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Microsoft Operating Systems Windows

10 Million Insiders Test And Use Windows 10 Every Day, Says Microsoft (zdnet.com) 91

When Microsoft made Windows 10 publicly available to all users in 2015, it said about five million people had signed up for Windows Insider program, and were using the OS every day. That number has grown to hit 10 million now, it said this week. From a report: Microsoft launched Windows Insider in October 2014 with its first public Windows 10 Technical Preview, and by that December the program counted 1.5 million members. It was a solid start, but the company now says that in just over two years numbers have grown 566 percent to 10 million fans. "We count over 10 million Windows Insiders today, many of them fans, who test and use the latest build of Windows 10 on a daily basis," wrote Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group. "Their feedback comes fast and furious, they have a relentless bar of what they expect, but it so inspires our team and drives our very focus on a daily basis."
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10 Million Insiders Test And Use Windows 10 Every Day, Says Microsoft

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  • Sure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:23PM (#54128459)

    So then why isn't Windows 10 getting any better?

  • by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:26PM (#54128495)
    My cat has fallen in love with Windows 10. It makes her litter box run far more efficiently than OS/2 Warp did.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      My smart toilet runs Win10. It was OK until an unexpected update in the middle of a dump which caused a reboot and rollback of said dump. Unfortunately I had just finished and was about to close the lid when it ejected the poo tray right in my face.
  • by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:30PM (#54128533)

    Sounds like these people are providing valuable QA and focus testing

    • by swimboy ( 30943 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:34PM (#54128571)

      Because everybody knows there's nothing like a self-selected sample to get accurate insights into your product.

      • by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529.yahoo@com> on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:49PM (#54129315)

        Because everybody knows there's nothing like a self-selected sample to get accurate insights into your product.

        This is what I find hypocritical of Microsoft. The people who are going to sign up to get prerelease versions of Windows are going to be the more tech savvy crowd who are going to articulate what they want, and then get summarily ignored...

        "Provide a means to actually-disable telemetry!"
        "No."
        "Let me control my update cadence!"
        "No."
        "Provide a classic mode for the Start Menu, even if it's not by default!"
        "No."
        "...At least let me leave Classic Shell in after the different major updates?"
        "No."
        "Let me use Chrome without Edge acting like a clingy ex-girlfriend?"
        "No."
        "Stop auto-downloading apps I didn't ask for?"
        "No."
        "Can we use ZFS or at least ReFS in desktop Windows?"
        "No."
        "Could you stop changing my default PDF reader?"
        "No."
        "Could you make the control panel situation a bit more consistent?"
        "No."
        "Could you integrate more cloud storage providers, rather than plastering me with OneDrive ads?"
        "No."
        "Could we have our integrated backup tools back like we used to have in Windows 7?"
        "No."
        "Could my installed drivers be set to be excluded from auto-updates in Windows Update?"
        "No."
        "Then what feedback *do* you want?"
        "The kind your computer provides to us automatically."
        "So, you don't want actual human feedback, then?"
        "No." ...Because that's what I think they seem to want.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "Can you make a VPN connect one-click?"
          "No." ... Because we interviews all 10 million, and most stated they wanted to right-click, left-click, search menu options, click-again, then click to Connect...
          Which is obviously, much, much simpler... Keep up the good work there Micropenis.

        • >The people who are going to sign up to get prerelease versions of Windows are going to be the more tech savvy crowd...

          Really? How do you figure? I'd expect the more tech-savvy crowd to be running Windows 7, if they were stuck with Windows.

        • undoing mis-moderation (Windows 10 tablet....)

        • I'm realizing just how crap 10 is. Homegroups and general sharing are broken. Homegroups (why isn't "Downloads" a share option?) will work okay until you change the windows name of one of your boxes, then it'll never pick up the new name right and keep displaying the old one, which also won't work right. Leave the homegroup (not as simple as they claim) and try to use standard old sharing, nope, no luck there either.
          I had to stand up a new homegroup, after a lot of hurdles such as blowing out idstore.sst.
          I

          • I can actually see a couple good reasons why Downloads isn't a share option. For a lot of less knowledgeable users, that's where the trojans and malware go, and people just don't sort through it which means they might be exposing themselves more than they expect to when they share it. I suspect the decision not to allow that is user oriented, and if you really want to share it, you still can with a manual shared folder.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          >"Then what feedback *do* you want?"
          >"The kind your computer provides to us automatically."

