According to one source (ZDNet), the latest marketing budget for Windows Vista has increased to $500,000,000. One of the first publicity gigs, which many publications just parrot free of charge, is some fluffy project called "Mojave". We won't describe here as that would only mean more publicity to it. However, it seems to be backfiring. Firstly, as explained in Microsoft Watch:

The reasons why the Mojave Experiment fails should have been obvious. They are:

1. Microsoft treats its customers like they're stupid. I've had this complaint for a decade.

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2. Microsoft embarrasses Mojave participates.

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3. The marketing campaign blames customers for Vista's problems.

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4. Microsoft denies there is a real problem.

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5. Mojave seethes with arrogance.

There is evidence that may suggest 'massaging' of statistics, too. The numbers reported are inconsistent, which may or may not imply that observations not supporting the hypothesis simply got discarded.

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, something stuck me about Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment that hadn’t clicked when I first watched it. Out of the 140/120 participants (the number varies depending on the source) that Microsoft say took part in this experiment, we don’t actually seem to hear from that many. Why?

Remember the bogus Novell/Microsoft survey, which enables sales people to pretend that people like this deal? See the quote at the very bottom.

Just days ago there was this report, which shows that Microsoft is still paying for 'studies'.

Quocirca, a research and analysis firm, released a comprehensive report sponsored by Microsoft (News - Alert) titled, “On Premise and On Demand”.

As for Novell/Quocirca, there is only a very loose tie here. In Microsoft's case, on the other hand, manufacturing of 'studies' is routine. Remember Forrester attacking GNU/Linux on Microsoft's budget? How about Gartner and the Yankee Group? This industry of analysts and so-called researchers is a joke as long as it shamelessly serves companies rather than genuine curiosity. It's marketing in suits, not research.

We do not typically write about (or bash) Microsoft products because that brings attention to them. Negative publicity too is publicity and we made rare exceptions when we looked at SP1 of Windows Vista and at Home Server.

For what it's worth, Microsoft also deceives its shareholders with bogus number that misrepresent sales of Windows Vista. Published the other day:

"From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with an XP licence," said Jane Bradburn, a marketing manager for HP Australia. "However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today."

Therefore the Vole's claims for high Vista sales figures are merely so much steer manure. The major PC vendors are still preloading Windows XP, but Microsoft is counting those XP preloads as Vista sales.

There's a much broader history to Vista lies, but we won't explore it further in this post.

Also worth a read (old articles):

• Currys group blames Vista for poor sales
• Dell casts doubts on Vista
• Lenovo offers downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP
• Windows Vista kicked out of Olympics PCs
• Acer: PC industry 'disappointed' with Vista

When all else fails, resort to lies and delusion. ⬆

"I think the vast majority, and I’d quantify that at about 80 percent to 85 percent, of the open source community actually supports this deal [with Microsoft]."

--Justin Steinman, Novell