Microsoft's New Vista Ad Campaign: Microsoft Mojave

[Digitalclips]

It's an great idea, we'll give them that, but from our standpoint, is it valid? They never show Vista on the screen, so how do we know it's really Vista they are showing.

Even further, they could have shown them a developer copy of the next Windows OS, in 10 minutes there's no way they could use the OS fully. You never know, its Microsoft.

I'd like to see the same folk two weeks later after using their copy of Vista themselves, alone at home or office on their PCs. That would then be a good test.

There is Apple's next ad campaign

"Hi, we are PC users that tested Mojave. Yes in the demo we watched it seemed impressive, but when we used it on our own PCs ... Oh Man! It was a nightmare! It was nothing like the demonstration we saw"

 

[Digitalclips]

Is it ethical to use humans as lab rats in a Microsoft experiment?

Ha ha, just kidding. But I do have to wonder about the ethics behind this advertisement. Were the participants compensated and if so, how much compensation was given? Did they explain to the participants after the "experiment" that they would be in an advertisement and that there was a hidden camera? Were the participants allowed to opt out and still receive compensation?

I would like to see how the control group's interviews went. I'm assuming that they used similar people (never used Vista) and allowed them to use Vista (knowing it was Vista) and then recorded their reactions. These would be the best reactions to show to the world in an advertisement, as opposed to the experimental group, no?

I would suspect they were scripted actors, maybe not professional as such but could be. What are the odds the woman gave them zero before and ten after? Most people in such a situation would give a low score but not zero so as not to seem to be too extreme.

 

[clevin]

I would suspect they were scripted actors, maybe not professional as such but could be. What are the odds the woman gave them zero before and ten after? Most people in such a situation would give a low score but not zero so as not to seem to be too extreme.

i would love to hear your critic of pc vs. mac ads by apple.... and do a comparison.

 

[FuuFuu]

i can't wait till what apple has to say about it.

 

[dsnort]

Vista is nowhere as near as bad as people make out , in my experience anyway.

Part of the problem is that Vista ISN'T that bad, but it certainly wasn't as good as people were expecting. It feels more like XPII than a whole new OS. And after five years in development, people were expecting more. Certainly there were some MS Fanbois who thought that with Vista MS would surpass Mac for usability and "cool". Didn't happen.

yeah, you wonder where did those stereotype perceptions come from...

From what I've read, most of those comments came from tech journalists, reviewers, and early adopters.

This whole campaign from MS is, IMHO, a bad sign for MS. This strategy is totally defensive. Apple has the "Mac Vs PC" ads, MS has the "We don't suck as bad as you think we do" ads.

 

[hagjohn]

What does a side by side comparison of Leopard and Vista have anything to do with MS's ad campaign?

And since you brought it up, there are times where I have to wait 2-3 seconds on my macbook running leopard. I've seen nothing discussed yet, that hasn't happened on my macbook. I've crashed, I've frozen and since Leopard came out, I've had to shut the lid on my macbook everytime it tried to go to sleep (fixed in 10.5.4).

Yeah im sure.... vista runs decently on a $399 laptop.... im sorry im sure your just gonna label me ignorant but I find that very hard to believe. Im not even like most people who hasn't used Vista... I promise you I've used vista more then I have wanted to.

YES vista will run with 2GB good enough for most people... the IE using grandma or the iTunes using teenage aint gonna care if tere is a 2-3 second wait every now and then. But someone who uses computers many hours a day (yeah call me a geek see if I care) I AM gonna care, and since that issue can be fixed with more ram, why not get more ram?

Interesting fact thats probably gonna annoy you... but I ahve Leopard running on my macbook with 2.0Ghz 1GB of ram.. and it runs pretty good. Only hardware issues I have with it, is I'd like to have a dedicated GPU but I guess I can live without, and 2GB of ram would be nice (im gonna upgrade that soon) Way I look at it (you can argue if you'd like... ) is

Leopard with 1 GB runs about as smoothly as Vista with 2GB
Leopard with 2Gb runs about as smoothly as Vista with 3GB.
So side-by-side comparison vista is a resource hog no debate.

 

[daveporter]

What I found interesting was not 'The Mojave Experiment' video that starts up when you enter the page, but the 'Overview' video that you can choose at the lower right of the page under 'See Windows Vista.'

If you look carefully, the OS that their putting down in favor of Vista is M$ Windows XP. In fact, they show Windows XP while the narrator insinuates that its difficult to find things with Windows XP but easy on Vista.

When have you ever seen a company put down one of its products (which end users still prefer to your new product) and try to fool you into loving the new product?

The last time I can remember anyone trying this was Coke and they tried to force new Coke on customers ended up having to back-up and offer Cock Classic or loose customers.

You would thing that M$ would be smarter than to try this.

