The net is rife about Microsoft's new ad-kinda campaign called the "mojave experiment". What it basically is that few people are first asked about their opinion on Vista and when they are negative (thoroughly and mostly), they are introduced to a new Microsoft OS called "Mojave" (unknown to them is nothing but Vista but for the name). They were shown few features of Vista which "wow"ed them and once they are done with calling it "awesome", "great" and the like, they are told the truth.

The test group (at least the ones shown) all respond in awe that Vista could do so much, change their opinion about it and ready to "buy" Vista.

It's not bad. I mean if the whole idea was to change people's perception about Vista being the "big bad villain" that they head about or keep hearing day-in and day-out, then may be it does work. But the net is rife about articles which wham-bham the whole ad (if I can call it so?) that everyone feels it's a bad idea.

May be not. I am quoting my personal experience here, so I suppose you can take with a pinch of lemon. I was eagerly looking forward to Vista all through 2006 till it was released. But then came the barrage of criticism from all the "Gurus" of the tech industry that I was taken aback. This was a guy who helps people with tech-issues. Soon, my wait for Vista became a free wireless transmitter for an anti-Vista campaign that was to discourage anyone from upgrading, make fun of people who had already upgraded.

Yes, I did. Months passed. Now, I finally got myself a Vista Ultimate from my university at an "undisclosed" price. Couldn't the resist the itch, at the same time being apprehensive about it, I opted for a Dual-Boot. First time Vista booted, WOW!!!!

Next thing I did, I disabled the UAC. Don't ask me why, don't give me sermons about it. I know my stuff and moreover I was experimenting. Anyway, my Dell 6400 laptop had all drivers natively accounted for by Vista (except for audio drivers which I had to get from the site). The OS partition was up and running with all updates and patches.

Experience?? Hmmm, this is the tricky part. I remember the initial days when I was trying out XP. Everything was different, much more was the transition from 98se to XP than from XP to Vista (mostly because of the eye-candy). Configured the system to run optimally and I got a score of 4.1 for that Vista experience thingy. It was fast, and seemed to know what it was doing for the most part. I threw in an antivirus and couple of most important utilities and NOTHING ELSE. Mind you this was still an evaluation and at the same time, the disk space was limited. After poking around for a bit, trying Dreamscene (which by the way is amazing though boring after the initial 5 minutes), and other eye-candy of Vista, I left it at that. I need to further try it to make sure it can stand my general operational routine though.

Seriously, all this Vista bashing aplenty in the media affected me, and from me, it went quite some way. But which OS wasn't this ill-received? I remember horror stories about XP and it being called BAD BAD things. And then it became the darling of the masses, over 2 years??? I am still critical of few things in Vista, but that's me because I consider myself a power user. I know a lot of people around me who wouldn't even bother doing what I do with a virus infection and instead proceed to do a clean install of the OS. For them, I don't think it really does matter which OS it is, and considering that Vista (at least in terms of technical stuff) is better (???) and faster than XP (*Conditions apply - such as system specs), I don't see why they shouldn't use it. I think it deserves some more time just for the sheer number of people using it or the number of software/hardware it has to work with. (Yes I still have issues with the prices though).

Vista would gain acceptability sooner or later, and then everyone will forget about XP, just like people forgot about win98. But then, I think before that comes, we might have Windows 7 on our hands (guessing). And then the cycle repeats.

And apple?? That's an interesting watch at a completely different level. Can it sustain the good-will/form by venturing into the whole wide market????