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Microsoft Unhappy With Beta Testers, Demands Answers (computerworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the not-my-gumdrop-buttons dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes: Microsoft has mandated that the feedback functionality built into Windows Insider Preview beta be switched on -- a change from earlier when testers could block questions from the company about what users thought of specific features. Starting with Build 14271 and newer, the frequency in which Windows 10 will ask for your feedback will be locked to 'Automatically (Recommended)' in the Settings app. This would seem to disrupt what has traditionally been seen as a tacit understanding between corporations and their beta testers/sandboxers in that the latter would volunteer their time, effort, CPU cycles, possible hardware failures/breakage, and more as part of a bargain to receive feedback or to test fly the beta OS with internal software environments in private. Microsoft would now seem to be altering that relationship.

10 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. The solution seems obvious to me... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh good grief! If you don't want Microsoft to gather information from your beta testing of Microsoft products, don't become a beta tester. I mean, is that what beta testers do, use the product and give feed back as requested? The simple solution if you don't like this policy is to not sign up to beta test Microsoft products if you don't really want to be hassled with feedback, "telemetry", and so forth.

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    1. Re: The solution seems obvious to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah..... Bizarre ask a beta tester to give feedback....what's this work coming too? Will someone please think of the children!

    2. Re: The solution seems obvious to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This.
      Seems to me microsoft was tired of people using the beta test as a way to just get early updates.
      I don't think it's unreasonable of them to expect feedback.

    3. Re:The solution seems obvious to me... by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Beta test seems like something you do to the OS. Then when preview builds come out you test compatibility. Anyone integration testing on beta is really too far ahead in the cycle

    4. Re:The solution seems obvious to me... by Nunya666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are confusing two different types of beta testing.

      Microsoft's beta testing is designed to test their software using your environment. Both problems and feedback are expected.

      Your beta testing is designed to test your software with stable versions of Windows. In fact, your beta testing should be done with every version of Windows that is supported at the time of your testing. Currently, that means Win7, Win8 and Win10. Most testers do that by having a VM for each version that they need to test. Using VMs makes it easy to roll back the VM to a known good state if problems are encountered, or after testing the installation of your software. For your testing, you should avoid beta versions of Windows.

    5. Re: The solution seems obvious to me... by kenh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are confusing two different types of beta testing.

      No, you are confusing 'beta testing' and 'evaluation'.

      Microsoft makes software available for beta testers who want to help Microsoft debug/improve their software... This is called 'Beta Testing'.

      When you want to test Microsoft's software in your environment, with your applications, on your hardware it is called an 'evaluation'.

      Beta testers get early access to pre-production software, evaluators get free access to (time-limited) released software.

      As noted previously, if you are doing compatibility testing with beta-level software you are testing too early, as beta software is very likely to change from release to release, and you wind up constantly re-evaluating compatibility as the code base changes dear neath you... You are chasing a moving target.

      It is perfectly acceptable for MS to require feedback from pre-production beta testers to ensure on-going support/updates to your beta release software.

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      Ken
    6. Re: The solution seems obvious to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except now the user is the product. With Windows 10, you're paying Microsoft to be sold to companies as advertising targets.

      If there was a time to switch to Mac and Linux, it's right now.

  2. Less altering, more enforcing by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Less altering the relationship I think than enforcing it. Too many beta testers were, it sounds like, treating the beta test as a sneak preview or early-access program and taking advantage of the offering without providing the feedback that's their part of the agreement. All Microsoft's doing is taking out the switch that lets them avoid being bugged for the feedback they agreed to give. It'll annoy people who were giving feedback but aren't having problems with those particular areas, but they're heavily outnumbered by the people who weren't giving feedback at all. Yet another case of the greedy breaking things for everybody, I suppose.

  3. To much of something is a bad thing by Zorak30 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I actually was a Windows Insider and loved it but then I started getting dinged with prompts for feedback every time I opened a new program or used a new feature they added. It isn't that bad, but when you're in the middle of trying to do something it is annoying as hell so I don't answer them. Over time this actually changes my habits and made me stop answering any of them all together. I was giving them feedback. They asked for more and I started giving them none.

  4. Re:is this really still an OS anymore? by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. But I use windows for gaming! Steam has more than 200 titles that run just fine in Linux

    It does. But like 90% of everything, most of them suck. There's a handful that are good. Games aren't fungible - it may be that just a single, specific title not being available on Linux is enough to keep certain people on windows.

    Personally, I run a linux machine and a windows machine, with a kvm switch. I game on windows, and do everything else on linux. Works for me.

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