An article on ZDnet comments about Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston yesterday. Microsoft executives explain that they will launch a 300 million dollar ad campaign to help clean Vista’s “tarnished” image. They also mentioned that many improvements have been made over the past two years (and will continue being made) to constantly improve Vista. They believe that this combined with increased customer support will result in a “worry free” vista experience.

Just a thought… but instead of spending millions on an ad campaign to change peoples’ minds, they could listen to everyone’s complaints and spend those millions on improving Vista. People are generally very unhappy with their Vista experience. The “updates” have done little to quell customer’s frustrations. It won’t help to just “put makeup on the pig.” Instead real changes need to be made. Microsoft should take a lesson from Dell. When customer satisfaction began to slip, they created Dell Ideastorm.

Dell Ideastorm is a site entirely dedicated to interacting with their customers. Dell uses this site to gather customer feedback and suggestions about their products. Then they take this information and directly incorporate it into product design. The initiative has been extremely successful. If Microsoft would just listen to their customer’s complaints more carefully, they could solve the problems and create a more successful product. If they would just collaborate with customers everyone would be a lot happier.

Call me crazy… this seems like a more productive and efficient use of funds than a $300 mil ad, but I don’t know. The ads might be pretty sweet.