^ Yup. I personally love to see the "new" "innovations" that Windows 7 has. Not to mention the tacky Aero interface. Microsoft has to trick every customer to buying it. In the Mojave project, they probably bought really expensive computers with cutting edge technology in order to make Vista seem useable. If I took a 1K computer, it still would have trouble loading Vista. Not to mention they probably used the best computer hardware out there + the Ultimate version of Vista. This is reminiscent of the days when PC was cheaper and Mac was more expensive. Today is quite the opposite.
They actually used a normal HP laptop with 2 gigs of RAM, I think a 2.0 or 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, and I don't know the screen size. I think the specifications were kinda similar to the Macbook Pro (not the new ones). A mid-range video card, a decent CPU, and 2 gigs of RAM. It's really nothing special.
The laptop at the time might have retailed for about 1000-1200 USD, which is pretty reasonable for a laptop and falls into the range of what most people are willing to spend on laptops. But I'm taking a stab in the dark at the GPU of the laptop. I know it had a dedicated one and that it wasn't anything more powerful than a mid range GPU. They didn't use the laptop for gaming, so even something like a 8400M GS would handle Aero with the same performance.
But you are right about the version of Vista being used, it was Ultimate. For the average user, there's no difference between Ultimate and Premium, asides dreamscene and 2 new games (at the time, just one, which was Texas Hold'em).
And I found the laptop used. It was a 1 year old HP dv2000.
Here's about it:
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=10161
And another article in non-English said the specs of the HP was a Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz CPU, and 2 gigs of RAM (as I previously said) running 32-bit Vista Ultimate.
I looked up the specs for the HP dv2000, and it said the screen size was 14.1" and that for the model with Intel CPUs, it used a Nvidia 7200 (a discrete GPU, but very low end), although the model they used was probably updated and used a low end 8 series GPU (like a 8400M GS).
What I find more offensive than annoying are the "Mojave Project" ads, where they allegedly demo a "new" operating system called Mojave to a bunch of unsuspecting people, who then rave about how wonderful and fast and fun it was. They then reveal Mojave is really Vista. "Ha ha, we tricked you, you like Vista, you like Vista, nyaa nyaa nyaa."
Dear lord. Microsoft, has it become so bad you are reduced to lying to the world to hawk your wares?
Microsoft's new slogan should be, "Come, let us fool you too". Jeez.
I guess you completely missed the point. Many people had very bad first impressions of Windows Vista when it was first released, due to some program compatibility issues, UAC, and the biggest issue, driver problems. People who tried Vista then started to tell all their friends and people on blogs that Vista was horrible. There was a lot of bad press about Vista due to its initial problems.
So MS grabbed some people who had a bad impression of Vista and gave them a demo of it, and the didn't know it was Vista. There's nothing unethical about it. They're not lying in their commercial. They were just trying to make a point that Vista isn't as bad as you've heard, and that you should at least try it before passing judgment.
And the whole reason they misled the people was to get a true opinion of Vista. It's like this. If you go into something
thinking it's going to be bad, then that biased opinion is going to impact your opinion. So, the people went into the experiment not knowing what to expect, instead of having a bias into what to expect.
And if you have a huge ethical dilemma over MS's "practice" in executing the "trickery," then I hope you hate Apple over them blatantly misleading the viewers of the commercial. It seems to me that you're trying to find any reason to bash MS, even if it requires some messed up logic.
