Microsoft, the reigning OS king, has received more than its share of criticism for Windows Vista. The OS, which suffered both from poor initial hardware compatibility and from relatively large resource demands has been shunned by many of the largest players in the business community. Some have come out in vocal support of Vista, arguing against those who feel Vista is broken an XP downgrade might be in order.

These supporters got a little more ammo to back their arguments thanks to a comical experiment put on by Microsoft. As part of its new PR efforts, which include “anti-Mac Guy” commercials, Microsoft conducted a top secret experiment known as the “Mojave” Experiment.

Inspired by an employee email from Microsoft’s David Webster, the Vista team gathered over 120 XP users in San Francisco who were critical of Windows Vista. After being questioned on video about their Vista impressions, Microsoft told them it was giving them a stunning opportunity—the chance to view their secret operating system they had been cooking up, codenamed “Mojave”. The excited users showed great enthusiasm for the new operating system, with over 90 percent giving positive feedback of the 10 minute demo of the system.

The comic twist is that there is no “Mojave” and it wasn’t a pre-release version of Windows 7. “Mojave” was simply a fictitious title applied to a standard Windows Vista install. Interestingly, the XP users seemed utterly unable to recognize Vista or its features, despite criticizing it. Remarked one user on the new features, “Oh wow!”