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Five things every Windows beta tester should know

By | March 1, 2009, 3:22pm PST

Summary: A few Windows 7 beta testers (and some high-profile pundits) are working themselves into a lather over the perceived shortage of feedback from Microsoft. I’ve read many of the complaints, public and private, and I think some beta testers need a refresher course in the basics of what it means to be involved in the development of a product as complex as Windows.

Last week my colleague Mary Jo Foley reported on rumblings of discontent from the invitation-only Windows 7 technical beta test community:

A number of Windows 7 testers have complained recently that Microsoft was not sharing enough information about changes it planned to make in response to their feedback.

Windows SuperSite’s Paul Thurrott questioned in a post yesterday whether Microsoft had already locked down Windows 7’s feature set before the majority of technical and public beta testers ever got to see a first release of the product. I’ve wondered the same.

This was all in response to another epic post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog by Steven Sinofsky, who tried to explain how the feedback process worked. The whole thing is worth reading, although at 4700+ words I’m afraid most people will just skim it.

Frankly, I’m having a hard time working up any level of sympathy for those doing the complaining, partly because I heartily approve of the way Windows 7 development is going right now and partly because I have seen the feedback process up close and personal. Microsoft is getting a bad rap from a group of people who are mourning the reality that they’re no longer being treated as privileged elites.

I was going to ignore this whole brouhaha, until I read a post on the subject by WinPatrol developer and Microsoft MVP Bill Pytlovany that included this provocative proposition:

Most Beta Testers Suck

As a developer I can tell you , beta tests aren’t what they used to be.  The number of people who actually report decent bug information is minimal. Most people download the beta just to be an earlier adopter. Developers are lucky if users read the release notes and compatibility list let alone any beta instructions. There are so many different machine configurations that sadly the only way to find some bugs is to have full global adoption of new software.

Bill isn’t going to endear himself to any beta testers with that line of argument, but he does have a point. I’ve read many of the complaints Mary Jo referred to and a few hundred others on the members-only Windows 7 technical beta newsgroups. I think a lot of beta testers need a refresher course in the basics of what it means to be involved in the development of a product as complex as Windows.

In that spirit, here’s my list of five things every Windows 7 beta tester should know:

Continued on next page –>

More from “The Ed Bott Report”

Topics

Microsoft Windows 7, Feedback, Microsoft Corp., Beta Tester, Windows SuperSite, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.

Disclosure

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is a freelance technical journalist and book author. All work that Ed does is on a contractual basis.

Since 1994, Ed has written more than 25 books about Microsoft Windows and Office. Along with various co-authors, Ed is completely responsible for the content of the books he writes. As a key part of his contractual relationship with publishers, he gives them permission to print and distribute the content he writes and to pay him a royalty based on the actual sales of those books. Ed's books written prior to fall 2011 have been distributed by Que Publishing (a division of Pearson Education) and by Microsoft Press. As of November 2011, Ed is a partner in the independent publishing company Fair Trade Digital Exchange, which exclusively publishes his books.

On occasion, Ed accepts consulting assignments. In recent years, he has worked as an expert witness in cases where his experience and knowledge of Microsoft and Microsoft Windows have been useful. In each such case, his compensation is on an hourly basis, and he is hired as a witness, not an advocate.

Ed does not own stock or have any other financial interest in Microsoft or any other software company. He owns 500 shares of stock in EMC Corporation, which was purchased before the company's acquisition of VMware. In addition, he owns 350 shares of stock in Intel Corporation, purchased more than two years ago. All stocks are held in retirement accounts for long-term growth.

Ed does not accept gifts from companies he covers. All hardware products he writes about are purchased with his own funds or are review units covered under formal loan agreements and are returned after the review is complete.

Biography

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He's served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during his tenure. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out.

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RE: Five things every Windows beta tester should know
beijing2008 14th Sep
Very great job. happy Thank you! fake hermes
View in thread
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Great Write-up....
Gnutella Updated - 1st Mar 2009
I think you reflected what the vast majority of the testers feel.

Even though I could b!tch and moan about not being a special 'tester' anymore w.r.t to Technet subscription which is essentially what some detractors are saying. Thurrott reflects that real well when he ridicules a beta tester's feedback to make a now empty accusation.

