The Mojave Experiment

So I finally sat down and went through the "http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/" website, one of Microsoft's many PR campaigns to challenge the "preconceived notions about Vista".

"Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new computer system sucks." -- Wargames

Ok so the researcher in me would like to point out a few things about this "open discussion"

1. (Con) They never took a user through the process of an actual upgrade. They didn't show them what it takes to get Vista to share directories, or printers, or how to manage older hardware with a new OS. They didn't take a user through how to switch from XP.

2. As far as I can tell, they never let the user ask questions, or say "hey - how do I do this in Vista"? Show me something real. Show me a game. Show me voice chat with well known programs like Ventrillo or Skype. Show me interoperability by using the main stay of applications everyone uses like Office or photoshop or gimp or firefox. Show me something other than gadgets

3. None of those people in the videos were IT professionals. It's all fine to have regular people in the videos, but where do you think they heard all of the negativity? From their neighbor, or from an IT professional? Somewhere, the information came from a "trusted" source. That means a geek/nerd/it wizard/guru said something to the effect of "this sucks - go back to XP". When you start to have sys admins and security professionals and hardcore it professionals say "yes this is a stable and usable operating system" you will see the negativity decrease. This worked fine when Microsoft got their act together for Windows 2000, and XP. Once they became stable, geeks praised it. Geeks are not praising Vista (yet), now why could that be?

4. They didn't show you how you have to tell Vista "ok" every time you run an application that has not had it's security certificate setup by the manufacturer.

5. They claim that 60% of Vista users are less likely to get a virus or malware infection than those running XPSP2. Really? Only 60%? That is a little better than half. So by upgrading to Vista, you are increasing your chances of not getting infected by (maybe) 50%. Does anyone else feel this is inadequate?

6. They didn't mention also what the 5 different versions of Vista will do? Which one did they show the users in the video? I can almost guarantee you it was Vista Ultimate. Did they explain the tier system? I doubt it.

7. Hardware, I bet you almost anything, they didn't just run down there and buy a laptop from they local store and install vista on it. Did they tell the video guinea pigs what was needed to run Vista/Mojave?

"where's the beef"?

Show me the meat. Instead of hiring Jerry Seinfeld to market to me, why doesn't Microsoft pony up, say hey, yeah we made a few mistakes, here is the fix. XP is an almost 8 year old operating system. We will have to move on eventually. I get that. No problem. I get that the world (for some silly reason) is driven by MS products and that no matter how much I want it to live in a world with OSX at the core, it will probably never happen.

So since I, as a geek, am forced to use multiple operating system, stop making my life more difficult. Geeks are by nature lazy. We don't like "more" work. We like to automate things and do things once. Vista is causing issues in this regard and people depend on us to fix it and make it better, so help us help you for crying out loud.