to as "Mojave". User experiences on using this operating system were noted and feedback taken. A surprising 90 percent of these users gave positive feedback on this new OS. They were later told that the new OS was nothing else but Windows Vista.
Despite Microsoft releasing numerous updates and fixes to the Vista OS making it a fairly stable, reliable OS close to expectations if not exactly on par, it seems to be mass dogma that's keeping users away from adopting this new OS. Going back to that experiment, a user is reported to have exclaimed "Oh wow", something Microsoft expected users to do with the new OS originally, as portrayed in those numerous television and print commercials going with the tag line "wow". Following the recent announcement of a huge budget allocation towards propagating Vista (covered here) for home and enterprise segments, the message being sent out is that Microsoft is not only being aggressive but also proactive.
Source:
CNET
Despite Microsoft releasing numerous updates and fixes to the Vista OS making it a fairly stable, reliable OS close to expectations if not exactly on par, it seems to be mass dogma that's keeping users away from adopting this new OS. Going back to that experiment, a user is reported to have exclaimed "Oh wow", something Microsoft expected users to do with the new OS originally, as portrayed in those numerous television and print commercials going with the tag line "wow". Following the recent announcement of a huge budget allocation towards propagating Vista (covered here) for home and enterprise segments, the message being sent out is that Microsoft is not only being aggressive but also proactive.
231 Comments on Microsoft Spins Over a 'Mojave' Approach to Grow Vista User-base
Vista Home Premium Upgrade 149.
Windows XP Home Upgrade 129.
Vista Home Basic Upgrade 129.
Want more proof
89.99 Windows XP Home SP3 OEM
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116511
89.99 Windows Vista Home Basic OEM
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116480
109.99 Vista Home Premium OEM
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116485
The double the price doesnt apply honestly for most users
here is another for you
134.99 XP Pro SP3 OEM
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116400
179.99 Vista Ultimate OEM
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116490
So there ya are the double isnt valid and the extra 20 for premium over XP Home and 50 extra for ultimate over XP Pro are worth it if you bother to look at what is offered over XP
If you have the will try your own experience, talk to someone random on the street, just ask them whether they like vista or not. My bet is 9 times out of 10 you'll get a no, maybe 8 (if they know about vista). Then ask them why, my bet is 9 times out of 10 you won't get anything that resembles an answer that indicates they themselves have tried it, it will mostly be spouting off things they've heard or read. Maybe 8. If you really get ambitious see if you can sit them down w/ vista, but that's a little impractical.
My arguments have nothing to do w/ whether the study is good or not, I really don't care, its marketing. My point is I have encountered this exact thing, and trying to break down a marketing study from a company is relatively pointless. Should I ask KFC on what grounds they say "Life tastes better w/ KFC?" Well, that wouldn't make much sense, it's marketing. No the answer has nothing to do w/ how much it costs. I have people that don't want to buy notebooks b/c it comes w/ vista already on it. I ask them why and they say b/c they heard bad things. Vista doesn't even cost that much more than xp, although it should, later generation tend to. There is plenty of reason to go to vista, but that's not really the point either. The reason they did this was to counter-act all the bad-mouthing they get, and it should have been done sooner.
SOME- want more and more out of video cards and cpu's, yet complain about the temps of those faster components or the PSU needed to run them.. This is how I kind of see Vista/XP/98 (notice i took out ME lol)..
I'm a big Linux supporter, but I know even the Open Source community got nothing on the ease of use and compatibility against M$. It may be a technically superior O.S. with a cleaner security model and rock-solid stability (nobody's debating that), but it's still an awkward system to use and most things just_don't_work as intended.
thats my horrid opinion :)
Don't worry, I already have Vista on my laptop, so I will continue testing it over the time, and I'll upgrade my main system when it is worth it. Unless windows 7 is close and it really is an upgrade...
I have to admit, anyway, that I wasn't very informed of the prices of the OS's now. Vista has come down a lot. But I can tell you something, Win XP here in Spain (I can't talk about the rest of the world) is a lot more expensive (that means €25-50) than 6 months ago, which IMHO is intriguing...
Hell it's more expensive than when I bought it back in 2003!!!!
It sounds like MS wanted to find out why Vista was not doing as well as they hoped, so they did an experiment to see why that may be the case.
How or why the "e-mail" got into the hands of people in the tech trade is unknown, but the whole thing sounds more like media blathering than MS trumpetting.