I wonder what would have happened if they showed the test subjects computers running OS X and Linux and Vista and then asked the test subjects what they thought of Vista. Want to bet the 0 ratings would not have changed. The message from M$ is clear: Vista can not compete with our old product (Win XP) so it surely can't compete against the likes of OS X and Linux, therefore, we need to some how dress up our pig in new clothes and lipstick and fool customers into thinking it is something its not. Great strategy; doomed to fail.

In any event, I predict that were in for some very entertaining "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" ads from Apple. I can think of hundreds of humorous one-liners that the Mac and PC characters could use to make fun of M$'s new ad campaign. I can't wait to see them.

Dave

 

[jasonvaughan]

I could probably get a PC, install Windows 98 with specific software, load of Ram etc and get a bunch of people to believe it was half decent. This is such a lame experiment it just shows how desperate Microsoft is. We have five windows users in the office and the only one who has not uninstalled it and gone back to XP, complains every day about why nothing seems to work.

Yes I am sure if you have the right hardware and you configure it carefully and fine tune it etc etc, it may be possible to get it operating as it should. However, that is not the point. It should work straight out of the box. OSX has glitches and there are bugs. However, there have been updates and it now works well. It is easier to use and faster than 10.4. Vista is slower than XP and requires ridiculous amounts of Ram and very fast processors or it simply does not work properly.

Microsoft seems to love stealing Mac features. It is a shame they can't work out how to nick the speed and reliability from OSX.

 

[Rhalliwell1]

So the first 5 minutes of using vista = oh, thats cool.

do you think Microsoft will do a follow up after 6 months?

Didn't think so.

Edit: go and watch the video at 7 across 4 down. Its a chap who is asked to describe vista in 3 words. he only manages to say 2...... hmmm.

 

[ogee]

So basically this ad proves that MS lies to potential users.



Thats something new isn't it!

 

[Flobber88]

Part of the problem is that Vista ISN'T that bad, but it certainly wasn't as good as people were expecting. It feels more like XPII than a whole new OS. And after five years in development, people were expecting more. Certainly there were some MS Fanbois who thought that with Vista MS would surpass Mac for usability and "cool". Didn't happen.

When Leopard came out in October, I got the sense that there were a lot of people disappointed with it as well, because it didn't meet their expectations from all the rumors and gossip flying around prior to its release.

I have mixed feelings about MS and Windows, but every time there is a rumor/news about MS on this site and I see the large number of negatives I just

 

[zombitronic]

When have you ever seen a company put down one of its products (which end users still prefer to your new product) and try to fool you into loving the new product?

June 9, 2008.

I got to see how slow my original iPhone is.

 

[lamadude]

I like working on my vista computer just as much as working on my macbook. Everything seems faster (dare I say "snappier?" ) and I prefer the taskbar over the dock. Of course Leopard has its upsides as well, but I think that some users on this forum are just like the people in the ad, hating vista without ever really giving it a fair chance.

 

[K3mp]

I just re-watched it and one guy said "It does things you could only dream on on the Mac". Also one person is a bit to dramatic about the ratings. Just about all of them cut the Mac down.

 

[nomar383]

I had vista ultimate on one of my desktops for about an hour before switching to XP again. I had sufficient system specs and I actually didn't need any additional drivers. I was also very surprised at how simple network printer sharing was. However, the UAC was so incredibly annoying that I couldn't stand it. I know I could turn it off, but what happens when I really need it?

That said, I used vista on my buddy's laptop (which was designed for vista and came with it preinstalled). In this case, I found it very much usable and stable. It looked nice and after an hour it didn't prompt me one time for the UAC (I think it was still on too). I've heard it gets better after using it for a few hours as it learns what is and isn't okay.

Keeping my experience with Vista in mind, I still prefer to come home to my Leopard machine at the end of the day. After working with Windows 2000 and 512mb of RAM all day at work, my leopard desktop (in my sig) is like a vacation. XP is still very good (especially since SP3) and it will remain on all of my dual boot machines until I am forced to change.

 

[BenRoethig]

If I was not already using OS X, these commercials would not convince me to switch to Vista. At all. All they cared about was how pretty it looked. And how nice the new box looked.

Unfortunately that seems to be all the newer crop of Mac users care about.

For traditional windows users on a newer machine, this might have some validity. A lot of Vista's problems come from Microsoft completely being very liberal with the system requirements. A lot of users upgraded but really didn't have the specs to do so. From there on in you're looking at a prettier version of XP with some pirated Mac features thrown in. For a user who had only used windows, Vista may seem more familiar. Trying to use my mac, my mother had a hard time doing things like remember which side to close the windows on, how to eject disks, finding applications, etc. Then again for a long time Mac users, the features that are missing or copysoft couldn't quite scan right make the difference for me.

