New
#120
Whoopee, my wife's comp will get the freebie. It had Vista, and 'just in case', I put the Preview on it with her MSA account. Looks like I lucked out.
Thanks, MS, all savings gratefully received!
With multiple machines, will you have to create new MS accounts? Guess it is easy enough to create another email account and go from there.
NoteUPDATE: Upcoming changes to Windows 10 Insider Preview builds
Getting the final release on July 29th
Windows Insiders running the Windows 10 Insider Preview (Home and Pro editions) with their registered MSA connected to their PC will receive the final release build of Windows 10 starting on July 29th. This will come as just another flight. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from Windows Insiders about how this will work if they clean installed from ISO. As long as you are running an Insider Preview build and connected with the MSA you used to register, you will receive the Windows 10 final release build and remain activated. Once you have successfully installed this build and activated, you will also be able to clean install on that PC from final media if you want to start over fresh.
If you are running the Enterprise edition of the Windows 10 Insider Preview, to upgrade to the final release of Windows 10 Enterprise you will need to download and activate it from Volume Licensing Service Center. As a reminder, the Enterprise edition of the Windows 10 Insider Preview is not eligible for the free upgrade offer and can be upgraded to the final release of Windows 10 through an active Software Assurance agreement.
Not really ... QA doesn't pay that well in the first place. - it doesn't generate revenue It is a necessary cost of doing business.
Just as the graph shows, there is a range - the upper tiers manage and develop the tools, the lower tiers run the tools, write up the results and do it 10, 20, 30 or more times until their management signs off on the code (RTM). Automated test tools are really only good to catch regression. They are a poor substitute for real world testing, which is what MS benefited from the Insider Program - real world use, by real people, on real configurations, and all the things users do to their machines.
You can't put a price on that. It sure beats releasing code and THEN finding out what happens in the wild
There were always previews, but they were closed to more technical people who see things differently from Mom and Pop, Brother and Sister. Those previews had a few 100 people - this open Preview was massive ... almost 3 million. Kudos to MS!
Why wouldn't MS continue such a great program? It benefits everyone and it costs MS nothing.
I'm not saying MS can do away with QA - absolutely not. I suggested to them that they should include a test matrix or script that every insider could run on their machine - they put up quests on the insider page. Fair enough - they can direct testing to the areas they need to test.
Full disclosure: I was a QA grunt once
I had most windows versions in beta, even alpha. First alpha versions of W8 were incredibly buggy, in dual boot with W7 used to wipe out all disks pretty regularly, had to run it on only one disk and it progressed slowly. Most fun I had was with Win 95, had it for over a year and since it was before internet era had to get it and updates thru some friends that worked on side developers of Apies. Because of a row with Norton, release version was without some stuff that beta had and didn't pick up until W97/98 to be as complete as 95 beta.
W10 seems to progress much faster partly because it's derived from W8 and in good part thanks to wide range of testers. MS made a good move there and with continuing testing same way it gets even better.