Microsoft's "Mojave Experiment" Teaser Site Goes Live 464
MojoKid writes "Earlier this week, Microsoft was reported to be arranging a kind of 'blind taste test' to get die-hard Windows XP users to try Vista. They were told that they were trying a new OS, called Mojave. The report went on to suggest that users liked the OS, though they were actually running Vista. Now it appears Microsoft has put up a
teaser site, with
plans to show the actual video footage next week. Though the footage should at least have some entertainment
value, it would be a bit of a reach to expect that the test methodologies were
real-world enough such that users had to deal with things like user account
control, driver updates, and broad application compatibility."
Hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
They were probably running on top of the range hardware as well, a grahics card with 1GB of RAM, system with 4GB of RAM and a Quad core processor etc.. most people accept that Vista looks nicer, but looks are not everything to those who have to use their computer every day for work.
Would have been funny if they tried to do this when Vista was first released and one of the tests was 'delete a file' :p
Re-education center (Score:2, Insightful)
You see all it requires is for users to be re-educated and they will love Vista. The same way that if only goverments could re-educate the voters they'd have nothing to gripe about.
Seems desperate (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a bad move by Microsoft. It only makes them seem desperate. By making this viral campaign, they openly admit that vista so far has failed in the consumer market.
This campaign really focus on the wrong issues. The main complaints over vista has never been that it isn't shiny and dazzling enough. The problems was that it makes older hardware painfully slow, the UAC annoyance, incompatible drivers etc. These are not things that a user notices in a 10 minute demo. This campaign shows nothing.
Re:Only Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't they give the users multiple flavors of the most colorful operating systems they never tried (Vista, OSX, Kubuntu, etc) and ask them which one they liked best?
Why? Oh I don't know really.. Maybe because Microsoft doesn't want to publish something that says that users like Mac OS X best?
They have a point (Score:3, Insightful)
75% of the whiners haven't ever installed it, and the other 25% tried to put it on a 6 year old budget "Dude I got Dell" computer the first month after it went public.
I don't even think there is even a dead horse anymore to beat. You guys are just masterbating now.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
(with each driver being run having been fully audited by microsoft, and everything tested beforehand to make sure it works)
So kind of like an Apple? Do something that everyone raves about, but get put down for it. Sounds fair to me.
Re:Hardware (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Vista isnt that bad really. (Score:5, Insightful)
yet my powerbook G4 from 2003 can run an OS with all the features of Aero, shadows, full screen , semi transparent menus etc just fine. You could install ubuntu with full compiz functionality on the same hardware as you have now.
Aero shouldn't require a third of the resources that it does, and should run just fine on your laptop. The fact that it doesn't is indicative of Vista's poor design.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that Microsoft would actually go through the trouble of "stacking the deck"? The very same Microsoft whose presentations are famous with the likes of Bill Gates plugging in a scanner and getting the BSOD in front of the whole planet? To suggest this would suggest that Microsoft has learned from their mistakes which I find unlikely. In order to learn from your mistakes, you have to first admit to yourself that you even MADE a mistake which is not something Microsoft is known for doing. In fact, this whole exercise is about trying to say "you guys are all just prejudiced against Vista! You never gave it a fair chance!" rather than admitting to themselves that Vista is a mistake and that cutting off WindowsXP is an even bigger one.
sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
I cant say this really suprised me. Seems like people foam at the mouth if you start talking about vista just because its from microsoft.
I work with a guy who really prides himself as being an tech god. We were looking at laptops because we both needed one, and of course all of them had vista. I was treated to him bitching how he couldnt find one without it. I asked why he didnt like it and he simply said it was because of all the problems people were having. I asked if it was the fluffy interface or the driver problems or even just the new-ish interface. He simply grunted it was because of all of it and said he never actulay tried it yet. I later learned he hasnt even had the chance to sit down and watch someone use it 0_o I think a huge chunk of people are like this, and it makes me die inside a little every time I hear it.
If your someone who isnt really a big geek I can understand the attitude. Of couse if your a IT person and your too lazy or retarded to simply find a fix for it and go on with your life, you should just grow up.
That being said, I use XP and I intend to as long as I can. If I have to change I will, and I wont be bitching the whole way down that road.