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RE: Five things every Windows beta tester should know
beijing2008 14th Sep
Very great job. happy Thank you! fake hermes
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Number 2 of your 5
chrome_slinky@... 1st Mar 2009
doesn't hold water.

"When you?re building a product that is going to be used by hundreds of millions of people, you have to find some common denominators. And as I wrote last year, sometimes there is no right answer: you can bet that for any decision you make, some nontrivial number of people will think you?re a complete idiot, no matter which option you choose."

This different slant on the argument from popularity doesn't wash. It is simply another apology for Microsoft.

If the company wants people to understand their decision process it should speak about it.

Although I am unimpressed by the 'Engineering Windows 7' blog, I see it as a step in the right direction.

I also agree with this

"If you?ve identified a bug and it?s made it onto the must-fix list, it shouldn?t take multiple passes to fix it."

but since we agree, can you tell me why there are problems with the Windows Explorer that have NOT been fixed from Windows 3.0 to Windows Vista (haven't used an SP1 machine, but it was certainly there in the original release)?

The exact problem? If I use Explorer to start renaming a number of files (different numbers depending on amount of memory installed) I will eventually reach a point where the Explorer crashes - sure, it will restart, but it still has crashed, a behavior that has been ingrained for quite some time, don't you think?
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Contributr
Never seen that one
Ed Bott Updated - 1st Mar 2009
By coincidence, I just renamed 8600+ files in a folder yesterday. Worked just fine on a system with 2GB RAM and Vista SP1.
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IE Crashes
larrybeay@... 4th Mar 2009
My IE started crashing about 5 weeks ago, and I see you have some problems also from your post.
I have deleted completely IE from my computer and use Firefox. However I find that it also hangs up and doesn't load after a short while.
You have any solutions you could offer. happy
Thanks in advance. PS I don't know where to look for a solution.
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Huh
nizuse 1st Mar 2009
I thought you only posted something when you had something to say!
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There you are.
sjbinaz Updated - 2nd Mar 2009
Please reread Bott's blog from last week. I sent you a link to possibly fix your update problem.

and I don't understand your need to criticize him so quickly and without saying anything concrete. It makes it seem that you just want to comment to hear the keys clicking.
( That is a modern version of my mother's " You talk just to hear your head rattle"). Not that you care but you are not likeable.
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resend link
nizuse 2nd Mar 2009
I didn't get any link. Maybe my spam filter blocked it. Nevertheless I am very interested in any possible solution to the 'phase 3 of 3' update problem.
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Not in Email
sjbinaz Updated - 2nd Mar 2009
Here:
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=61183&messageID=1128212
It is in a reply to a post you made to ED's article last week. If you want me to email it, I would need the address.
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Thanks
nizuse 2nd Mar 2009
I'll check it out. Much appreciated.
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keep in touch
sjbinaz 4th Mar 2009
If you would, please let me know. You may email me at my junk account platypusinaz@yahoo.com and we can trade email addys
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aaah no success
nizuse 7th Mar 2009
Unfortunately I had no success with the links.
Actually I am hesitant to try any other solutions - my fear is that Vista will mess up somehow and I would then have to reformat and install Windows (and my SuSE dual boot) again. The phase3of3 thing is annoying, but bearable. A nasty side-effect could however be that new updates can't get through - not sure of that though. Sigh...
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And a 6th...
Kip Kniskern 1st Mar 2009
Good write up, Ed. Funny I was just talking to an MVP about this last night. Another thing that has changed about beta testing is the increasing importance of the "Dr. Watson" crash reports. While most beta testers can't write a decent bug report, having telemetry from millions of installs on real world machines is VERY valuable data that simply couldn't be simulated in a lab. The sophistication of the crash reports and their analysis, while it might not be as sexy as filing a showstopper bug report, provides information that just wasn't available years ago. It's why betas have changed from small tight knit groups of IT pros to the millions of testers you see in the Win7 beta today.
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Windows 95: what a disaster
rseiler 1st Mar 2009
Did you seriously mean to say that Win95 was one of the "two most troublesome releases in the history of Windows"? You couldn't have. That was a long beta that resulted in a revolutionary (relative to Windows) and phenomenal product. In that case, long beta equaled success. Maybe you meant WinMe (though I think its beta was relatively short)?

