I might be aging myself a little here, but I’m sure we all remember the old Folgers commercials where the premium coffee is switched with the much maligned Folgers instant. Microsoft did something similar recently in San Francisco to some folks who held a negative view of Windows Vista. They asked 140 non-Vista consumers to try out a version of a new OS Microsoft is working on codenamed Mohave. Before the demo the average rating (1 to 10) for Vista was 4.4, and after the demo the rating for Mohave was 8.5. Unfortunately for all the haters, the fact is that Mohave is Vista.
It’s no big surprise to me. I’ve talked to plenty of people who have a negative opinion of Vista who have never used the OS. Then you’ve got the folks who have been using the same arguments recyled from the Windows XP days, and yet XP is now “the good old OS”. I don’t think you can discount the Apple switcher adds either. If you know me, you know that I’m not a Windows zealot. I’ve even been known to run Linux on one of my home PCs, but I don’t think the case has been made that XP is still a better bet than Vista. Especially now that Vista has been out for over a year and a half, and we’re not seeing the compatability issues that were experienced at its launch.
To me, a huge part of the problem with Vista is an image thing. The Apple marketing team does such a good job at marketing the Mac. They make it look like the cool kid everyone wants to hang around with, and Windows looks like some reject whose mom dresses him funny so he ends up writing a tech blog and never having any girlfriends or fun. But I digress.
The bottom line is that too many times conclusions are drawn without knowing all the facts. This is applicable to a wide range of topics (climate change, energy policy, beer selection), and it’s just as applicable to the Vista question.
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