This is how bad things have gotten for Microsoft Corp.: The software behemoth has a virtual monopoly in computer operating systems, and yet it still can’t get people to buy the latest version of its flagship product, Windows.

In fact, things are so bleak for Windows Vista that customers have actually launched campaigns aimed at saving Vista’s stiffest competition -- the previous version of Windows, XP, which is now so old in technology years that it should qualify for Social Security.

To Microsoft’s credit, the company knows it has a problem, and it has decided to address it directly with an ad campaign arguing that the product isn’t as bad as people think it is. To their detriment, they’ve fumbled that, too.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Microsoft

A new campaign, called the "Mojave Experiment," shows a series of regular users who seem to like Windows Vista a lot -- as long as they don’t think it’s Windows Vista. Instead, the users have been told that they are seeing a demonstration of "Mojave," an even newer version of the operating system.

The campaign also includes many of the negative things people have heard about Vista, to get a sense of why so many people think they won’t like it.

The idea behind that is apparently to show that there is little context behind these suppositions. But here’s the problem: there’s also little context to this campaign.

We don’t actually see much footage of people trying Windows Vista, so we don’t know how much they actually did themselves, versus how much they were shown by an experienced marketer.

That’s important because it’s one thing for a paid expert to walk people through a demonstration on a high-powered computer, with all the bells and whistles installed and the latest components added. It’s quite another to try to play your favorite, 5-year-old computer game on the machine, import your family photos or hook up that ancient printer without the benefit of tech support.

We also don’t know whether the subjects were able to directly address the issues users have complained about, such as sluggishness with older or cheaper computers, or incompatibility with existing products.

Plus, we don’t know whether the people they show are a representative sample of the public. Microsoft says it polled 140 people, and most of them liked "Mojave" better than they thought they’d like Vista. But the company doesn’t say who conducted the interviews or offer other evidence of whether this was an unbiased experiment.

In short, we feel manipulated, not convinced.

Elsewhere in the campaign, Microsoft takes a page from movie promoters and pulls a one-liner from a long review of Vista. The company boasts that The New York Times "raved" about the operating system when it first came out, writing "Windows Vista is beautiful."

In fact, the Times was talking about the actual physical appearance of Vista, not the compatibility issues and other problems users have complained about. The actual article’s headline reads: "Vista Wins on Looks. As for Lacks …"

Faced with an unpopular operating system, Microsoft is right to face its detractors head on. It’s just taken the wrong approach.