No one's going to dispute your second choice, Vista, but it's a little unfair to count Longhorn in the beta timeline. It was scrapped, and they started all over. If you start the count there, it's not that long.

BTW, W2K was another epic-length beta. It felt the longest for me, even though it probably wasn't, but that was another fine result.

Bottom line: you might want to scrap that paragraph.
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Contributr
No, I meant Windows 95
Ed Bott 1st Mar 2009
It was revolutionary in its impact, but it was a mess in the field. It wasn't truly usable until Windows 98 came along.

Yes, W2K was also a long beta, but the result was pretty good.
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Windows ME
Too Old For IT 2nd Mar 2009
And here I thought Windows ME was a disaster of epic proportions.

Or was it merely an answer in search of a question?
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Windows 95; immediate victory with a short term failure.
Cayble 1st Mar 2009
Windows 95 was and I think still is known as the first operating system for the common person who could learn alot of it on their own. It was like a change in the trajectory of a wave, and it was a huge change that took hold so there is no reason to discount Windows 95 as anything less then groundbreaking on that issue alone.

On the other hand, Windows 95 was the first OS to be caught flat footed by the ever exponentially expanding law of hardware development where 3 to 4 years after Windows 95 was released it was not a nice or easy task to get it inboard with a new high end system without some significant BSOD.

Win98 was a slight improvement on the viable time line issue, but not buy a lot. By 2003 Win98 could run most hardware but it was not anything close to unusual to see people who pushed their Win98 systems hard with anything close to high end hardware got more then their fair share of BSOD and as such the XP holdouts rapidly bargain to sign on-board for XP by the 2002-2003 years span.

Windows 95 broke huge ground but it exhibited problems with high end hardware being pushed to the limits far sooner then just about any Microsoft OS since. That doesn't make it a bad OS; it just makes it a ground breaking kick butt OS for its day that got caught by the short and curlies due to the high end development of hardware.
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I don't think that's what he meant
mark16_15@... 2nd Mar 2009
I think he meant that the testing process was a nightmare. These 2 major disasters eventually produced the 2 best OSs hat Microsoft ever released. (Win 98 was actually better than 95 but was essentially a service pack which you had to pay for).
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Isn't Win7 an SP for Vista?
sykandtyed 2nd Mar 2009
Win7 is the pr release to overshadow Vista's incompatable problems with existing software that we are expected to pay hundreds of dollars for.
Don't get me wrong. I'm using Vista to post this, but the constant securety nag screens is maddening when your an only user.
The article does hit the nail on the head with "this sucks" with no constructive critism.
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RE: Five things every Windows beta tester should know
Wolfie2K3 2nd Mar 2009
Bill Pytlovany's right on the money... MANY beta testers DO suck. Evidence of that can be found on the Technet beta forums.

But that's part of what you're going to get with an open beta program that will let just anyone get in on. You're going to find the guys with just enough computer knowledge to be considered "highly dangerous" mainly because they can get themselves into DEEP manure and can't get themselves out. Guess they're only interested in running the beta just for bragging rights or some such.

Then there's the ones who didn't read the instructions - particularly the bit about NOT installing it on your primary work machine because it's a BETA and bad things can happen to your data especially without a good solid backup.

This time around, we've even got a few TARDS showing up and posting crap just to start something. Stuff like the most alarming bugs popping up without any details as to the system the guy's got.

There's a bunch of people who are whining about the "Classic" interface and are demanding it be put back. Gotta wonder just where these guys were when Win 95 came out...

All in all, it seems to be going fairly well in spite of all of the distractions...
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That makes me shake my head, too.
sjbinaz 2nd Mar 2009
Why the desire for the old Classic ?
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Vista is the new New Coke
zenotek 2nd Mar 2009
After seeing how well 7 runs on my netbook, I'm
convinced Microsoft did this on purpose.
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Re: Vista is the new New Coke
notsofast 3rd Mar 2009
Please. There was no netbook when Vista came out. There was no point in making an OS for Netbook like hardware, because anyone with H/W that was that slow was extremely unlikely to buy an OS to upgrade that hardware.

