The Mojave Experiment - Getting Punk'd Microsoft style

A quick disclaimer: I am not a Vista fanboy, by any means. Windows is Windows, and raised as a PC boy, learning how to use MS-DOS when I was ten and progressing through each version of Windows over the past years (judiciously skipping over Windows ME), I am very aware of both its faults and its strengths. It is certainly not the perfect operating system, but it is the one I'm the most familiar with, and I've never really had any problems with it, so I continue to use it.


Windows Vista has been getting a lot of flak lately about being terrible. This is to be expected; whenever a new widespread operating system comes out, it will get the tar beaten out of it, and Microsoft will then dutifully write up the patches and fixes to be downloaded, so that Vista can continue running smoothly. Such is, really, the early years of any computer program nowadays. To criticize Vista for not being perfect the first time through and requiring patches and fixes is to unduly criticize almost every program that has come out in the last five years.


The thing is, I've used Vista for about a year now, and I love it. As a casual PC user, it's a lot easier to use than Windows 2000 (and I would know - I got my certification as a Windows 2000 administrator in high school), and much cleaner looking and less goofy looking than XP. And as I've begun to familiarize myself with my computer and start to upgrade and augment it, twisting it to my own needs, Vista has been surprisingly complying.


So was I surprised at the results of Microsoft's Mojave Experiment? Not really. Basically, Microsoft rounded up a bunch of people who had stayed away from Vista because of the rumors they had heard, and then had them list the reasons why they stay away from Vista and rate it (one girl gave it a big fat zero). Afterwards, they introduced the brand new Microsoft operating system "Mojave," or in other words, Vista by another name. They loaded it up, took them through a quick spin, and by now, everyone was raving about how easy it was, how nice it looked, how it now had gadgets, how it now had this and they loved it. They wanted a copy of the Mojave.


Then, in Punk'd form (though not as annoying as Ashton Kutcher), they revealed they had been tricked - Mojave had been Vista all along. Freaking out then commenced.


I'm not surprised. Lots of people hate Windows simply because it is popular to hate Windows; few have actually tried to understand it. If you take an hour or two to learn about your operating system, you will suddenly realize that it has a lot of power, a lot more than you realized at first. Blaming all your computing problems on your operating system as the cause of your woes is like blaming all of your behavioral problems on your parents - you give them more credit than you think, and conveniently redirect all blame off yourself. Many people complain that x or y doesn't work on Vista, only to have people point out that they actually didn't read the instructions and if they had done it this one simple way instead, it would have worked out just fine.


I'm not saying Vista is perfect, again, by any means. Vista's got problems. All programs got problems. I'm just reiterating what every tech support employee understands right away - the vast majority of computer problems are because of the user end, not the computer itself.