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Are Windows 7 Testers Going Unheard?
nandemoari writes "Windows 7 beta testers are disputing whether or not Microsoft is taking notice of their feedback.
The dispute follows a blog post by Steven Sinofsky, the man in charge of engineering Windows 7. He notes that in one week in January Microsoft received data through Windows 7's automatic feedback system every 15 seconds.
According to Sinofsky, it's impossible to keep everyone happy. That's partly because there are only so many changes Microsoft can make to the system and still finish it, and partly because in many cases testers often have opposing views about a feature."
I only wish Linux had numbers like this. For all the hours I've spent building ndiswrapper or ATI display drivers on any number of boxes... I don't even have that much weird hardware, but Linux printing support is way behind, 3D display is way behind, sound support is sometimes flawless and sometimes nonexistent.
Not that I'm about to use Windows, but it would be nice.
...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Pirates will ALWAYS break your security, please stop punishing paying customers for it.
Yeah, sure, drivers. I heard that with XP. I heard that with Vista. Every single cherry install of XP or Vista I've ever done, without exception, has failed to load ethernet, wireless, video, or soundcard drivers. Every. Single. One.
That's especially great when you check under Device Manager and see five or six "unknown devices" and Windows helpfully offers to search online for the drivers. Thanks, jackasses.
Meanwhile, I have to use a second computer to not only find out what hardware this thing has by looking up specs -- cause Windows sure as hell ain't gonna tell you -- but go to each individual manufacturer's website, click through search opens, and hopefully come out on the other side with a couple of executable driver installers, each and every single one of which will want to install a horseshit systray thing to hog memory, extraneous entries in the program menus, a few desktop icons, and various other party favors.
Even when the drivers install, they don't work half the time. I just got done fighting with some Brother printer driver one of the marketing girls installed on her machine, actually -- after I had to manually point it at the driver files it just finished installing, it took me half an hour of screwing around to get it to even *see* the printer. Ready for the desktop!
Meanwhile, with Ubuntu, the biggest driver headache I've ever had was back in the Dapper Drake days where I had to wrap the Windows drivers for a Broadcom wireless card. That hasn't even been an issue since 7.04 as far as I know -- at most you click "enable restricted drivers" and away you go. The aforementioned Brother printer worked immediately when I plugged it into my Ubuntu machine, by the way.
Microsoft bragging about driver support is laughable not only for the fact that their hardware and driver support effing sucks, but unlike Linux, Microsoft can't even use the vendors-aren't-supporting-us excuse.
Finally:
The remaining devices were almost all served by downloading drivers from Windows Update
Has anyone, in the history of humanity, ever gotten that to work? I don't mean the part where it connects to some anonymous server in Redmond and sends them god-knows-what information -- I mean, has anyone actually come out on the other end of that process with a driver? In fifteen years I haven't seen it happen even once, and I don't think I've ever heard of it happening.
all drivers included, "almost all" could be downoaded easily. No matter what you think of Microsoft, that information is pretty much astonishing.
It'd be astonishing if it were true, but somehow I doubt reality is anything close to this. Your quote comes from the pen of Steven Sinofsky, the guy in charge of Windows 7 engineering, and like every other claim Microsoft makes about how great their OS will be this time, it's just as much BS now as it was every other time we've heard it.
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As a 7 beta tester who has posted multiple feedback, and actually had replies, I have to say they are at least trying.
I believe they sort through them to find the people that might actually have a good idea of whats going on, and act upon those because they actaully have somewhere to start and head toward.
If you want to be heard, leave a good analysis of whats going on and maybe some suggestions as well.
They arent just going to hire people to go through these and analyze the 12 different bugs that 12,000 people are complaining about.
To me at least, it appears they are trying.