Now there are netbooks, so the design assumptions changed. I swear to god most people that comment on software have never been involved in designing or writing anything beyond a hello world program.

You make the OS for the hardware you think people will buy, just like you try to make games for the hardware that you think gamers will have when the game is completed.

Sometimes you hit the mark, and sometimes you write Crysis.

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Most people hate change
donniebnyc666 3rd Mar 2009
My clients are all home or home office users. I can't tell you how many I've found using XP with the 2k menus. Why? "I don't like change" is always the answer.
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Most people can adapt if given the chance
Northlite 4th Mar 2009
My Clients are also home users of various ages, they are not using the Classic menu on any of their computers - why - because they don't even know it exists. I buy the computer, set it up to their use and they go from there. I put their most used Icons on the Desktop or Quicklaunch bar and they have never once called me and said I can't find this. Apparently my clients knew when going from Windows 98 or Me that things were going to look different and didn't question it. We need to give users more credit for actually being able to adapt to something new if given the chance.
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Bad Beta Babies
DarienHawk67 2nd Mar 2009
Yeah Wolfie2k3. You tell 'em.

What really bothers me is that most of the Win7 beta tests fail to read practically any documentation. The rather stick to do dogma that has been outdated for the last five years and wonder why they can?t just do action x.

Almost as bothersome is when some of these same "testers" are presented with good, relevant information, they want to object because they seen (or at least they think they have) something similar elsewhere.

It would not surprise me at all if MS never chooses to do a public beta again.
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Bad Beta Babies
Giba1 6th Mar 2009
Why Microsoft is requesting 500 Beta Testers for Vista SP2?, if MS don't need BT's I think somethink is wrong in your statement or in Redmond.
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RE: Five things every Windows beta tester should know
EricVM 2nd Mar 2009
I am a new beta tester and I "almost" got insulted. Then I thought to myself....hmmm...I have been giving them valuable descriptive optimal feedback with my experiences and or problems.
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Alfa and beta testing
pjotr123 Updated - 2nd Mar 2009
..is something I've done quite a bit of, in the past few years. Not for Windows, but for Ubuntu, but the principles remain the same. Now Ubuntu happens to have a pretty effective testing process.

Esential is the open communication with the bug reporters. Bug reporting should be possible for all users. And it should happen in a public newsgroup, so that the reporter can react and interact with both the developers and other bug reporters. As in Launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/

Furthermore, alfa and beta releases should be frequent and available to all. It's no big deal and not a big waste of developer's time. See this release schedule of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyReleaseSchedule
No less than 6 alfa releases, 1 beta release and a release candidate, before the final version is shipped!

I don't intend this post to be an advertisement for another operating system; my point is simply that the Windows developers could learn and benefit from the approach that a major Linux competitor has.

And remember, they crank out a new version of their operating system *every six months*. With a developers' crew that's somewhat smaller (cough) than Microsoft's. So their alfa and beta testing is apparently highly efficiently organized.
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RE: ...testing
n0neXn0ne Updated - 2nd Mar 2009
"It's no big deal and not a big waste of developer's time."

Only if you are short of developers.

^o^

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it's "Alpha", not "alfa".
rtk 2nd Mar 2009
I'm sure you've done lots of alfa testing.
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Contributr
Be nice
Ed Bott 2nd Mar 2009
Check out his ZDNet handle (Pjotr) and it's pretty reasonable to assume he's not from the U.S. and probably not a native speaker of English. Making fun of someone for a misspelling when they're trying to communicate in a second language doesn't advance the discussion at all and frankly just makes one look petty.
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Thanks
pjotr123 Updated - 2nd Mar 2009
You assumed correctly. I'm from the Netherlands (where I live as well) and Dutch is my first language. Although I speak English, German and French fluently, I do make mistakes in these languages from time to time. happy

On topic: I'm very much interested in your opinion on my original message. What do you think?
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RE: Alpha and Beta testing...
Narg 2nd Mar 2009
pjotr123, the differences are far deeper than the group of testers and/or developers for both OSes. I don't believe the Microsoft developer set is bigger than that of Linux if you include any of it's distributions. Linux/Ubuntu being a community project has a virtually limitless supply of developers. Nor does Linux have a business side requirement that Windows does, which weighs much more heavily on Microsoft than it does any Linux distribution from any source. Windows remains more standards compliant than any other OS available today. That's a lot of development and testing to handle for a finite group of developers.

