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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 think that's his way of saying "We can't make all the users happy so we're going to do our best to make sure none are happy."
I suspect there is a big difference between unheard and ignored!
Users: No drm!
RIAA/MPAA: drm!
"Kernel 2.8.1 beta testers are disputing whether or not the linux community is taking notice of their feedback. The dispute follows a blog post by Linus Torvalds, the man in charge of engineering Kernel 2.8.1. He notes that in one week in January the linux community received data through Kernel 2.8.1's automatic feedback system every 15 seconds. According to Linus, it's impossible to keep everyone happy. That's partly because there are only so many changes the linux community can make to the system and still finish it, and partly because in many cases testers often have opposing views about a feature."
Newest changes coming in the RC http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/26/some-changes-since-beta.aspx
Libera te ex Inferis!
How about the litany of major usability issues that Windows has had for years that MS wants to constantly ignore? Especially given that Gates has sent memos out criticizing the Windows team, and they still don't address these issues.
Usability took a big step backwards with Vista, and most of those issues haven't been addressed in 7.
I'm not sure they were will. Is 7 better than Vista? Yes. Is 7 better for enterprise users when paired with Server 2008? Certainly. Is 7 better than XP for Home users? Not really. Don't believe the hype.
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Maybe. But I do think that customer feedback is crucial to Microsoft at this point. And I think they know that. They really can't afford for Windows 7 to get the same public backlash that Vista got.
My blog
Of course it was. It was "Mojave" open to the public. Been saying that all along. But I also have to agree with the pragmatic answer to the question about whether or not Windows7 testers are being ignored. I tend to believe that if the feedback opposes "the plan" whatever that may be, the feedback goes ignored and if the feedback is a compatibility issue, they will likely consider it and weigh it against opposing factors such as what compatibility breaks or complicates.
There is nothing inherently evil or bad about this approach in my opinion.
FTFA:
To date, we have fixes in the pipeline for nearly 2,000 bugs in Windows code (not in third party drivers or applications) that caused crashes or hangs.
Yet the trolling headline screams "ZOMG, M$ doesn't listen to users!!!"...
But wait, there's more!
To date, we have recorded over 10,000,000 device installations and over 75% of these were able to use drivers provided in box (that is no download necessary). The remaining devices were almost all served by downloading drivers from Windows Update and by direct links to the manufacturer's web site. We've recorded the usage of over 2.8M unique plug-and-play device identifiers.
2.8 million pieces of different hardware, and over 7.5 million installations had all drivers included, "almost all" could be downoaded easily. No matter what you think of Microsoft, that information is pretty much astonishing.
But their mistake is in allowing too many beta testers. They knew it would be impossible to handle the volume of feedback. They wanted the positive PR, plus the ability to say, "Sorry, we're too busy" to a lot of the requests.
A better beta test would have been more restricted so all feedback could be considered. They're obviously not interested in hearing all the feedback.
Developers: We can use your help.
Since even Bill Gates is unhappy with the product experience on Windows, and they ignore him, what makes you think they're going to listen to Win 7 Testers?
He owns the company.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That's funny, I read this blog post from Microsoft today that detailed some of the changes made since the beta, all thanks to feedback from said beta.
It's quite a sizeable list and apparently only a small amount of the changes made so far. Considering nobody outside of Redmond (With the exception of a few select partners) is supposed to have access to anything other the beta, who's actually making the claim that the feedback is falling on deaf ears? Sounds to me like Microsoft IS actually listening for once.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Microsoft hasn't done a great job of explaining to the millions of people who've tested Windows 7 that the beta stage is more about catching problems than significantly changing the way the system works.
My impression has always been that alpha testing is for determining whether or not to continue with an approach, and beta testing is for exercising the system to weed out sufficient bugs to continue with a final release. The beta testers complaining sound like they just went in with unreasonable expectations.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
There's a difference between ignoring ideas and not implimenting them though.
If you had to respond to each piece of feedback, all you would end up doing is responding to feedback.
