Bonum Certa Men Certa

Lies, Damn Lies, and Windows Vista

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.

[...]

2. Microsoft embarrasses Mojave participates.

[...]

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

[...]

4. Microsoft denies there is a real problem.

[...]

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):



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

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025