Add to that the limitless amount of 3rd party interaction with Windows, which remains the most supported OS in terms of available software and hardware, and you have a mix that no other OS in the World has to deal with. The fact that Microsoft pulls off the amount of work and achievements they already do is amazing.

In terms of software in an analogy to other construction, it seems to me they are building the Hoover dam many times over on each release. Add to that the 3rd party mix, and you're going to be hard pressed to calculate the true man-hours required or achieved in the full development of Windows and it's environment.
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apologies to both of you
rtk 2nd Mar 2009
was meant as a joke.

Been hanging out on Adrian's blog too much lately. wink
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@pjotr123 - it's a matter of scale
de-void-21165590650301806002836337787023 2nd Mar 2009
Read Sinofsky's post: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx

No. Really. Go read it and then come back here - I'll wait for you ...

... read it? Okay, good.

I just wanted to repeat what he said and what Ed said above:

When you're creating a product that is going to be used by several hundred million poeple in over a hundred languages, running on practically every PC architecture created in the last 6+ years, you HAVE to make hard decisions.

And you have to accept that you're not going to be able to individually respond to each and every "bug report".

As Steven says: in just one week, Win7 Beta testers submitted "well over 500,000 reports. That averages to over 500 reports for each and every developer to look through".

In ONE week!

With all due respect to Ubuntu, they have a beta test base numbering into a few thousand. Most Ubuntu beta testers (like you and I) are pretty technical and are better qualified to create well-formed bug reports than 98% of Windows users (people like my Mum for example).

I for one would much rather know that Microsoft is collecting all this data and is making sound judgement calls based on the impact and reach of the reported bugs vs. their available resources. I may not agree with all decisions, but I know that the decisions are (now) being made based on sound data (unlike some of the decisions made during Vista).
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Too much alpha not enough beta
artfudd 2nd Mar 2009
That Ubuntu schedule appears much like what MS *has* done with W7 development, but with a much longer time period. IMO, there is too much alpha testing among the select few, and not enough beta testing among the larger groups of beta testers.

If more effort was spent trying to fine-tune the beta testers and guiding them along the right paths and methods for bug and design change requests, instead of basically ignoring them, then they would get a lot more quality feedback that would be a lot more valuable in shaping the final product.
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Good Advice - Now Drop It
jpr75_z Updated - 2nd Mar 2009
There is one BETA. There will be one RC, and that's that. All the whining in the world from the prima donna bloggers is not going to change it. Perhaps we could see a USEFUL article about Windows 7. I would like to know more about creating and booting from a VHD file and why I would do that instead of using a WIM file.
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Contributr
More of that is on the way
Ed Bott 2nd Mar 2009
But not till after the release candidate. I don't want to spend a lot of time publicly documenting the workings of a beta that is going to be changed significantly.
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VHD Boot
Joe_Raby 2nd Mar 2009
"I would like to know more about creating and booting from a VHD file"

Well it's only slated for Enterprise and Ultimate for one.

If you want to do this from a bootable install disc, get to the partitioner screen and hit Shift-F10 to open a command-prompt. Then you have to use DiskPart with about a dozen commands.

It's tricky, but not un-doable.

The reason they added this in is to leverage interoperability and serviceability of VHD's.

How do you boot from a WIM anyway? I know that the Windows Recovery Environment is installed with Windows 7 automatically, and it normally sits dormant as a WIM file in one of the Windows subfolders (can't remember which one). I'm guessing they temporarily mount it into the boot partition, since it's about the same size as the WIM - about 200MB by default.
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Unfortunately you need extremists
Michael Kelly 2nd Mar 2009
to balance out the other side's extremists. Rush Limbaugh, Al Sharpton and the like are necessary evils, because without them the other side would have no restraint. Likewise you need people over-complaining about MS because without their voices MS would see no need to communicate at all.
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Contributr
Nothing wrong with passion
Ed Bott 2nd Mar 2009
I'm not going to bite at the political references.

