Windows 10 Preview stats: Two-thirds of testers live dange

Arelem · 17 Oct 2014

If you actually read the source article, the author is speaking of those folks who installed it over the primary operating system of their PCs.

"There are a couple precautionary steps you’ll want to take if you install the Windows 10 Technical Preview over your Windows 8.1 installation or on its own hard drive partition, however."

badrobot · 17 Oct 2014

It's ok to use it everyday OS but you should know your limits on when not to use it. VM or Real Machine, it's still "testing". Why? Because what we have right now is just a test version of the OS (aka tech preview). It doesn't matter how you use it or how you installed it.
I have on separate drive.

I run it as an everyday OS except when I am doing banking. I just simply reboot and switch drives to boot up either on 7 or linux.

jimbo45 · 17 Oct 2014

badrobot said:

It's ok to use it everyday OS but you should know your limits on when not to use it. VM or Real Machine, it's still "testing". Why? Because what we have right now is just a test version of the OS (aka tech preview). It doesn't matter how you use it or how you installed it.
I have on separate drive.

I run it as an everyday OS except when I am doing banking. I just simply reboot and switch drives to boot up either on 7 or linux.

Hi there

I suppose it all depends on your definition of "testing". Running everyday stuff on it for a long period - and being able to revert to an earlier OS in case of unsolvable problems or other incompatibilities such as not being able to use some Banking or Corporate software - is fine -- that constitutes "Testing".

I'm referring to people who wipe their old OS and use the new one as a Primary OS without any sensible means of "going back" without doing a complete re-install of the old OS - and there are even on these boards people who still after being warned "Ad Nauseam" STILL DON'T TAKE PROPER BACKUPS. !!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

badrobot · 17 Oct 2014

Agreed.

Buying a spare hard drive is cheaper in the long run than overwriting your existing OS and then buy a new one come 2015. :)

But of course nothing can be better than backups. They cost nothing and will save you a lot of time. :)

Graulges · 17 Oct 2014

I installed mine on a spare machine. So, yep, straight on the hard drive. What's the problem? How many of that 64% did the same, it wasn"t necessarily on ther main machine. Living danerously?

LittleJay · 17 Oct 2014

I'm referring to people who wipe their old OS and use the new one as a Primary OS without any sensible means of "going back" without doing a complete re-install of the old OS - and there are even on these boards people who still after being warned "Ad Nauseam" STILL DON'T TAKE PROPER BACKUPS. !!!!!

Yes....but the Forums would be soooo boring, if everyone did the sensible thing!

Mark Phelps · 17 Oct 2014

Any time you open "testing" to the general public, you're going to encounter a large number of folks who make no effort to protect what they have in place prior to jumping into the testing pool. I'm part of the "insider" program myself, and I did the install on a separate hard drive -- to retain Win8.1 as my "production" system.

When I later learned that (1) there is no way to go "back" to the prior Windows version if you "upgraded" that to win10TP, and (2) MS is doing keylogging to "collect user stats" -- I'm especially glad I did it the way I did.

As to complaints from bloggers about either of these two issues -- these are typical side-effects of product testing.

Graulges · 17 Oct 2014

But surely all of that 64% aren't using it as their main machine or have I got an unrealistic view of the general level of sense around? Probably. And this is an internet forum

unifex · 17 Oct 2014

Well, even if you use it as your "main" OS, I still don't quite see how the backups would help. I do backup my files but only for the slight probability of drive failure. If the OS runs into problems and needs to be reinstalled - well, that costs me time, but my files are not affected - what kind of OS failure would damage my files? Some virus perhaps, but to be honest, I never ever had one of those and even if something will seep through, how's that related to OS failure?

Now, of course I don't do banking or any other serious stuff on the test version of the OS, but mostly out of paranoia - who knows what does this thing report "home". OS being possibly unstable has nothing to do with it.

Clam · 17 Oct 2014

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

That's the WHOLE POINT of testing !!! (but of course as you take backup). You WANT to find all possible defects and stress the system to maximum before letting it out of the door and into production.

Who'se ever heard of a TEST PILOT for example who didn't "Live Dangerously". If possible these people also have a "backup" -- a means of ejection if the plane goes catastrophically wrong -- probably more and more impossible these days though. !!

What's the point of some of this "Non Journalism". There must be better snippets of technical news surely. !!!!!

Now if people are using W10 as their RUNNING machines then that can't be construed (at least in the English I learned) as TESTING.

Using a system say in parallel running or comparisons with the original previous OS (whether W8.1 or earlier) is a perfectly valid means of testing too - but running it as a normal "everyday machine" IMO does not constitute "Testing" as such.

I believe in the I.T world that's called "Testing in Production" which I'm sure is heavily frowned on and only done as an ultimate last resort.

Cheers
jimbo

No offense, but that's the biggest BS I've ever read on this forum.

There's no better way to test something than use it every single day for every single thing you normally do. The more time you spend testing something, the more you get to know the software (or anything else you may be testing) and more weird stuff you may encounter.

Think about it for a second. Compare new OS with a car you just bought from unknown person - if you take it for a short drive, you will not hear it sound weird after 2 hours of drive or you may not notice one of the front lights isn't working properly if you haven't had the time to drive during the night.

So yeah, there's no better testing than actually testing it on a real PC and using it 24/7 because this way you will not miss ANYTHING. Of course, exploring stuff you normally don't use and doing things you haven't done before with new OS also helps to test the features you may not be familiar with, but if you find something odd, you can ask around about it or just report it right away.