 

[daveporter]

but I think that some users on this forum are just like the people in the ad, hating vista without ever really giving it a fair chance.

Actually, I have had quite a lot of experience with Vista. Before making the switch to OS X, we objectively evaluated Vista, OS X and Linux (Ubantu) for use at our company (which I own). We conducted the evaluation when it became clear that if we planned to stay with Microsoft products in the future, we were going to have to make the move to Vista at some point. Moving to Vista would have required us to essentially purchase all new hardware since our computers were all about 4 years old. We decided that if we were going to have to make a move to new hardware anyway, then we should take a look at all the options that have become viable since the last time we refreshed our computer systems.

It would take too much time and effort to go into all the details, but the bottom line for our company was that OS X provided the best overall total cost of ownership, it was favored by our staff over the other alternatives, and we, the management, felt that OS X offered much better security (which was a major concern to us) then Microsoft solutions.

It is now over a year since we made the final transition and we could not be happier. OS X was everything we hoped it would be. That is not to say that our solution is the right solution for every firm or person, it may not be. However, my guess is that in most cases OS X would be the best choice in most cases.

In fact, since we made the move, a number of other firms that we joint venture and partner with have also made the move to OS X. We never tried to sell them on the idea, they came to it on their own when their staff interacted with ours during normal work tasks. Often, one of our partner's staff members bought their own MacBook and brought it to work and that infected the rest of the staff who demanded that the management take a look at OS X. That led to the wholesale conversion. That says a lot about a computer platform in my opinion.

Dave

 

[jackc]

Couldn't this cause some people to think, "wow, so they're admitting Vista got all this bad press, which I wasn't even really aware of, now they want me to forget about it"

 

[imacericg]

But they are only being subjected to 10-15min of Vista. Of course the people are showing them everything cool about it.

Users who have to use it day in and day out are the ones complaining.

Its almost like their pulling double trick.

Will apple respond? "Hi, I am a Mac, Hi, I am a 5min-demo of Vista"

 

[ikir]

One word, try for yourself. (actually, 3 words )


I don't even know how you do this comparison, what are the standard you use then? just subjective "good? bad? ok?"

$399 laptop, sure, maybe Apple's high priced product line gets you too much so you have doubt about cheap ones

My $399 laptop:
Acer Aspire 3680
1.6Ghz Celeron M
120GB HDD
512MB RAM (I updated it to 1G)
1280x768
GMA950

Its probably a refurbished product since I actually found out the HDD is 120GB (in specs, it should be 80GB)....

Vista sucks, stop it. I wrked on a P$ 3Ghz and 4GB ram and it was slow and crap. 1,6Ghz cpu on a crappy mb? LOL

 

[clevin]

Vista sucks, stop it. I wrked on a P$ 3Ghz and 4GB ram and it was slow and crap.

How about stop making false statement like this?

 

[scifijunkie]

Accept or Deny

I finally had to register for this thread. Vista may be usable. It may even have its good points. But install it in an office full of average users and see how long they love it. First goes the UAC, because you just don't want to hear about that all day every day for the rest of your IT life. That program in XP that used to open .tiff documents? It's gone. Now you get to explain to all the users how to read their old scanned files without Microsoft Office Document Imaging. I love the comment in the video where the user says, "I love gadgets!" In the normal office environment, who sees the desktop? Oh, you can set your windows to not overlap your gadgets, but only if you have a wide-screen monitor or you enjoy scroll bars.

All the things these first impression people love about "mojave" are the same things everybody loves about Vista the first day. The next day one user asked me if I could turn off the grow/shrink on the windows, because it was making her motion sick. All of a sudden the "cool" starts wearing off and they realize they have to use this thing every day.

On the plus side, 1 1/2 years in, our software companies are starting to support Vista.

 

[TheSlush]

Air?

Are any of these ads going to air on television?

 

[mustang_dvs]

I wonder who convinced Microsoft that an "It's not as bad as you think" campaign was the best move.

IMHO, damage control ad campaigns tend to waste money -- it's akin to trying to answer the "Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?" question.

 

[glennyboiwpg]

This experiment is flawed...

I think this experiment was a good idea EXCEPT for one thing....


I've been reading alot of articles on the failings of vista and one of the major "reasons" for vistas shortcommings is bad drivers.

So you have a company making computers, and they slap components into the machine and the componets could be garbage and then the vista experence will almost for surely be bad.

But also even if you have good componets you could have bad drivers, (old drivers for the devices because it's "cheaper" for companys to include those, rather then the latest/greatest/best tested)


So my problem with this experiment is that so MS takes a computer, ensures that the hardware/drivers are all great and wonderful and then does this experiment.

Is that kind of flawed?

A better experiment would be if they picked up 10 random machines, with 10 random configs from 10 random distributes and then did this experiment.

THAT would have been more real.

But thats just me.