I see nothing wrong with passionate opposition. But it does help to understand how the process has changed. These complaints don't reflect the way Windows is built in 2009.
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Your logic is flawed.
TheWerewolf 2nd Mar 2009
What you've said is "We can't get rid of extremists because who would balance out the extremist."

However, if we refused to cater to *any* extremists on either side, then we would not need extremists.

The real truth is - we *like* to read the tinfoil hat rantings of people on both sides because it either expresses the things we want to say - or because it irritates us and gets our adrenaline going.

As for "passion", there are different kinds of passion. A person who throws him or herself into their work and refuses to compromise has passion. A person who will go to extreme lengths to experience something has passion.

A person who sits around posting inflammatory blog entries ... well, that's passion in the 'get out of your parent's basement and get a life' kind of passion.

I guess for some, it's better than not having a life at all.
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No.. the logic is not flawed
artfudd 2nd Mar 2009
It takes all kinds of beta testers to provide a large and diversified pool of feedback, some of which can be just the feedback given from using the product (if given the builds to test and use that is)and providing opinions and suggestions, as well as reporting any bugs and abnormalities encountered in the process.

It is then up to the developer (MS in this case) to process ALL the feedback and use it to shape the final product. If they (MS in this case) have a problem with how they use and process that volume of feedback from various sources, then THEY are the problem (and have to further streamline THEIR process), not start excluding some of their historical and valuable sources of the solicited feedback.
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Maybe MS has a reason to exclude
Drakaran 3rd Mar 2009
If their "tried and true" beta affiliates got them Vista, I can't really blame them for trying something different. LOL

Honestly, MS is handling this beta (and the whole win7 release) really well, and Ballmer is getting my attention. I'm starting to wonder if it might have been better if he'd taken over sooner.
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YOUR logic is flawed.
AzuMao 2nd Mar 2009
What you've said is; "you can't have a life if you've asked a company to fix some of its problems".
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RE: Five things every Windows beta tester should know
ecr@... 2nd Mar 2009
No matter how much ad-mire Omensoft666, they still cannot "make a silk purse, out of a sows ear".

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Hmmmmm.....
MGP2 2nd Mar 2009
I'd think that an 85+% market share qualifies as a silk purse. The other operating systems have to crane their necks looking up to see if they can even see a sow's ear level of market share.
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Obsession with figures...
SimonUK 2nd Mar 2009
You are obsessed with percentages aren't you! "85+%[sic]" doesn't
necessarily mean a product is good now does it? McDonalds have the
largest independent share of the fast food market (19%). Are Quarter
Pounders the best burgers?

Whilst Microsoft do indeed have the largest desktop install base,
this figure is somewhat skewed. For instance, Jonny has an HP laptop.
That laptop was sold with a licence for Windows XP, which was removed
when he installed Ubuntu, which was installed from a cover mounted CD
- so no formal way to track it. Do you think Microsoft count his license as
installed? Hell yes they do! So it really depends on how you count market
share. I grant you, it would still be significantly higher that the others.
Still doesn't mean that Windows is the best product. It means it the most
available.
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Maccas may not have the best burgeres
Aussie_Troll 2nd Mar 2009
BUT, they do sell what people want, and what the are willing to pay for, they are quick, efficient, clean, consistant quality. They provide what people what and the price they want to pay.

Now consider if Maccas gave away their burgets FOR FREE, did not pay their employees had no consistancy had 100+ slight variations of the same burger. and on any given day you dont know if your burger will taste like the one you had and enjoyed last week.

Its all about meeting the markets expectations.

McDonnalds dont make burgers becaus the people who work there like to make burgers or like to give you a freedom to choose between Mcdonnnals or burget king.

FOSS could learn a good lesson from McDonnalds.

I spent many years in the Navy, and have visited many real dirty and dives of places, but you always know if you find a McDonnalds you will get good service, clean premises and toilets and a meal that you know will taste acceptable.

(and little green gerkins that you can make stick to the roof )

************************

Pfffft, Facts are meaningless, you can use facts to prove anything that?s even remotely true, facts smacks.
H Simpson

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