Not surprisingly, Microsoft's recent "blind taste test" of Windows Vista has yielded the kind of PR bonanza that Microsoft couldn't beg, borrow or steal just a few weeks ago. This week, the company released a slew of videos showing some of the 140 consumers videotaped in San Francisco using Vista for the first time. But the users weren't told they were using Vista, as they were selected specifically because they believed that Vista wasn't any good. Instead, these people believed they were using a future Windows version, codenamed Windows "Mojave."
The comments made by these individuals are emblematic of the problems Microsoft now faces when it tries to market Vista to a world that, apparently, has already made up its mind about the OS. "I heard negative things; I never tried it myself," one woman says. "I wouldn't touch the thing." "It's horrible, it has so many problems." "I've heard nothing but bad things about Vista, really." On and on it goes. On a scale from 1 to 10, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4, Microsoft says.
Then, the users were shown "Mohave" and walked through (Vista) features like backup and restore, parental controls, recording TV, and making DVD movies. The comments changed dramatically "Wow!" "I like that security feature." (Breathlessly) "That's great." "It's awesome." "Really cool." "It's really impressive." "It's totally different from what I heard it would be like." "It's an awesome program, but you have to see it for yourself." The average rating after the hands-on demonstration was 8.5. "Many would have rated it higher, but they wanted more time to play with it themselves," Microsoft notes.
Most tellingly, perhaps, not one of the 140 participants rated Vista lower than their initial pre-rating after having actually used the OS. And fully 94 percent of respondents rated Vista more highly.
The best part of this experiment, of course, is when the participants were told that they were really using Windows Vista. "Really?" one man asks, incredulously. Mouths literally drop. Laughter ensues. "Son of a gun," one man says. "You got me."
Perhaps. Or perhaps it was Apple with its often questionable anti-Vista advertising. Perhaps it was the under-qualified but pontificating tech pundits who bashed Vista incessantly. Or maybe it was, to be fair, Microsoft's months of silence on this issue. By doing nothing for so long, Microsoft has only exacerbated the problem.
Criticisms aside, Microsoft is finally fighting back. Finally. Turns out, all it had to do--go figure--is show people what Vista is really like. What a concept.
You can check out the videos on the Mohave Experiment Web site.
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Also my other concern is how realistic are the features they demoed, specifically backup/restore and recording tv. One would assume the computers were already setup and configured with the tv signal coming in. Would my mom really be able to get that working? I know the media center interface is really nice so thats not a problem, just getting people to that interface is the problem. Also I've had Vista since the first week it was out and I do need to try the backup feature, I have no idea where its found or how to work it. I work in IT and have not come across this yet. I also have a mac at home and time machine while frivolous in its looks is dead simple to use.
So all in all I think Microsoft could knock it out of the park if they just moved this beyond a 10-20 minute product demo.
Jaxbulls July 30, 2008 (Article Rating: