Once Tricked into Using It, Users Like Vista
"I hate Diet Coke."
"Here, try this new soda!"
"Wow, it's great!"
"That was Diet Coke!"
"Ooops!"
In a similar move, Microsoft took Windows XP fans and showed them a new OS, "Mojave." What's interesting is that this "new" OS wasn't really new at all...
Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.
"Oh wow," said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.
Yep, but they were spared a few things: finding drivers, application compatibility, Vista-capable PCs that run the OS sluggishly at best. Let's do another test and add that to the mix, and see what kind of response we get then.We're not going on an all out we hate Vista rant here. In fact, we use the OS in the HH labs for testing and benchmarks, sometimes under some fairly rigorous requirements. However, setting up a controlled sample test and calling it something that is supposed to be compared to broad market appeal, just isn't right. It appears Microsoft needs to ease up on the marketing kool-aide and work on sound research practices of their target user base.
