Richard G. Harper said:
This "hotcrap" MVP isn't sussing you (and the likes of you) because of financial issues but
because you're being extremely ungrateful for what you did get!
This beta offered an unparalleled opportunity for the public to get in on the action, so to
speak. No other product offered so many builds and so many opportunities for folks to get
code - for that matter, the public had a shot at the same final pre-release code that the
private beta tester community had. I don't know of any other program where that has
happened.
Right about now, I can imagine some project manager looking at the whining going on and
saying, "Wow, was that a mistake! Guess we'll never do that again."
Absolutely not. They could care less about the whining,
doesn't phase them one bit.... hardly anyone from Microsoft
sees it. The data gathered from CPP is "invaluable".
That is exactly why Vista was made available to a larger
audience. The same goes for Office 2007.
I did not do the Vista beta expecting anything from Microsoft.
However, for the other side of the whiners to infer the CPP
testers input was lacking, they are mistaken. I read several
articles on the enormous about of bugs submitted by the CPP
testers and more importantly- Microsoft was literally flooded with
valuable information from Vista's error reporting service.
The wide release to the public and the information gathered
as a result, is why Microsoft didn't just make Beta 2 and RC1
available to CPP- they also released a couple interim builds
and RC2. The bugs submitted, error-reporting and crash data,
generated by CPP was an enormous help to Microsoft- far beyond
what the typical advanced Tech Beta testers would generate.
One last thing, which I have mentioned before. Mark V.
and myself were instrumental in figuring out how to protect
Vista's System Restore points in a dual booting configuration.
I was told numerous times my findings could not be correct-
by MVPs and ding dongs from Microsoft- almost inferring I
was either crazy or lying.
Jill Zoeller of Microsoft didn't even know what I was talking
about, even though I had sent the feedback to Microsoft several
times. Never saw anyone post about it. So, it took a CPP tester
of Beta2 two weeks to figure it out- in all the testing prior, no one
else had discovered the same thing.
By using Vista's Bitlocker or hiding Vista's partition from XP,
your restore points will *not* be deleted. Yet, still to this day,
you will not see anyone from Microsoft discuss this issue.
Anyway, I've never expected Microsoft to be generous.
I've kept my expectations of the company realistic/low.
I am not disappointed.
Some info on Vista, beta bugs, error-reporting and the
contributions of CPP testers below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/t...rss&adxnnlx=1163945607-1PDa+vCJqjq3iDwTnuxZ5Q
<q>
Vista has also been tested extensively. More than half a million computer users have installed
Vista test software, and 450,000 of the systems have sent crash data back to Microsoft.
The test data from the second beta release of Vista alone generated 5.5 petabytes of
information — the equivalent of the storage capacity of 690,000 home PC’s.
On Sept. 1, for example, Microsoft released a version of Vista called Release Candidate 1 to a
large group of outside testers, hoping to take advantage of their free time over the Labor Day
weekend.
Immediately, Mr. Garzia recalled, a wave of crash data fed back to Microsoft disclosed a newly
introduced bug that had been created by incompatibility with a software module (referred to as
a device driver) written by a partner company.
</q>
http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/archive/2006/07/05/Windows-Vista-Bug-Analysis.aspx
<q>
the bulk of the open bugs have been entered into the system post-Beta 2
</q>
-With the exception of June 3rd, the bug pace has taken a significant upturn since Beta 2, and
the pace picked up even more when the CPP became available. This was to be expected, since Beta
2 was the first time Windows Vista was available to the general public.
That last point is an important one for several reasons. First off, the bulk of the open bugs
have been entered into the system post-Beta 2. This means that Microsoft still has their work
cut out for them. Second, though the average for the entire period is 81 bugs a day, a closer
look at the data since May 1 shows that the number of bugs per day is actually increasing, not
decreasing, trending closer to 200. While the amount of feedback is fantastic, and definitely
expected based on the number of people with access to Beta 2, one would hope that, at this
stage of the game, those number would start to go down, not up.