Re:Hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Make the fsckers run it on a 2.4 GHz P4 with 256 MB RAM.
Hands-off experience with an OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a hands-off experience with an OS is like examining a car in the showroom: its mileage is just great as long as you don't start the engine.
In addition, my guess is that that Microsoft ensured favourable test conditions (top-of-the-line hardware, plenty of Ram, hardware graphics acceleration, and a nice clean install without crapware).
This "Mojave" demonstration might be good publicity though, but only as long as people don't start to question what exactly was shown and whether or not Microsoft provided unrealistically favourable test conditions. For one thing seems pretty obvious: Microsoft didn't use a $498 Dell computer from Wallmart as a test platform.
Re:They have a point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only Vista? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because that question is irrelevant. This isn't about trying to convince people who don't use Windows to use Windows, or about trying to convince people that Windows is the best OS ever. The message Microsoft is going for is simple: "If you like XP, you'll like Vista too."
(And I happen to agree with them: I'm not particularly fond of Windows, but having used Vista, I can't see where all the hate is coming from. My personal ranking is Linux > OS X > Vista > XP.)
Rest assured, it's like the coke tests (Score:5, Insightful)
You remember the coke ads where the "randomly selected" participants invariably chose coke over the other brand? No, really? What did you think you see, a "representative average"? Or just the ones that actually chose coke, no matter whether that was 90 or 10 percent of the people "tested"?
It's like those "interviews" where they try to show just how dumb the average Joe is. Go out on the street with a world map and let people point out Iraq. Sure, 90% might find it, but when you only show the 10% who search for ages and finally point to India or even Florida, you "show" just how dumb the population is.
But let's for a moment assume that yes, 90 percent of their participants said that Vista is nice. Ok, it is. Hey, it sure looks great. Especially when you offer nothing to compare it to. Give someone who's hungry a Hamburger and he'll tell you it's great. Especially when you don't offer him some steak at the same time.
Re:Hands-off experience with an OS (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see the purpose behind this kind of test - it's very, very popular to hate Vista even though there are very few actual problems with the OS (especially since SP1). We switched to Vista at work right after it came out and while there were a few rough edges to start with, I never felt like going back to XP. Vista is simply better in every way except performance on low-end systems.
Of course, with the anti-Vista hatefest still going on, there's little Microsoft can do but try new marketing approaches to get that message across. They're hardly running out of money, after all. Unfortunately this means that Windows 7 will likely be Vista with a new name and some of the rough edges smoothed out, to pull the same trick as the "Mojave Experiment" - give Vista a different name and people might like it.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
I just did another downgrade from Vista to XP this week. A friend bought a brand new PC from Wal-Mart with Vista on it. He couldn't stand the fact that his 5-year-old machine at work running XP was more responsive than his brand new Vista box.
He wanted the downgrade bad enough that he traded me several XBox games to do the work. That is saying something right there. When I asked him if he liked the features on Vista he looked at me quizzically and scratched his head.
Never let bling interfere with usability. The "ooh, shiny" of fancy graphics and widgets lasts only a moment. On the other hand, usability issues will become increasingly frustrating over time.
I've never understood this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
My (limited) Vista experience is on a laptop with Celeron CPU, 1Gb RAM and Intel graphics.
It seemed to run just fine to me, Aero included.
I wounldn't have Vista for other reasons but maybe Microsoft is right - people like you need to take a second look.
Well? What's the Plan? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
vista works fine (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a lot of difficulty matching my Vista experience with the meme. People seem remarkably enthusiastic to dismiss the OS and complain about lack of compatibility and sluggishness in particular. My impression was going 64 bit bordered on masochism.
Having started out on SP1 with common, modern hardware, I have none of these apparently certain problems - indeed the reverse has held true. Vista boots noticeably faster and is much more snappy in use. All of my hardware had Vista drivers. I can't see why MS bothered with the 32bit version since 64 happily runs everything I've thrown at it. UAC was a nuisance for the first week but experienced users can revert to a proper account management and novices can get some of it's security from UAC.
I can see why businesses are sticking with XP. There isn't justification to risk any headaches. There's not enough value for home users with XP already on their machines. Advanced users may have specific reason [wikipedia.org] to avoid it even on new machines.
