The Mojave Experiment

Microsoft got a little creative in trying to figure out what is wrong with Vista. They found out what I think is also true for most about the economy - most of the issues are perception rather than based in reality. Unfortunately, perception always becomes reality. But check this out. It is time to not only look at Vista - it is time to be using it. Shame on you if you are a partner and still running XP. Shame on some of me too because we are not completely migrated internally yet. Still a lot of old machines (I am cheap) that don't have the horsepower. But all that do and all new machines are firmly running Vista including all 5 of my work and personal boxes. (does that make me an addict?) Check out the details on this experiement:

There was a financial analyst webcast last week and an exciting new marketing/pr initiative called the Windows Mojave Experience www.mojaveexperiment.com was shown. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to share it broadly – it is a very clever way of starting to think about how we can change perceptions on our flagship product.

In short, a focus group of Mac, Linux, or legacy Windows users who had low perceptions of Vista were shown a demonstration of a new operation system codenamed “Mojave” – when in fact it was Vista. The results were amazing: of the 120 respondents polled, on a scale of 1:10 where 10 was the highest rating, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4. After they saw the demo, respondents rated Mojave an average of 8.5. It clearly shows, that many of our challenges on Vista are now perception based.

This experiment offers us a great proof point. Vista really is not an issue - it is a bad perception and press that is the issue. Yes it requires the right hardware but the time in now to make the move!