Windows Mojave Experiment

Microsoft’s published several videos and results from its Mojave Experiment to ‘prove’ that Vista’s a lot better than the general public perceives it to be.

People in the focus group had never used Windows Vista before and were asked to rate the operating system based on what they’ve heard about it. The average rating was only 4.4 out of 10.
They were then shown a demo of what was supposedly Microsoft’s next generation operating system, dubbed Windows Mojave. The focus group gave Mojave an average rating of 8.5.

The focus group members were then told that Mojave was actually Vista…and they were generally shocked and surprised.

You can watch the videos by clicking here and visiting mojaveexperiment.com.

This is a piece of slick marketing, but this ‘experiment’ proves nothing in my book except that the salesperson is fully capable of running a Vista demo. The focus group members were wowed by things like being able to search for the calculator, browse media in Media Center and editing photos.

Vista’s not the big scary monster some make it out to be, but this experiment glosses over too many real issues.

From Microsoft’s Windows Vista Blog:

We interviewed and polled 120 participants in San Francisco, in hopes of better understanding everyday users’ perceptions of Windows Vista and seeing whether there really is a gap between perception and reality. We wanted to see how people reacted to Windows Vista when they were not aware they were seeing Windows Vista. We recorded our discussions, and today you can see them for yourself.

Some other facts about the research:

* The focus group took place over three days in San Francisco and was conducted earlier this month.
* All participants were either Mac, Linux, or users of versions of Windows that came before Windows Vista. Respondents were chosen from the focus group organizer’s database, called at random, but then selected based on having a low perception of Vista (<5 rating on a scale of 1-10). * The participants were given a demo by a trained retail salesperson - geared towards the experiences they seemed most interested in following a series of interviews. While the retail salesperson drove the demo, it was geared by the interests and direction of the participant. * We did not use some geeked out or custom built PC. We used an HP Pavilion DV2500. It had 2GB of RAM and was running an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz. The OS was a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate. * Of the 120 respondents polled, on a scale of 1:10 where 10 was the highest rating, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4. After they saw the demo, respondents rated Mojave an average of 8.5. Finally, some people have asked if Mojave is the big marketing project we're working on - it's not. The Mojave Experiment is just that: an experiment we conducted on the fly that yielded interesting results. We're publishing the video today because we think you'll also find it interesting.

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