It's fully justified to critisise MS for releasing a product that fails to push us substantially further forward than the 5 years+ since XP. But for Joe home user buying a new PC, I think the tech enthusiast community are doing them a disservice with our Vista vitriol. We encourage them to decide between Vista or XP, and to pick the weaker of the two. The choice should be Vista or Linux.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
"More than likely, they're buying a new computer and it will come with Vista. Which, by the way, will probably be well tested so that there are no driver issues."
while it is true that I'm not up to speed on the status of vista patches (don't use any windows boxes myself), of the few people I know that have received vista on new pc's, the drivers have been one of the primary causes of their grief, even though they came with vista and were 'vista certified' laptops.
and as for installing the os themselves, I imagine a lot of people do when their box eventually gets hosed, which lets face it, in the overall life of a windows box will happen at some stage (be it six months, or five years, away)
Re:Long wall of other people's writing for you. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'm going to call you on these - but first, some background.
When Vista came out, I didn't immediately jump onto it - I had no need, I was using Macs exclusively at home and XP exclusively at work, I had no spare time to 'play' with an OS.
In the past year my work role changed drastically - I was no longer the legacy systems developer that I had been for 5 years, I was moving into infrastructure support - so I decided it was time to buy a Windows laptop (Windows on bootcamp is not really decent for heavy usage, Apple haven't done a stellar job with the drivers).
So I went out and bought an XPS M1530 - 2GB ram, Core2Duo T7500. It came with Vista Home Premium. SP1 got put on as soon as the laptop hit my desk.
My first thought was 'Ok, get the drivers for XP and lets install XP Pro'. Only I didn't have the time, so I put it off. And then I kept finding other things to do, so it kept getting put off.
Until, eventually, it was several months later and I realised that Vista wasn't living up to its Slashdot hype - it wasn't getting in my way, I didn't have a slow system, it wasn't crashing, none of my apps were having issues, UAC was staying out of my way and only making an appearance when I *expected* it to make an appearance etc etc. In short, I sat back and realised there wasn't any reason for me to actually go back to XP Pro.
So here I sit, XPS in front of me, iMac on its pedistool over on one corner of the desk, Macbook Pro on another pedistool on the other corner of the desk, and a Dell Vostro 200 sat under the desk running Windows Server 2008 Standard. And I couldn't be happier.
Now, to address your points:
So, sorry but your assertion that 'Problems with Vista that you notice very quickly (but not in 10 minutes)' haven't yet applied to myself after several months of usage.
Now, its sad but all I am expecting in reply to this is the standard 'M$ shill' response - I'm no shill, just someone that hasn't had a problem.
Double oops (Score:4, Insightful)
This campaign has two problems:
1. It wrecks the illusion that Microsoft believes "Vista is the most successful Windows release ever". Have you seen them talk about Vista in public? They cite sales statistics and call it their most well received release ever. Why then do that campaign in the first place, and that late into the cycle?
2. Microsoft underestimated the power of technical users forming the opinion of their less technical friends, clients, family. The marketing of Vista (the "wow" begins now and so on) was targeted to the non-technical folks, while ignoring to address the concerns raised by the more technical people they communicate with on a daily basis. This campaign fails in that as well, so it'll have a very minimal effect on Vista's PR.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only Vista? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is? How? Vista Explorer actually reminds me of Linux file explorers more than previous versions did. Sure, it's no match for Konqueror/Nautilus/Thunar/Rox, but it's not bad. It does seem slower in file operations than XP explorer.
Re:Hands-off experience with an OS (Score:1, Insightful)
Saying that Vista has "a few rough edges" is a bit of an understatement. A good number of these have since been smoothed out, but there are a lot of issues that still remain.
Just a few examples...
The sheer number of things that have been moved around, rearranged, or renamed for absolutely no good reason.
An even more inconsistent interface than Windows XP had, with even more stuff that moves around or hides itself and appears sparodically for no apparent reason.
UAC. Nothing wrong with it in theory, but even Windows itself keeps triggering it far too often. You should be able to run the system, including performing routine maintainence, without ever seeing a UAC prompt. You can do that with Mac OS X, and you can mostly do that with Linux. You can not do that with Vista. It just conditions people to ignore it and hit "OK".
