This week in the office we’ve been talking a lot about Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment. In case you missed it, this is Redmond’s new attempt to dispel negative perceptions of Vista. The central claim is that “people would like Vista if they could only see it for themselves.”

And, in fairness, the experiment does show that people do like Vista, so long as they can only see it. There’s no indication of how they feel once they actually start using it, which is probably for the best.

But though the experiment may be very limited in scope, Microsoft has gone to town in documenting it. The site contains fifty-five short videos. They can’t seriously think anyone’s going to watch them all. Even I couldn’t sit through more than two thirds of them, and it’s my job to keep up with this kind of stuff. I suspect the intention is simply to impress you with the sheer weight of evidence they’ve gathered.

But as I was watching the thirtieth of these films, I found myself wondering: what might have been achieved if the time and money expended in producing all these little adverts had instead been channelled into actually improving Vista?

Fixing Vista

Admittedly, the most common complaint against Vista is its hunger for system resources, and it’s unrealistic to think Microsoft could fix that without some major re-engineering.

But to be honest, it’s not the system footprint that made me ditch Vista and go back to XP. RAM’s cheap, and hard disk space is cheaper. Hell, I welcome excuses to upgrade my PC.

What put me off was the niggles – the stupid design decisions, the things changed for the sake of change. The worthless and obtrusive Network and Sharing Centre. The arbitrarily renamed and reorganised Control Panel. The unhelpful way the display settings have been split up into separate dialogues. The bewildering shut-down options. The pointless security requesters.

That and, of course, the slow file-copy problem that’s made Vista all but unusable on some LANs for eighteen months now. I actually asked a Microsoft representative outright why the hell they couldn’t make Vista copy files as quickly as XP. His response: “There’s no problem with Vista. Perhaps you need to get your router manufacturer to fix their IPv6 drivers.”

Broken as designed

These are all problems that could be fixed in a matter of weeks if Microsoft chose to address them. And if it did, I’d probably go straight back to Vista. After all, it has numerous features that I do like: favourite links, fast search, Previous Versions, pervasive thumbnailing… hell, I even miss the little globe that shows when you’re connected to the internet. I want it all – I just want it all in a slightly more usable package.

Unfortunately, Microsoft seems determined not to give me that. Eighteen months of updates (including a full service pack) have brought endless under-the-bonnet fixes, but not a single update to the outward-facing parts of the OS that directly affect everyday users. It’s as if the company simply can’t admit that its “easiest Windows ever” might benefit from a little streamlining.

At least Microsoft is now acknowledging, in general terms, that Vista has acquired a disastrous reputation. That’s a positive development. But its response to the bad news is anything but encouraging: the Mojave Experiment isn’t intended to address users’ criticisms, but to discredit them.

The message is clear: our product’s fine. We just need to fix all you ignorant users.