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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!
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.
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 is no reason to be stuck in Windows bondage land. You don't need it. Really, you don't.
Really? Because my multitude of games and windows-specific programs beg to differ. Of course, I don't strictly need those programs, but by that same standard I don't strictly need a computer at all.
I'm going to let you in on a secret, and it's not something you mention in company of Slashdot users and OSX nuts: people use what they like and are familiar with, and windows is good enough to get the job done. Vista is still miles ahead of Ubuntu in typical, every day usability, and this is coming from someone who likes to fire up the command line and edit iptables by hand. The gui in Ubuntu is still brittle and requires a lot of command line usage to use it like I want to use it. Windows, on the other hand, works a ton better without ever touching the command line. For a good server, I'll use Ubuntu. For a workable computer to play games on and browse the internet, I'll use windows.
This choice is reasonable, logical, and entirely dependent on opinion. If someone tells me I'm wrong, all they're doing is showing that they're being irrational. I like windows, and it's not because I'm masochistic, it's because it's just plain more usable for what I do.
And if you're an enterprise user with 1000's of computers and 1000's of users all needign to share data and collaborate? Well then there's Active Directory. God knows I'm not a Microsoft apologeist but I haven't seen anything that even comes close to the power and ease of use there is in Windows Server and Active Directory.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Unix was sharing data and enabling users to collaborate when Redmond still thought DOS was hot and sexy.
The fact that you are brought up in a Windows environment doesn't mean there aren't other ways to accomplish things. Really.
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.
I have converted 3 people to *nix since October. All three came from the 'used Xp just fine, but what is this?' crowd, right after getting a new PC with Vista pre-installed. All three have commented on how easy their computers are to use now, and wished they had heard of this *nix thing years ago.
What exactly did these people find so hard about Vista? Seriously?
I mean if they could 'easily' handle switching Office programs, switching email programs, switching browsers, switching to any of linuxes file explorers, switching to Gnome or KDE windowing conventions, using amarok instead of itunes or windows media player, learning the new terminology, figuring out Kopete or Pidgin instead of MSN, got their wifi going, set up their own printers, figured out how to get their all in one scanner to ocr something, shared some files over the network with Samba...
but what... you expect me to beleive they were hopelessly befuddled by Vista's "Network and Sharing Center" or that that "Add/Remove Programs" is now "Programs and Features"... or that when they install something they have to click 'Allow'.
Give me a break.
The only rational explanation I can think of is one of expectations. They expected Vista to be identical so the slightest change is reported as 'confusing and hard' and they expected Linux to be incomprehensibly different so the slightest familiarity is 'surprisingly easy and welcome'.
But in 'absolute' terms anyone willing to take the effort to poke around in a Linux distro to figure things out will cope just fine in Vista with the same mindset.
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.
and if you actually believe those statistics...
I remember at one point working at a large manufacturer and noting that our internal records showed more non-VM Linux machines in use than what supposedly existed for the entire globe.
Yeah. You run off and believe those numbers. Go for it.
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.
For example ?