Microsoft releases Alfas and Betas to many different communities of testers

And those releases have multiple cycles and run a long time so there is ample opportunity for developers of dependent s/w and web pages to test against the coming release and provide feedback to Microsoft. How many builds of W95 did I load...including one from floppies that took 20+ hours of feeding floppies before the first boot.

I wonder if Microsoft might just have as many in-house testers using the daily builds of IE as there are total testers for FF, Opera, Safari etc al. They are after all, one humongously huge company. And not everyone grabs the nightly build of the latest OS or browser even from developers who provide it.

In my old place of employment, we had nightly builds and the developers actually were developing on the OS for which they had submitted updates the day before. So if there was a major bug, they felt/found it first. But the release cycle was more like yearly because that is the way the customers wanted it. They were betting important things on the stability of the s/w. They certainly didn't want anything but a long release cycle in which they were heavily involved. It wasn't released until major customers signed off that it didn't break their apps. Daily builds would have distracted them from their mission...luring them into daily regression testing and taking resources from supporting their existing app release and developing for the next release.

Different goals for corporations/agencies. And so different development, customer exposure for comment and release cycles are appropriate.

I had used XP for years and was quite happy.

My wife needed a new PC and it came with Vista. Never had I seen Vista. No manuals. So out of the box it was fully functional in 30 minutes with no confusion and all for Dell's cheapest mail order $400. Now it is a year later ... no crashes or other issues, she doesn't even know what OS is on the machine, she just uses it.

When I needed a new machine, I bought a no-name eMachines from Costco on a whim. Came with Vista and had a trivial experience setting it up and using it. I'd say its actively used 12 hours a day over the last 6 months and I don't recall a crash despite more than a half dozen external peripherals via USB. For $379. I do use a UPS on both machines and they do have 2-3GB of memory but no high end graphics or high speed CPU..both low speed dual processors.

As one whose OS experiences go back 40 years and who did a load of an alfa from floppies of W95 that took over 24 hours, I know OS horror stories. To me...Vista isn't one of them. I've had and have zero issues with it.

IMHO, YMMV

But why should the average user have to worry about tickless
after all other OSs figure out your hardware and install the right options. A distribution could worry about the user experience and take care of this automatically or, at worst, ask you if you are installing on a battery powered system.

There is utility in having one entity responsible for the ease of installation and not punting it to the varying knowledge/skill levels of the user.

If Microsoft and Apple can do it....

One: they appear to have evaluated/proven their own work, always a dangerous thing.

Two: they claim to exceed Common Criteria requirements but don't claim Common Criteria evaluation successfully completed which would require a third party evaluation of their methodologies, designs and code against a Protection Profile. This a is a wonderfully complex process usually involving the developer organization, the evaluators and a national standards body empowered to oversee the effort, make their own tests and ultimately grant formal Common Criteria evaluation. In an effort I participated in, it took at least a dozen documents, millions of dollars and dozens of months to get a robust OS through an evaluation. This was done by a very talented group that had more than a dozen years experience providing evaluated products and getting them approved. And such evaluations are country specific as the spook agencies in each country want to have their own look and say.

Three: what is left out of this OS is what makes an OS usable in the real world to do real things that people want to do...like work over a network or work with files.

The ODB2 standard defined certain codes that had to be standard and certain codes that must be revealed and any $49 code reader can read them and potentially shut them off.

But manufacturers also implement extensions to those codes that are for diagnostic purposes or option enabling purposes that they do not allow access to except through proprietary computers which they sell at extremely high cost (high 4 figures) mostly to dealers or to mechanics who specialize in one make of car.

The problem is a "we work on all cars repair shop" can't have the diagnostic computers for all the makes let alone all the manuals that tell them how to troubleshoot the problem (multi-page flow charts), the parts on hand to make the repair a prompt one, the specialized repair tools necessary to do the job or the expertise to do the job right.

I have all the repair codes for one of my cars and all the repair manuals and a code reader. Doesn't mean I can or should do most of the work, (but it does help me keep the repair shop honest).

Doesn't mean a do everything shop is gonna be the right place to take my car for all the possibilities of failure either. I want a shop working on my car that is doing the same car day in and day out and thus has the computer, manuals, parts and expertise to do the job right and promptly.

All makes shops can do some jobs, but there are lots they shouldn't attempt any more than I should.

Nadar's request won't change this because the do every make shop will still not have the parts or manuals or expertise to do many jobs.

It is up to us as consumers to know what each shop can do and pick the right one.

Lets see...you are going to not be physically present to work either hardware or software problems and your people are. And you say you need to give them trivial capabilities that any OS can support and no special aps.

That tells me you ask them what they are used to and find the hardware with the best worldwide support and go with that. The browser will give you access to the apps they will be using. Who cares what browser. Or what OS.