So what the hell do they need beta testers for?
For broad spectrum testing. You think it's easy for a team of Test Engineers in a company to test every single possibility on every conceivable platform? For something as far reaching as a consumer operating system, it's a great idea to get thousands of people to do the basic hardware/software compatibility testing and others for you for free.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
They really can't afford for Windows 7 to get the same public backlash that Vista got.
And yet, it will. News are made today, not reported, and the media found out with Vista that "new OS by redmond monopolist sucks" makes for more headlines, better headlines, over a longer time period, than "next windos version exactly as expected".
The media will eat them, because they're sharks and they can smell blood.
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They test Windows?
*head explodes*
I don't think any sane person can believe that Linux supports the same range of hardware that Windows does, especially in the graphics department. You can blame that on device manufacturers that only ship with Windows drivers, leaving the FOSS community to write the Linux ones, if you want.
And yet somehow Stickney gets modded as Flamebait for a truthful assertion about his experiences, one I've had myself (and now I'm smart enough to insist on Nvidia graphics for any machine that runs Linux).
As an experiment for those that doubt me, drop into your console and run the following commands
glxinfo | grep "direct rendering"
glxinfo | grep "pbuffer"
and tell me if your driver supports both of them.
Vista really doesn't suck. I say this as an OS X, Linux, and M-Windows user.
But if Microsoft wants to increase marketshare among the people using unlicensed installations of the OS, it's the Vista-style *licensing* of Win7 that must change.
The licensing model of Vista (and Win7) is like dongle, only worse: it's a dongle with an expiry date. It penalizes the customer. If I buy an authentication key, *I* should be the one to say on which computer I install it. I shouldn't have to call Redmond for permission if I change computers.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
between opposing opinions of the desirability or design of a feature. And there is risk of introducing new bugs by adding features or getting insufficient testing by introducing new features or code changes late in the product time line.
Any product manager has had to wrestle with the desire to satisfy with features, the desire for stability and the production target date. It isn't easy...partially because users have little appreciation of the chaos their requests introduce into the production process...nor should they care...it is the PM's job to filter the inputs and come up with workable a plan within resources and time lines...and the users job to judge the finished product.
And why there are cut off dates for feature changes that are different and earlier than for bug fixes. Feature changes generate too much risk if introduced late in the cycle.
As one who had the fate of his company's yearly reporting resting on a delivery date being met, I can tell you it isn't an easy call you make when you say "ship it" and you don't always get it right. Get it wrong and you are looking for a new job in another industry.
According to the CMMI process http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/06.reports/pdf/06tr008.pdf (p.63):
The Process and Product Quality Assurance process area supports all process areas by providing specific practices for objectively evaluating performed processes, work products, and services against the applicable process descriptions, standards, and procedures, and ensuring that any issues arising from these reviews are addressed.
While "evaluating work products" certainly SOUNDS like this means QA is software testing, it is far from it. It means something completely different when you complete the sentence..."evaluating work products against the applicable process descriptions". Thus, it is QAs job to ensure the software test engineers are doing the job the way the process states they should be, not conducting any sort of software tests themselves.
So no, somebody in QA doesn't say, "hey, this button doesn't work". Instead, they say, "hey, Bob the software tester didn't follow process 4a" and because of that, nobody caught the fact that button didn't work. Then QA tells you your processes suck and makes you write new ones (even thought that's their job).
And yes, I realize my expertise in CMMI fully qualifies me to be a great Dilbert character.
No it isn't, it's you being a prick.
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A "Whoosh" to you, and two "Whooshes" to the moderator who tagged you insightful.
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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.
While I realize they're hemorrhaging market share (how sad)
"Hemorrhaging" is GM sales.
It is not Microsoft which has lost 2% of the desktop market - 23% of which now Vista. Operating system market share
An interesting footnote here:
In the Net Applications webstats, Linux at 0.8% has only eight times the share of the Win 7 Beta
- and something less than twice the share of the iPhone.