From my POV, the whole process is lopsided: taking my own case as an
example, I have about 40 years experience in using computers, including 20
years in development and the rest in client education, assistance and
support. I've used personal computers professionally since 1984 (that was
MS-DOS 2.0). I'm acutely aware of the users' needs, in part because I have
the ability to put myself in their shoes, and in part because I work with
them on a daily basis. Yet MS doesn't know about me or others like me, and I
(and many others with equivalent experiences) have never been approached for
our opinions. The only ones who participate in the process, and whose
suggestions are (sometimes) taken in consideration, are the ones who *pay*
Microsoft for the "privilege" to access and play with unfinished software.
Most of those people are young and technically oriented, and have little or
no experience of what the average Joe out there needs or wants. Being the
more numerous, their suggestions and advice drown out those of the few
people like me, who *do* know users.
--
Pierre Szwarc
Paris, France
PGP key ID 0x75B5779B
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Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom !
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"Zack Whittaker (R2 Mentor)" <admin@zacknet.co.uk> a écrit dans le message
de %23I1ZDXjRGHA.5908@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
|> The customer expereince program only tracks usage patterns, not new
| > features
| > or new concepts, although usage patterns may imply some of them.
|
| I know - it just helps improve what is there and how people use it - they
| know how people use software from the CEIP reports, so they know how to
make
| things easier to access and use.
|
| > I don't know how they pick beta users, but I'm sure MSDN subscribers do
| > get
| > MS attention just because they've got 7 grand of cold hard cash to spend
| > every year...
|
| Sometimes random, but it really helps if you have a lot of experience
behind
| you. If you know a product, they'll usually ask you to participate in
| further ones of that product. For example, I was on Messenger 7.0, then
7.5
| and now WLM 8.0. They are carefully selected most of the time, with bug
| reports feedback and all that.
|
| > and yes... it's been too long for vista to come for aafter half a
| > decade...
| > and that's EXACTLY why we demand more from this OS than any other we've
| > seen... the standards should be higher than anything else for its
| > extraordinary length of dev time
|
| And they are! You must remember there are many different perceptions -
from
| novice users, experts, developers, web developers, security analysts,
| technology evangalists - so overall it's much better for everyone. They've
| had a lot of work to do in Vista and it's not as if they've been slacking
| you know, there was a point where they nearly re-wrote the entire codebase
| from scratch - it's not easy building something that advanced!
)
)