

Vista Blind Taste Test - mattmaroon
http://mojaveexperiment.com/

======
eznet
Lame. Watch the individual videos:

\- a lot of MS:"this is really vista." pawn:"really?"

\- a lot of MS:"Here, let ME show you _randomGadget_" pawn:"huh. wow."

One thing I notice is what few actual pawn responses are given, seem to be
coming from people who either a) have never touched or seen Vista aside from
this 5-10 min DEMO or b) have never touched or seen a computer aside from this
5-10 min demo or a kiosk at their local mall... Again, this is DEMOED by a MS
rep - these pawns don't even get to touch the box or use Vista...

Vista looks pretty at first - thats about it - and that really all that is
required to convince people that an OS's UI looks friendly with just an
glance. The real trick is taking the OS home, putting it on your box and
continuing to like it after the novelty wears off - exactly what did not
happen. Instead, countless people, MS fans and haters alike, obtained Vista,
installed and used Vista and then decided they did not like it.

I was really excited about Vista - until I used it for about 2 weeks... Then I
became tired of the excessive boot times, the sluggish performance on app load
and the general bugginess of it all - on my new dual core 2.4 ghz, 2GB
machine... Then I installed Vista, run XP virtually and could not be
happier... I have booted Vista several times over the past couple years to
update and try it again - always go back to Linux...

But thats just this pawn's experience.

~~~
unalone
Precisely why this campaign is so shady. They're replacing glam for glam. It's
nothing you can actually get an accurate reading from.

------
joseakle
Is it really a blind test? I can't see any results. The video begins like an
advertisement, continues like and advertisement, i'm not sure i can trust it,
it doesn't look like it was done by an independent company.

I'd love to see the results of a usability test between OSX, various flavors
of Linux, and varios versions of Windows. Asking first time users to acheive
simple tasks like sending and reading email, using the web, storing and
sharing pictures and listening to music.

~~~
nailer
Exactly. A proper test would have a control group - perhaps Windows XP with a
different theme.

Also the applications wouldn't be selected for a particular outcome, eg,
running on Vista.

~~~
eznet
I think that misses the point of this MARKETING CAMPAIGN ;) They don't want a
real study, they just want something SHINY to show people...

~~~
unalone
Sounds like V-er, Mojave itself...

------
theantidote
Great. I can see positive responses that a person may have to a demonstration
of Vista by a trained salesperson.

We have no idea how many thousands of people Microsoft had to go through in
order to elicit these few positive responses.

I work in IT and Vista is just a major headache. It's fine once you get used
to it and turn off all the flashy features, but at that point it's hard to see
the difference between it and XP. There are a lot of changes for the sake of
change, and many of them hurt usability a lot. For example, the old Network
Connections control panel has been changed and hidden multiple mouse-clicks
deep for no real reason. What if I want to enable a network adapter? There's
no easy way to do it!

Maybe the next version of Windows will bring real changes that make sense,
rather than slapping a pretty face on an old OS and changing things around
just enough so people don't notice it's the same thing.

------
mattmaroon
Gotta give it to MS, this one is brilliant from an advertising perspective. As
so many pointed out here, it isn't valid science, but it isn't meant to be. It
points out that people expect Vista to suck from what they read, but when they
try it they actually like it.

Could this be the start of Microsoft finally not sucking at advertising?

~~~
unalone
Nah. It was pointed out already that this is the same idea that Gerber tried
with its "real people" foods a while ago. It's a clever idea, but it doesn't
spread enough via word-of-mouth to actually negate negative feelings.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm guessing MS is planning on spreading this by a lot more than word of
mouth. They're launching a humongous national campaign in all forms of media,
on which they'll probably spend more than the entire worth of Gerber.

I can't even find any info on this Gerber Real People (though I only tried
searching for that) but my guess is they have little or no similarity. And
there are plenty of viral ads that actually did work, including one by
Microsoft promoting Halo.

~~~
unalone
But that one worked because people liked the looks of Halo to begin with. You
can't get around a common mentality by pointing that mentality out. People
don't change that logically.

------
Hexstream
In case anyone's wondering, the site is registered to Microsoft. But anyway
the presentation is so shiny it's obvious it's an ad. (From the _stating the
obvious_ dept.)

------
MoeDrippins
This is a no more a blind "taste test" than if Pepsi hadn't allowed their
pawns to actually sip the cola, but just described to them how good it was.
Ridiculous in the extreme.

------
rainface
Didn't the 'blind taste testers' realize the OS was running slow as molasses?

~~~
unalone
"Slow" isn't a problem when it's a new install. Given a completely new
installation, Vista looks nice. So the marketing is deceptively pointing out a
deception.