Just my 2 cents. ;)
In my business we have to do just this.. Customers don't like change.. I sell water filtration systems with coolers.. We replace bottled water.. We get those who think our water is bad b/c it comes from their city water instead of the bottled jug.. So we do a NON blind test so to speak.. We tell the customer A: is our water and B: is your bottledwater.. Most will pick B as the best.. Funny thing is both A and B are the exact same samples from our system..
It's not the most honest of tests, but it does prove the point that Perception is Reality..
Personally, I haven't heard anything bad that was not true. Most people I know that don't like Vista is because of the same thing I do: they already have XP and Vista does not offer anything worth an upgrade. Some of them are also influenced by the bad start of Vista (bugs, lack of drivers, etc.), but that's not the main reason, just some additions. Things have changed, but MS will have to wait until these changes are noticed through word of mouth. That's how this works, they can't blame people for lacking the knowledge. Vista WAS WORSE than XP when it launched and was for too many time, they can't expect things to get better overnight.
The experiment doesn't proof that Vista has not been embraced because the bad-mouthing. Test subjects are described as "XP users that hate Vista". They had some time with the test systems and give good feedback. And what?
-How were the test systems they used?
-How were their own (subject's) PCs? (A heavily crippled C2D would be a lot better than a very well optimized P4, for example.)
-Which kind of aplications could test subjects use?
-Could they experiment with different peripherals and drivers to test compatibility?
The interface and usual windows preinstalled programs are not the problem of Vista. So, how could the test subjects conclude Vista was or was not a good OS? As EastCoastHandle said: without anything to compare to, they simply can't. It just ran fine, but it could run better under Win XP. The matter of the thing is that they will never know. The experiment is not valid. You could have said anything except that. Well maybe I'm too concerned about the 10%+ performance penalty to look further... :roll:
IDK if other users can tell, but I can tell a huge visual difference between the two.. Not just eye candy and special effects, but the overall clarity of Text, Icons, Images, ect.. Vista just plain looks better on screen... That has to be worth a little something, maybe not $180 tho..
But don't forget that when XP launched it was a nightmare also.
Many, many people advised others not to upgrade to XP until SP1 came out.
SP1 helped, but it was not until SP2 that XP really became a solid OS.
Vista is very similar to XP in that manner.
I feel that SP1 for Vista, and the improved drivers, makes Vista a more stable OS at SP1 level than XP was at the time.
I've learned a couple of things too.. And tho I don't share every view stated here, I do understand more about why users (more exp. users) are not for Vista.. I think we all have made some good points.. Bottom line is whether or not Vista is for you.. Being an "Eye Candy" type of person, I like Vista.. But if I were a stat/performance person then, yes, I see why it's not liked..
As for the originall post goes, after reading over and over again I see more clearly now EastCoast's (and others) point about that test..
In the end tho, we are talking about something that will be replaced sooner than we think.. Vista will go down as a failure no matter if you it's for you or not, mostly b/c of it's lack of sales..
so bein that 90% of people have those cpu's or older in their rigs, you can see why those same 90% didn't think vista was so bad when used on decent hardware. which is exactly the point, joe blow can't afford or doesn't care enough to upgrade his rig to run vista.
vista isn't the worst os put out, (it's not the best either) but it requires more from hardware which in the end always takes a while to get adopted.
It is marketing at its dirtiest and creates consumers to mistrust the outcome. Same thing goes with polling during political season, it is nothing to listen to or even consider unless it is a study that has a formula and result that can be studied, and performed by unbiased 3rd parties.
The recommended reqs of Vista is a 1Ghz processor and 512MB of RAM.
This is interesting as the Pentium 3 ranged from about 600Mhz to 1.4 Ghz.
We all know that a system with a P3 is not going to run Vista worth a crap.
I think that MS should have been a little more specific in their specs about Vista, and perhaps should have been a little tighter on the specs (like minimum P4?).
Just some casual observations.
so far, no one else has had anything else to offer in argument of XP over vista. To be honest i agree - if your rig is so old that you only have 1GB of ram, stay the hell away from vista. its a great OS, but its not for old rigs like that.
before people complain that they dont want to buy more ram... well i'd never game on XP with 1GB again either, lol.
Also, since when did the operating system all about speed? That seems to be another big argument, you get a few more fps or things load a bit faster. Although I myself believe my experience has been the opposite (I've found vista to be more responsive and have had better gameplay by far), I still don't understand why a few seconds here and there and a few fps is better than better graphics and a more powerful and more intuitive interface.