Nearly 40,000 Microsoft Employees Tested Windows 10 Before Launch

[Batu69]

Redmond says 40 percent of the company tested W10

 

Windows 10 was launched on July 29 to users across the world, but testers who were part of the Windows Insider program had received early builds of the operating system many months before in order to help Microsoft improve it before the general release.

But while Windows 10 was built with help from users across the world, Microsoft also tested the new operating system on computers within the company in order to thoroughly see how early builds work before actually shipping them to insiders.

The company had its very own internal rings for Windows 10, so before fast ring insiders got a new build, they were all tested by Microsoft’s own employees.

Through testing of new builds

And according to a recent case study documenting the internal Windows 10 deployment process, Microsoft had nearly 40,000 workers running the new OS on their computers, not only to diagnose bugs but also to help improve general performance.

“Prior to product release, there were 38,000 users, roughly 40 percent of employees, internally running Windows 10. Microsoft IT used flighting (delivering pre-release builds of Windows 10 through Windows Update) to make sure that early adopters were running the latest builds as they became available,” Redmond says.

“The early adoption community is closely tied to a moderated internal community support forum, where users could report issues and seek assistance from other users. Microsoft IT was able to gain early insight by watching the threads to identify issues as they surfaced.”

Starting early 2016, Microsoft plans to provide insiders with access to builds that were previously exclusively available to company employees, thus trying to speed up development of the next OS updates coming in the summer.

Plans to release builds faster to users aren’t new, but they obviously include additional risks, as more bugs and issues are very likely to be experienced, so Redmond recommends those who don’t have the time to hunt down bugs to switch to the slow ring or to remain on the stable version.

Article source

[vibranium]

I also take this piece of MS info with a pinch of salt. Some of the serious bugs (e.g. conflict with Nvidia driver) are so obvious, it is unlikely that a sample of 40000 could not catch it. And yet MS claims that such bugs were only caught after release into Fast Ring (hence justifying the Fast Ring strategy).

[Sylence]

1 hour ago, vibranium said:

I also take this piece of MS info with a pinch of salt. Some of the serious bugs (e.g. conflict with Nvidia driver) are so obvious, it is unlikely that a sample of 40000 could not catch it. And yet MS claims that such bugs were only caught after release into Fast Ring (hence justifying the Fast Ring strategy).

 

It's possible that the version they used for testing was running fine and the newer versions released to the consumers had the bugs

[vibranium]

1 hour ago, saeed_dc said:

 

It's possible that the version they used for testing was running fine and the newer versions released to the consumers had the bugs

 

Not very likely to be the case (build numbers are similar and all) but you could be right.

[pc71520]

"How worse things would have been

IF

less than 40% of the Redmond geniuses

had not tested Windows 10?"

 

 

Really,  makes me wonder...

[Karlston]

And despite all that testing, it's still immature nearly 5 months after release.

 

And Microsoft's forced-mystery-cumulative updates continue to cause problems for users.

 

And their strategy to convince Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade is by unconscionable forcing, nagging, bullying, and despicable sneakyness (2 choices - upgrade NOW, or upgrade TONIGHT, no obvious DON'T upgrade option).

 

And the bulk of Windows 7 and 8.1 users still refuse to take it.

 

And Microsoft still hide the Windows 10 failure by avoiding using "market share" to describe Windows 10's "success".

 

Cue the first Microsoft double-failure.

 

 

[steven36]

Sounds about  right though  40 percent of the company tested W10  but  they claimed to have had 1.5 million Windows 10 'Insiders back in Dec 2014 with all this testing  they still  released a version  that was no more than a beta with the way windows 10 is suppose to keep getting new features it may be  beta like forever . What made windows  stable before was the fact was after they got it stable  they stopped adding new features . New features  while there nice and all  more times than not causes regression .  But for what I use a computer for most of these new features were useless to me. I don't like m$ browsers  ,modern apps or Cortana . There shipping off more and more responsibility  to the free volunteer  users and exposing  the consumer to even more regression what are you going  get in return?  most likely more people will  lose there jobs  and you want get anything but more bugs windows 10 is already free tell July 2016 .

 

Lest take a look  at one year ago

Microsoft: We have more than 1.5 million Windows 10 'Insiders'

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-we-have-more-than-1-5-million-windows-10-insiders/

 

[wavymavy]

...and still many don't think they got it right.

 

The people who get paid by ms said it's great...

the people who buy it said it needs help!