On the theme front, there's virtually no visible difference between the active window, and background windows.
Completely crazy layouts of the control panel, with a mixture of new embedded control panels, new control panels that run in a separate window, and older Windows XP style applets that run in a separate window. Particularly the display settings, which occupy at least three separate screens of different types.
The menu systems for setting up things like networking is insane. Some crucial settings, like the ability to actually change network settings, are hidden five levels deep.
While we're at it, wireless networking is too hard to manage unless the default settings just happen to work perfectly, and you're not using any kind of encryption. Yes, it's an improvement over XP, but what isn't? I've used Linux machines that were easier to get working on a wireless network, and Mac OS X just blows it out of the water.
I can keep going. Granted, I have an even longer list of problems with XP, simply because I've used it for far longer. Many of those still apply to Vista though.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
When I first got my hands on a Vista machine, I was a little excited. I had tried out some betas, but they didn't work very well (surprise, beta). I worked under the assumption that they had fixed up XP, and gave it a pretty skin. Oh, I was so wrong.
So over a year later, I got a new desktop machine at work. Athlon 64 3800+, 2Gb RAM, SATA drive. For giggles, I let it boot up into Vista. It was something like 20 to 30 minutes to get to the desktop, since it was a first boot. From there it was still dog slow. I had my Athlon 2400+ with 1Gb RAM running XP sitting beside it, and the performance difference was really sad.
Luckily, I had already planned to wipe it, and install Slamd64 (a 64bit Linux). That's a very peppy machine now. So much so, that I have VMWare running all the time, with two or three Linux VM's and a WinXP VM (for a work-required program to run).
I'm far from a newbie user, but if I had been, I may have thought computers were always real slow, and that's just the way it is. That's the only people who are going to be really satisfied with Vista, the ones who don't know any better.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
"I see that you don't use any windows boxes yourself. That in itself should disqualify you from judging the merits of Vista."
Just because I personally don't use any windows boxes, does not exclude the possibility I support and fix messed up windows boxes, I have personally seen computers that, for example, could not play the built in windows games when music was playing in media player, and needless to say lots of other weird ass crap. All of which wound up being drivers (primarily) or vista's fault.
In regards to people's boxes eventually getting hosed, I agree, some don't, however of the techies I know, all of them reinstall every year to two years, because it slowly degraded with the crap being installed etc. The last xp box I fixed was not 'dead' however took 20 seconds to load the start menu after the os was fully loaded... with a core 2 duo. admittedly it's usually nowhere near that bad though.
"Are consumer-grade computers even built to last 5 years without experiencing some kind of trouble."
You'd typically lose a hard drive and disc drive by then, otherwise yeah.
"What about driver support? Can I use any scanner I want in linux? Or this no-name wireless card that works just fine in Vista?"
To that I say, can you use any scanner you want in vista? if you answer yes I'd call bullshit, I have a scanner here that xp or vista wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, as for no name wireless cards, last two random non checked cards worked perfectly fine in linux, I know there are still unsupported ones out there, but they are becoming fewer and fewer.
But still, that is not the point, no os (no matter how much it tries) will support every piece of hardware in existence
"If so, how do you think people would react if they had been given a shiny, new OS that, for instance, does not support Itunes?"
depends on how it's handled, on insertion of ipod, if they are presented with gtkpod or some other such program that will handle their ipod needs when plugged in and still complain, then they are being bitchy.
If they want it for the Itunes store, then they have obviously used it on another platform before to get hooked, why not let them continue to use it on that platform, nobody is forcing them to change (though lots of people I see only use itunes for ipods).
I just think you assumed too much about me, which is fair enough considering the amount of idiots on slashdot is non trivial. Linux is not without it's problems, anyone would be insane not to say that, however they are a different set of problems, and ones that can typically be resolved by the user if enough attention is paid.
Poor test (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly it's Microsoft selecting people, like they select people on their getthefacts site.
Secondly, asking people if they like an operating system... it's not like most people are going to be dicks and say "it sucks" to someone's face. If I was there I'd probably be encouraging and tell them I liked it too, doesn't mean I wouldn't switch from Ubuntu though.