          YES!
              Just like they referenced the automatically provided feedback on our "lack of using the Start Button" as THE reason to drop it.

          "We" were using it, just maybe not the way they wanted. Take it away? Suddenly start button add-ons.

      • Doesn't really take a bunch of snowflakes to poke around and find bugs, and as for metrics you don't have much of a choice lately

    • by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Usually you'd listen to what your QA team has to say, not complete ignore them and allow major bugs to get released.
  • inaccurate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dejitaru ( 4258167 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:33PM (#54128567)
    10 million insiders does not equal actual testers. This is like the whole "number of registered users vs number of active users" that sites play. For example, i'm an insider because I was playing with windows 10 before it came out (10240). Once it reached RTM I refused to continue using insider builds because using windows 10 normally already has enough issues as it is.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Same here. I was an insider during the Windows 8 era, when I hated 8 but had to have it on this laptop for work, and was waiting to go to 10. So I signed up and replaced 8 w/ a 10. Once 10 reached RTM, I just went with what was released.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I was briefly an insider before Windows 10 was released and stopped using it as soon as I took a closer look at the EULA. Unbelievable that the phone-home feature remained in after the initial pre-release testing!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      10 million is the accurate count of active users. You think you can so much as take a pee without Windows 10 knowing about it and reporting to Microsoft?

    • I commonly use 4 different Windows machines, 2 Windows 10 tablets, a Windows 10 desktop, and a Windows 10 laptop. The desktop and one of the tablets are on fast-ring builds, while the other two are running release builds.

      News at 11: Which builds are more stable? The answer might surprise you!

      My guess, they test new user-beneficial features in the fast-ring builds, without the bullshit, so they can get good feedback on just the features people care about; then, they introduce the Microsoft-beneficial fea
    • Yeah.. This.. I signed up as an "insider" waaay back when it was still in beta.. I tried a couple of builds on a spare machine and played with it a while, tried both installing "castrated" and default on different machines, watched its traffic to/from MS/other sites and compared the traffic seen from the castrated install vs the default install... Virtually no difference.. Which told me all I needed to know about Windows 10 ... or as I call it "Windows NSA Edition".. Bottom line is MS is likely showing me a

    • Funny how many of us seem to have done this.
      I switched exclusively to Linux (then dabbled in Mac) almost the day it went Gold, I got tired of their games with Insider Builds and not listening.

      Granted, I just needed a push to leave, but Windows will probably never be my primary OS again after all of this. I was frustrated before, but after working with Win10 for customers, no thanks. Windows ME and Vista had fewer issues than I've seen with Win10, and that's before you even take Telemetry into account.
  • by Casandro ( 751346 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:35PM (#54128577)

    ... like the inability to remove Cortana, or the many bugs involving parts of the OS replicating OS features like the UI toolkit. Or the bug that the bitmaps of TrueType fonts are ignored so you'll always have those blurry characters. Or the longstanding Windows-Bug that the binary files of programs cannot be deleted when the program is running.... etc...

    The feedback probably mostly goes to /dev/null, because many of the bugs either stem from decade old design decisions, or come straight from the marketing department. (which is apparently the most powerful department at Microsoft. Probably much more important than the sales department.)

    • Or the longstanding Windows-Bug that the binary files of programs cannot be deleted when the program is running

      Um, I'm just an observer here, but this seems like a "yeah, no shit" type of "bug".

  • by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:41PM (#54128655)
    They were all originally forced into a Windows 10 upgrade and now are showing empathy for their captors.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    There's a reason companies that care about quality hire real QA instead of just spewing out garbage and hoping for the best.

  • Really? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Paolo Agati ( 4826179 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:49PM (#54128725)
    wow... 10 million blind people... or do they just try to login without doing anything? with so much tester the system should run without a glitch.... but I keep experiencing daily crashes, many times a day... I'm really thinking to switch definitely to Linux... even in an all Microsoft environment
    • by Tvingo ( 229109 )

      If you're having that many issues it's almost certainly a hardware or driver problem. There is no reason you'd be experiencing that many software crashes everyday when most people experience none, unless you're just really really unlucky.

