 |
|
| CURRENT SECTION :: News | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
|
 |
Are you a Vista user? Think back on all the problems you’ve had with it. Well, they’re all in your imagination, apparently. In a bizarre new marketing campaign, Microsoft has set out to show the world that Vista’s actually fine – and we’d all love it, if only we’d give it the benefit of the doubt. Apparently its plummeting reputation is merely due to a series of misconceptions. Writing in his blog, Microsoft product “evangelist” James O’Neill wrote: "Unless this is the first post you've read here, you'll know that I like Windows Vista, not because I work for Microsoft, but on its own merits. You'll also know that I'm convinced that a lot (not all, but a lot) of negative perception about Vista is down to ignorance and problems of a bad press.” To combat this, the software giant took 140 computer users, who had apparently never seen or used the operating system in the 18 months since its launch, and let them play around with it. But instead of telling them they were using Vista, it told them it was a prototype of a whole new operating system, codenamed Mojave. And hey - guess what? Apparently they really liked it. According to Microsoft’s research, published online at www.mojaveexperiment.com, the 140 participants gave “Mojave” an average rating of 8.4 out of 10 after the demo, against an average score for Vista of 4.4. However, Microsoft haven’t released crucial information about the demo, such as the degree to which the demo systems were “tuned up” prior to being shown to the public, prompting questions of the legitimacy of the experiment. Microsoft also added that a number of respondents said they “would have rated it higher”, but wanted more time to play around with it on their own, prompting questions as to how much autonomy the participants were given in the experiment. As CUK reported last month, increasing numbers of disgruntled Vista users are downgrading after becoming frustrated with its constant “are you sure?” nags and its many compatibility problems. But some analysts have defended it, saying that Microsoft is at least partially right in its assertion that Vista is not entirely to blame for its poor image. “They are correct in saying there's been a lot of bad publicity out there about Vista,” said Laura Didio, research fellow at the Yankee Group. “This is one way to combat it." Gartner analyst Stephen Kleynhans added: "[Vista is] a lot better than most people think it is. Particularly when you look at the product as it exists now, with Service Pack 1 and everything else to it, it's actually not a bad platform. For a lot of consumers and a lot of folks who have modern hardware, it is a pretty good choice." It is also true to say that while the confirmation screens and locked-down user interface may be annoying for experienced users who are used to XP’s hands-off approach, they have gone a long way to alleviate the spyware problems that have plagued previous versions. Microsoft’s own research claims that Vista users are 60% less likely to be infected with malware than users running XP SP2. In any case, it seems the writing may be on the wall for Windows in the long term. Last week, the Software Development Times reported it had seen internal Microsoft documents that outline the roadmap for a successor to Windows. The new OS, codenamed Midori, envisages an age of cloud computing, and is likely to be a radical departure from the existing Windows architecture. Instead of the traditional model of a single PC hosting all of a user’s applications and documents, the new system will reflect the increasing tendency for users to alternate among a number of different devices. Graham Taylor Aug 5, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
|
|
  |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| All content © Contractor UK Limited | http://www.contractoruk.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1[Register for News Letter] | [Privacy Statement] | [Terms of Use] | [Top of Page] |