Re:How could they NOT know.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Windows 7 looks exactly like Vista, UI wise... Win98 and 2k looked a lot alike too. So it would make sense.
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
part of new ad campaign (Score:1, Insightful)
Folks, this is advertising. They have a really good ad agency now.
To some extent the damage is done, the Vista 'anticlimax' is somewhat entrenched in people's perceptions. But again they have a good ad agency now and they are going to use all the tools.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
I too have never used Vista. But here's why:
1. System requirements. They are too high. Not that I don't have anything that couldn't support it, I do. But think about it. If all those resources get called upon for use in the OS, what's left over for applications? Furthermore, it's currently pretty rare to have a machine that can have more than 2GB RAM. (Though my laptop can have up to 4GB and one of my workstations has 8GB...I use Linux and can access and allocate every last byte to run applications, unlike Windows.)
2. Business Case. There is none. There's nothing that 'Requires' Vista. Everything that works on Vista, so far, also works on XP. XP, as a follow-up to the first reason, since XP requires less in the way of resources, there's more for applications. And there are plenty of applications that I support in business that DOESN'T WORK in Vista. So truly, there's plenty of reason to stay away from Vista.
Believe me when I say that I was one of Microsoft's original fanboys. I hailed the overtake of Windows networking over Novell. I wore "Start" button t-shirts before Windows95 was released and I ran Chicago beta releases as far back as the first known...(that includes the one that was on the 1.7mb formatted floppies that found its way around on BBSes before the internet was everywhere) I hailed Windows 3.1 as awesome because it unified tedious things like video and print drivers for applications so that each application didn't need to support video cards and printers and you could run more than one program at once. But Microsoft really sold the fans out when they failed to care about quality and stability and began to cater to big media interests by playing their DRM games.
With Linux, at least, you get a LOT more "...than you pay for."
Re:makes you wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
Or I could not upgrade the memory (save $64) and not downgrade the OS (save $500).
Let's see, save $564 dollars, or waste $564 to reconfigure Vista to act like a useful OS...
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
So what's the excuse for selling a product that is unusable as packaged? Especially when the machines in question run perfectly fine with Ubuntu or XP. I know, I bought one. It was literally the slowest computer I ever used in over 20 years... and I never even booted with a half gig of RAM, I put in an extra gig of RAM before I even started it the first time.
The machine (a low-end Gateway) took minutes and minutes to boot. You would double-click to launch Firefox and it would take 30 seconds before you even saw an hourglass... and another 30 seconds before the app would come up. The machine would frequently freeze for several seconds at a time and appear totally locked up. It was unusable by any standard. Given the fact that I told my wife the cheapest machine I could buy would blow her old laptop, which had finally died of old age after some 6 years, out of the water, this was particularly ironic. Of course, the machine runs perfectly fine with Ubuntu, but she eventually asked for XP because of stupid Microsoft requirements for school work, however XP runs perfectly fine too.
Gateway is either insanely stupid or has been cowed by Microsoft to the point where they don't even care about their customers. In any event, the machine is quite nice without that boat-anchor turd of an operating system rendering it completely useless.
Fortunately I had an extra XP license for her, so it wouldn't cost 25% of the machine just to put something on it that actually worked. Microsoft literally has nothing useful to offer. Steve Ballmer could compete better in a Mr. Universe contest or a Shakespearean Acting contest better than Microsoft can compete in the software business. (Of course, in MS fashion, Mr. Ballmer would simply have his competitors arms and legs broken in the first case and faces shot full of novocaine for the second.)
I've seen lots of feedback good and bad, but the best thing I've heard is that it's more stable than XP. In other words, it works as well as the OS that's 7 years old was supposed to. Thanks, Microsoft. Thanks for nothing.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
It was probably an HP.
My HP tablet running Vista took at least 20 minutes to be usable the first time it booted. Wiped it, installed Vista again (from a Dell disk, ironically enough; Dell doesn't ship crapware), and suddenly it's a great little machine.
You can't blame Microsoft for the crapware HP puts on the machine, especially if you were one of those protesting when Microsoft tried to gain more control of the end-user experience.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
.
