http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/In this new Microsoft marketing campaign, 140 people were asked to rate Windows Vista. Not surprisingly, considering the OS's reputation, the ratings were quite low - I believe the average was 4.4/10. Then these same people were sat down in front of a computer running Vista SP2, but were told that they were using a new OS called Mojave. After a short while, users were asked to rate Mojave. Average rating was 8.5/10. The logical conclusion is that most of Vista's problems are based on bad reputation and customer ignorance.
Of course, as always, it's not a perfect experiment. The computer used was an HP Pavillion DV2000 Notebook with 2 GB RAM. This particular model, when sold in electronics retail stores, comes with only 1GB RAM, meaning that if the test subjects went out and bought the same model computer at BestBuy with Vista, the experiences they had in the lab would be significantly different than the experiences they had at home. Additionally, once they get home, they may try to hook Vista to an old printer and run into many of the compatibility problems that kept them away from Vista in the first place.
Another problem with the experiment was the design of the experiment itself. Almost all the users were reluctant to rate Mojave, because they wanted more time to evaluate it outside the lab. The ratings they did give were fairly high, probably because they were guided through the demonstrations in a controlled environment. Again, when they experimented at home on their own, they may have found that what they wanted to do was more difficult or less intuitive or just not possible.
Finally, it has been suggested that there may be meta-flaws in this experiment. Who knows what kind of computer experience the test subjects had? Who knows if they weren't actually paid actors?
As an interesting sidenote, Microsoft has been developing a new web technology called Silverlight, that is supposed to directly compete with Adobe Flash. The Mojave Experiment website is done completely in Flash.
Probably the most useful thing we can learn from this experiment is that marketing forces have a lot more effect on opinions and economic decisions than we usually admit. Although I personally believe Vista is an inferior product, because I've used it and didn't like it, there are apparently some people out there who don't like it but have never tried it. It's entirely possible that Vista really has gotten a bad rap which is largely undeserved. And that might count for a lot more than stability, user interface, system design, and security. Which is in a way sad.
FYI - the website specifically states that Vista is compatible with over 2000 printers. OSX Leopard ships with built-in support for over 3000 printers, a number that does not include separately available drivers (which probably means that it supports closer to 5000 printers).
