So today I accidentally stumbled across the new Windows marketing campaign. If you haven’t seen it, check out “The Mojave Experiment”. The gist of the campaign is that Microsoft disguised Windows Vista and told random people that it was the new Windows OS, code named Mojave. After a brief demo and rave reviews, they revealed to everyone the secret. What you just saw was Windows Vista.
The comment I loved the most was one guys shocked disbelief with a simple question. “So why is it faster?” And I guess that’s my point for sharing this.
One of the things I dislike about Mac is their limited offerings of hardware configurations. BUT… by only offering certain configurations, they have the ability to insure that even the most basic system is going to be able to run the OS properly and quickly. Windows, on the other hand, has often been sold inside of “value machines” that are stripped down junk. They need an upgrade just to meet system suggestions. So whether you are buying XP, Vista, or a new Mac, lesson to be learned, don’t buy the bare minimum.
And more important lesson number two… You are the cause of most of your problems. Or at least I am the cause of most of my problems. My Mac is currently running slow as snot. BUT… I’ve just about maxed out the hard drive, I am running 5 or 6 programs with at least 30 or 40 tabs open in Firefox and I haven’t rebooted it in at least a week. A few weeks ago, I cleaned off the hard drive, exercised some self-discipline with the number of tabs I used at any given time, and rebooted each couple of days. If I didn’t know superior, I’d swear they were different machines.
Same goes for my Windows PC’s. My old Dell is a fresh clean install of XP Pro with only a couple of apps and only one user. And as old as it is, it runs very well. The personal I am typing on at the moment is one my whole family uses. We’ve multiple accounts and often are logged into a couple of them at the same time. My wife tends to download little apps here and there and it has been at least 3 years since I have reformatted it. The hard drive is almost full and although this machine has more RAM than my Dell, there’s a noticeable lag most of the time.
So yes, Vista on a kick butt demo machine with Microsoft staff demoing the features is impressive. Honestly, I don’t mind the Vista interface and think a lot of the features are breathtaking. Of course, I had those same features on my Mac a year or two previous to them being available for PC, but that’s beside the point. The question, and the issue Microsoft needs to address, is how is Vista working for the average user with the average Personal computer? How is the average user supposed to pick which version they need?
What do you think? Any Vista users out there absolutely satisfied with their experiences? If so, on what kind of hardware?
Tags: Mac, microsoft vist, Mojave Experiment
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