The $349 Vista Basic desktop at Walmart.com ships with 2 GB RAM
Walmart.com has 30 Vista desktops and 20 Vista desktops that ship with at least 2 GB RAM. 3 or 4 GB is not uncommon. 64-bit Vista is gaining visibility as well.
The 512 MB PC runs XP Home or - wait for it - Linux.
This follows a depressingly familiar pattern. The moment OEM Linux begins to gain some traction, hardware prices fall and the Windows system with eye-popping specs becomes suddenly very affordable.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were talking about a Unix running KDE 3.5.9, those numbers would be 256MB, 384MB and 512MB.
Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
We tried selling them Vista... We tried threatening the VARs and manufacturers... We tried threatening XP users... Now we're gonna fool 'em into buying our operating system!
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
That's actually true for a lot of people, I can't give an scientific estimate but anecdotally a large proportion of the people that I talk to that criticise shooting heroin into their eyeball admit to having never actually used it when queried (some obviously had, and their complaints were valid). It's become socially cool on tech sites and such to bag out shooting heroin into your eyeball without having a shred of experience to back you up, so their test, if conducted properly, could actually yield some interesting results. Of course, it'd be far more interesting if a neutral party conducted similar tests.
You can stare at the specifications for something and make your decision based on that, or you can try using it and see how it works out in reality. A little experience may alter your perspective slighty, not enough to exonerate shooting heroin into your eyeball but enough to notice that only the people with problems speak up in most cases.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
I see that you don't use any windows boxes yourself. That in itself should disqualify you from judging the merits of Vista.
That doesn't make any sense. Did you ever consider the reason he doesn't use Windows is due, in no small part, to the merits of Windows?
how do you think people would react if they had been given a shiny, new OS that, for instance, does not support Itunes? What about driver support? Can I use any scanner I want in linux? Or this no-name wireless card that works just fine in Vista? But, hey, we're talking Linux here, so it must be the manufacturer's/MS/Apple's fault if all these things don't work.
Interesting. As a Windows user, are you sure you're qualified to judge Linux or OS X?
It's far more likely that a Linux or Mac user has considerably more experience with Windows than a Windows user has with Mac and Linux *combined*.
As someone who has extensive experience with all consumer (and many workstation/server) variations of Windows since 3.0, I can state in no uncertain terms that Vista is inferior, by far, to XP, in terms of overall user experience. The only Windows follow-up that was worse than XP -> Vista was 98 Second Edition -> Me, and that's *solely* due to Me's penchant for hosing itself. Remove that aspect of Me, and Vista becomes, hands down, the worst Windows "upgrade" ever.
Re:They have a point (Score:4, Insightful)
I too have noticed that Vista 64 Home Premium SP1 runs fine on top of the line hardware, such as your workstation class notebook. I have it running on an Intel Q6600 quad core, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 8800GT, and it runs admirably.
The people having problems with Vista seem to have only 1GB RAM or less, and ancient older computers without dedicated graphics cards.
I won't fault them for hating an OS that runs like molasses when XP runs just fine on anything with 1GB of RAM.
For those of us that have really top of the line PCs like you and I, sure, we can run it just fine, and for the most part, still have no major problems with it (except I still wonder why it takes 2-3 minutes to delete a lot of files... what the hell is it doing all that time?).
For the vast majority of PC users that don't upgrade every year and don't need top of the line equipment, there is a night and day difference between XP and Vista.
Oh, and by the way, I did have to spend about 4 hours turning off every single unnecessary service, background indexing, and hacking the registry to make it decent to play games in, but that was long ago and I've mostly forgotten about all of that effort...
Re:Only Vista? (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't say much because nobody (most importantly THEY) knows if they'd like OSX more.
IMHO, they'd have nothing to worry about. People who are happy with MS tend to dislike MacOS, if only because it makes them learn some new things.
"Converts" are people who have either no particular tie to Windows... like my wife who never knows whether she's on Mac or Windows when talking to tech support. "Is there an Apple at the top left, ma'am?" Either that or people who for whatever reason are so thoroughly disgusted with Windows that they actively seek out an alternative.
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the one application I really can appreciate a straw man argument like yours in: some lame joke.
Re:makes you wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the problem...