I've been on both sides of this as a Windows OS tester. I beta tested Win98 for the cost of the disc, about 10 bucks. It was not a true test, it was an advertising gimmick. But I treated it like any other test and gave feedback on the OS. After that (and thanks to some friends I had that worked for MS) I was invited to every Windows test after that.
So I was invited to the Windows 8 alpha. First off, overall Win8 was a HUGE step forward as an operating system. It is too bad it was handcuffed by a gawd-awful horrifying abysmal GUI. It did so many things better than 7, but all of us testers (there were probably 10,000 testers altogether) were in unity that the GUI was gawd-awful, horrifying and abysmal. And we were also in unity that MS was going to lose a ton of bucks if they released that mess. The responses? "Oh, don't worry. People will love this new interface once they get used to it". We heard that over and over. Trust me, it fell on the deaf ears of a lot of very tech savvy testers. Even after working with the interface for nearly a year, I still found it confusing - how was my 75 year old dad going to react to something like this? As it turns out, he reacted the same was as most people did to this gawd-awful, horrifying abysmal interface and either did not buy it, or only bought one copy even if they had a lot more computers in their house.
I was VERY vocal about my disdain for Win8. As vocal as I was, I figured that I would never see another tester invite. But after MS lost all that money on 8, I received an alpha invite to test Win10 4 days after they released the patch to 8.1 along with a bunch of other people that were quite vocal about Win8. And they really tuned into our input, changing quite a few things we suggested during testing, such as adding a better compatibility tool and better gaming tools. So if you hate Win10, blame me. But overall Win10 is considered a huge upgrade from Win8 and better than Win7. MS listened, and Win10 became a well liked OS that is very gamer friendly.
The point is, I have seen first hand that if you want a good product, listen to your testers. You don't need to accept every single suggestion of course, but listen to what they say and consider the input as you design. But ignoring the advice of your testers completely is going to backfire.
BTW, those words in boldface in paragraph 2 were some of the cleaner comments from the GUI category of the tester forums describing the Win8 GUI.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
I was VERY vocal about my disdain for Win8. As vocal as I was, I figured that I would never see another tester invite. But after MS lost all that money on 8, I received an alpha invite to test Win10 4 days after they released the patch to 8.1 along with a bunch of other people that were quite vocal about Win8.
You and those other folks probably received an automated invite to the beta for w10. I doubt they even looked at your feedback, as they wouldn't have some sort of council deciding who gets invites based on how nice they were about the last OS.
I've been on both sides of this as a Windows OS tester. I beta tested Win98 for the cost of the disc, about 10 bucks. It was not a true test, it was an advertising gimmick. But I treated it like any other test and gave feedback on the OS. After that (and thanks to some friends I had that worked for MS) I was invited to every Windows test after that.
So I was invited to the Windows 8 alpha. First off, overall Win8 was a HUGE step forward as an operating system. It is too bad it was handcuffed by a gawd-awful horrifying abysmal GUI. It did so many things better than 7, but all of us testers (there were probably 10,000 testers altogether) were in unity that the GUI was gawd-awful, horrifying and abysmal. And we were also in unity that MS was going to lose a ton of bucks if they released that mess. The responses? "Oh, don't worry. People will love this new interface once they get used to it". We heard that over and over. Trust me, it fell on the deaf ears of a lot of very tech savvy testers. Even after working with the interface for nearly a year, I still found it confusing - how was my 75 year old dad going to react to something like this? As it turns out, he reacted the same was as most people did to this gawd-awful, horrifying abysmal interface and either did not buy it, or only bought one copy even if they had a lot more computers in their house.
I was VERY vocal about my disdain for Win8. As vocal as I was, I figured that I would never see another tester invite. But after MS lost all that money on 8, I received an alpha invite to test Win10 4 days after they released the patch to 8.1 along with a bunch of other people that were quite vocal about Win8. And they really tuned into our input, changing quite a few things we suggested during testing, such as adding a better compatibility tool and better gaming tools. So if you hate Win10, blame me. But overall Win10 is considered a huge upgrade from Win8 and better than Win7. MS listened, and Win10 became a well liked OS that is very gamer friendly.
The point is, I have seen first hand that if you want a good product, listen to your testers. You don't need to accept every single suggestion of course, but listen to what they say and consider the input as you design. But ignoring the advice of your testers completely is going to backfire.
BTW, those words in boldface in paragraph 2 were some of the cleaner comments from the GUI category of the tester forums describing the Win8 GUI.
problem with win 10 is the permission for network and workign with others computers, the little sh!t don't like to show others computer in the network, and sharing older printers is hell.
there was also some issues with interface, and several changes on some access I had to overlap, for me in general at home it work like win 7 for me, at work now that is a mess
Comments
So I was invited to the Windows 8 alpha. First off, overall Win8 was a HUGE step forward as an operating system. It is too bad it was handcuffed by a gawd-awful horrifying abysmal GUI. It did so many things better than 7, but all of us testers (there were probably 10,000 testers altogether) were in unity that the GUI was gawd-awful, horrifying and abysmal. And we were also in unity that MS was going to lose a ton of bucks if they released that mess. The responses? "Oh, don't worry. People will love this new interface once they get used to it". We heard that over and over. Trust me, it fell on the deaf ears of a lot of very tech savvy testers. Even after working with the interface for nearly a year, I still found it confusing - how was my 75 year old dad going to react to something like this? As it turns out, he reacted the same was as most people did to this gawd-awful, horrifying abysmal interface and either did not buy it, or only bought one copy even if they had a lot more computers in their house.
I was VERY vocal about my disdain for Win8. As vocal as I was, I figured that I would never see another tester invite. But after MS lost all that money on 8, I received an alpha invite to test Win10 4 days after they released the patch to 8.1 along with a bunch of other people that were quite vocal about Win8. And they really tuned into our input, changing quite a few things we suggested during testing, such as adding a better compatibility tool and better gaming tools. So if you hate Win10, blame me. But overall Win10 is considered a huge upgrade from Win8 and better than Win7. MS listened, and Win10 became a well liked OS that is very gamer friendly.
The point is, I have seen first hand that if you want a good product, listen to your testers. You don't need to accept every single suggestion of course, but listen to what they say and consider the input as you design. But ignoring the advice of your testers completely is going to backfire.
BTW, those words in boldface in paragraph 2 were some of the cleaner comments from the GUI category of the tester forums describing the Win8 GUI.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!