Vista is great, honest.
Microsoft looks to be rolling out its “Vista isn’t so bad, see?” ad campaign, as this delightful little jpeg shows. You know how people used to think the world was flat, but then a bunch of explorers proved them wrong? Apparently Microsoft will try to demonstrate that Vista actually doesn’t stink on ice. Good luck with that.
Somewhat less snarky, ZDNet talks about the same ad, and explains why Microsoft has its work cut out for it self, even if Vista is now much better. (I haven’t used Vista since last summer. This MacBook uses Windows XP when it goes into BootCamp to play Team Fortress 2, which is the best PC shooter I’ve ever played. Granted, I’ve played like three my whole life, but the point stands.) Those “Get a Mac” ads Apple ran completely skewered Microsoft, and largely are responsible for the public’s “Vista is lame” perception. If Microsoft were to release a point-by-point refutation, that’d be seen as legitimizing Apple’s claims. Can’t have that, now can we?
Microsoft is said to have spent a cool $300 million on this ad campaign, so it’ll be fascinating to see what the Admen have come up with. We regularly throw around award-winning ideas in our chat room, and we’d cost much less than $300 million.
I disagree completely with the premise behind this ad campaign. As a log time Windows user, a current Vista user (at work) and a Mac user (at home) I can tell you it’s not a perception issue at all. It’s a plain, hard fact. OS X starts faster, runs longer with no issues and shuts down faster than Vista does on exactly the same Intel chipset with exactly the same RAM. Vista’s eye candy is great but I much prefer the simpler, more intuitive UI in OS X.
Microsoft might be better served spending their $300 million on making Vista start faster, run better and shut down quicker. Maybe give some of their developers a raise or a bonus. Maybe hire some “graphic designers” to rework the UI. Spend their money on substance rather than fluff! Wow, what a blinding flash of the obvious.
@Jeff
No idea what the hell you’re talking about. Had Vista for more than a year and no complains whatsoever. I’ve had my laptop on for weeks at a time and just used the sleep mode whenever I would take it with me and travel. From sleep to ON in 10 sec flat.
@Jeff
No idea what the hell you’re talking about. Had Vista for more than a year and no complains whatsoever. I’ve had my laptop on for weeks at a time and just used the sleep mode whenever I would take it with me and travel. From sleep to ON in 10 sec flat.
SLEEP to ON in OSX is under a second.
Honestly I’m not going to miss those extra 9 seconds.
Multiplied by multiple sleeps and wakes a day, multiple days a week, etc.? I open and close my laptop a dozen or more times a day, easily. That translates into hours per year, waiting for a computer to wake up so I can use it.
Of course, I waste more time than that on the internet in a week, but at least I’m doing something besides twiddling my thumbs…
I’ve been running Vista Home Basic on a brand new laptop since last summer and it’s an absolute dog. I have 1GB memory and I don’t even use it for anything that is resource intensive. It takes endless minutes to shut down and nearly as long to boot up. POS and I only bothered with keeping it because I work in user support and need to be familiar with it.
I installed vista on my laptop within a week or so of launch, the only problem I had was with Acer’s drivers and software and that was resolved quickly. I can still use my favorite aps that are 10 years old (including games) without any issues and its crashed maybe twice on me since I installed it (one of the two was a direct result of my tweaking/my fault). It does take a long time to cold boot but as mentioned hibernate and sleep are quicker. As for performance I haven’t had any problems. All that said I see little real reason for all the windows bashing. I loved XP but I like Vista better.
Sys specs: 1.6 core duo, 2gb ram, ati x1450 acer
This ad is surprisingly innovative, coming from Microsoft. And “Get A Mac” has its charms. As to whether Mac or PC is superior — well, I’ll leave that argument to others. But I think it’d be a real game-changer if people knew the actual Mac Guy and the actual PC Guy. But of course, the “MSM” is ignoring this important story:
http://theavocadopapers.typepad.com/avocadoblog/2008/07/different-think.html