I watched a lot of the videos and I also thought that the experiment was creepy and condescending. I think there are a lot of uninformed people that have made assumptions about Vista without using it, and it was these people that the experiment were targeting. But the big question is what was the experiment trying to prove? Vista fanboys will say that it proves that Vista is awesome, but all it proves is that people can be wowed by a 10 minute demo. - Stuart Maxwell from FriendFeed MT Plugin

As the other commenters have correctly stated (and as you've amended in the body of the post itself), the Microsoft experiment is significantly different from Milgram essentially any way you look at it. There's nothing unsettling about a little controlled deception in an advertising/public opinion campaign. Psychology, experimental economics, and other researchers use these techniques on a daily basis, and the ends justify the perfectly acceptable scientific means. Microsoft doesn't seem to have crossed any lines using similar techniques in this marketing program-- rather, I think it's a brilliant use of modern-day social science techniques to show consumers that sometimes, they really are stupid. - Andy DeSoto from FriendFeed MT Plugin

What Stuart said - Adam Loving from StumbleRead