The Microsoft Mojave Experiment
Microsoft gets a bunch of people in a room with negative impressions of Vista (and no previous experience) and shows them what they think is the next version of Windows. Microsoft asks them for feedback and opinions. Everyone is "wow'd" except for one skeptical guy. Most of the ABMers and Apple fanboys out there are poo-poo'ing this new approach saying it really ignores the problems with Vista and blames the users for what is really a substandard product. I couldn't disagree more ... Microsoft has been more than forthcoming about some of the shortfalls in our bringing Vista to the marketplace (hardware requirements, application compatibility, etc), and we've done many things to address these issues. However, the plain, hard truth of the matter is that Vista is a very secure, high-quality product that performs very well in many environments. This truth is lost on many in the general population due to what have been some very effective (and unaddressed) Apple ads of which I'm sure you're all aware (the Mac guy versus the PC guy). Trying to remake a Vista "first impression" will be difficult, but needs to be done ... hopefully the biggest mistake in the Vista release - allowing a competitor to falsely label the product with misinformation - will be a lesson well learned for the next time around.