Of course this presupposes that your guess that they will only be using the computers for email and docs and web access is right.

What if they decide 6 months in to edit on site? Or to need some not yet known app. What will set them up best to be able to do that? What choice of HW/OS will best set you up to adapt to unknown needs half way in to the project? And if you are going to consider that then you are back to guessing what they might want and need and you can't just provide the simple solution you thought you could.

Good luck.

First a Mitsubishi from their one brand store as it was really the only game in town. Next from Sears as they had a decent price and I was there after visiting Best Buy and not deciding. 2 days ago after visiting WalMart where they were out of every one of a size and brand I'd consider, was it Costco and drove home with it. Their selection was medium, price good, condition of box (and product on installation) perfect, sales pressure/help not needed.

Interesting article in Business Week on liquidators and how they operate. Don't expect bargains until the last days when there is darn near nothing anyone wants left. It wasn't Circuit City people selling in those last days, it was the liquidator setting the prices and hiring the existing staff.

And I'm talking evidence from peer reviewed studies of success rates and complications rates over thousands of patients. Early detection can result is very high cure rates, and late detection very low.

Biopsy is certainly something that you want someone well practiced in the art performing. But once you have had a repeatedly elevated PSA or a rapidly changing for the worse PSA, to not get a Biopsy invites what can be a painful demise.

Prostate cancer isn't just one kind of cancer, doesn't just affect the prostate and doesn't grow slowly in all men. There are types that originate in the prostate but then can spread outside the prostate capsule through the body and, when finally detected in late stages due to some complaint other than a urinary one, can have affected the bones or other organs. At this stage, surgery or radiation can do little for the man. Yes, there are people who are old enough or ill enough that something else will get them before the prostate cancer. But dying of an aggressive prostate cancer that has gone undetected and spread is a painful way to go.

I was treated with a lot of people of varying ages, some with young kids, some in their 80s. Truck drivers and physicians, IT workers and farmers. From all over the world. 16% of men will get it.

My prostate rectal exam always came back: smooth and normal. Only the Biopsy detected it and, by the time I had the Biopsy, my cancer was in several sites within the prostate. The Biopsey results in a Gleeson score which is a measure of the aggressiveness of the cancer.

(www.rcog.com is a good reference site)

The rule of thumb is: If you are African-American or you have a family history of some prostate cancer, you should get the PSA test starting at age 40. Else start testing at 50.

Said as one who just had treatment for prostate cancer. The treatment (www.rcog.com) was chosen from about 8 possibilities because the treatment was evidence based/proven and the Dr could tell me based on my PSA (blood test) and Gleeson (results of Biopsy) scores the statistical probability of my total cure measured 10 years from now with a .2 PSA as the measure of the cure rate. I wanted a cure, not someone who would treat me, did few treatments and didn't adjust his treatments based on the statistics of his success/failures with patients. I will be followed up every 6 months until I die as my results go into the 12k person data base the practice keeps.

Using the same treatment, early detection can change the cure rate from as high as over 97% to below 40%.

GET TESTED

(They do not know why AA men get cancer earlier and get a more aggressive form, just that they do and it needs to be caught earlier to have the same chance of successful treatment.)

it is losing market share month by month. And browsers which didn't exist 2 years ago are gaining.

So the barrier to entry in the browser market must not be so compelling as to prevent another entrant. Nor is the barrier to success.

And customers/consumers have (and had) multiple choices and are taking advantage of them.

So why the case?

between opposing opinions of the desirability or design of a feature. And there is risk of introducing new bugs by adding features or getting insufficient testing by introducing new features or code changes late in the product time line.

Any product manager has had to wrestle with the desire to satisfy with features, the desire for stability and the production target date. It isn't easy...partially because users have little appreciation of the chaos their requests introduce into the production process...nor should they care...it is the PM's job to filter the inputs and come up with workable a plan within resources and time lines...and the users job to judge the finished product.

And why there are cut off dates for feature changes that are different and earlier than for bug fixes. Feature changes generate too much risk if introduced late in the cycle.

As one who had the fate of his company's yearly reporting resting on a delivery date being met, I can tell you it isn't an easy call you make when you say "ship it" and you don't always get it right. Get it wrong and you are looking for a new job in another industry.
 

for when they have to reply to an anti-trust complaint.

Why does IE have the highest usage ranking?

Because it comes with Windows and has been tested in advance to work with Windows. So people have no reason to try the many options that are different. People don't want different, they want familiar. Another reason is because IE terminates normally and doesn't leave processes hanging like Firefox has done for the last 2 years. I love Firefox's interface and use its latest (on both XP and Vista) but am not blind to its faults and can't set my wife up to use it. I'd have to be her full time process killer.

And Google's quality in most of their applications lacks IMHO compared to Microsoft's (compare Gmail to Outlook).