      • It's always weird when I see people talking about $SOFTWARE like it must be terrible for everyone because they're one of those weird cases that has crashes and errors all the time, but nobody else seems to have the same kind of issue. Windows 10, for me at least, with maybe a handful of exceptions has worked far better than any previous iteration of the platform across two cheap tablets, two Surface Pros, a laptop and my desktop PC. It works just as well for most other machines I've seen too, so I have no i

  • ...aka people who SIGNED up for it when it was offered for free as a Beta download (like me), and who never got around to installing it or using it.

    Later, I actually bought an OEM Windows 10 on an USB install memory key (official, from Microsoft), just so I could use my HTC VIVE (I'm a Linux guy in general). But microsoft kept mailing me on the "insider program", and I had so much trouble with it, I had to try to "opt out" again so I could stop having beta features on my new "officially purchased" license,

    • Your key isn't what puts you in Windows Insider, it's your Microsoft account. If you don't want to be in Insider, opt out on the settings screen and unsubscribe from the emails. Ta-da.

  • How many know? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dins ( 2538550 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:52PM (#54128747)
    And of the 10 million, how many of them know they are "Windows Insiders"?
    • by dave562 ( 969951 )

      Given that they have to consciously opt into "insider" builds, I would say 99% of them.

    • And of the 10 million, how many of them know they are "Windows Insiders"?

      I will bet all of them given the constant nagging to upgrade their OS. I have a more important question. How many people *think* they are Windows Insiders providing valuable feedback on the product.

      If 10 million people were actually listened to then I doubt the product would be such a steaming turd on the surface.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    It's a piece of crap.

    Windows 7 FOREVER.

  • 10mil people will only use windows 10 the free way
  • Did Microsoft sign up all the voluntary insiders in the same manner everyone " volunteered " to upgrade to Windows 10 ?

    Or does MS simply figure everyone is an insider by default since so much telemetry is sent back ( unless steps are taken to prevent it ) ?

  • All the flaws of Windows 10 aside, describing the feedback from your testers as "furious" does not make me want to use your product.

  • I'm a "Windows Insider". My wife's little company has a couple of Windows computers, and I wanted to know what Win10 was going to look like, and how the upgrade process was going to go. The Insider program gave me earlier access, so I put Win10 on my gaming computer to look at. That's it. Claiming me as an "Insider" is pretty meaningless.

    I don't game every day. But with the telemetry turned off (um...how much do I trust them...is it really off?) how would they know?

  • Microsoft's corporate strategy seemingly is want everything you don't have by destroying everything you do.

    Years ago was just a few loud Linux zealots you'd find at any neighborhood IT shop. Now I talk to people almost weekly willing to put up with lost functionality and usability issues to get away from Microsoft.

    Numerous times in recent months I've sent long emails detailing what would have to be done fully expecting customers to say "F" that and fold only to be surprised by willingness to proceed.

    Custom

  • Windows 10 insider program did it for me. I'm kind of glad now.

  • Amazing ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 ) <<angelo.schneider> <at> <oomentor.de>> on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @06:48PM (#54131475) Journal

    10M massochists volunteering to play with that?

    I have to use it at work since 6 weeks ... you can not even properly grab the edge of the window with a mouse to resize it.

    Dragging a window from one screen to the other or releasing it to close to the edge ... then it will go full screen automatically ... the search function in the explorer is not working properly ... since windows 7 I think. And people "volunteeringly" use this pile of crap?

    I close my Dell Laptop, unplug it from the docking station.

    Next morning I plug it in again.

    All windows are now on the screen of the laptop and not where they have been before: a nice set of chat and mail tools on the laptop screen and all the programming tools on the "external/main" screen.

    Helllllllllo? That worked 1987 on a Mac just fine!!

    And it is impossible to have a window overlap screens, the sizes get distorted ... and trust me, the resolution of the laptop is just fine, bullshit like this never happened on a Mac.

    So the 10M people have no clue how a computer should work but are masochist enough to beta test ...

    • you can not even properly grab the edge of the window with a mouse to resize it.

      Dragging a window from one screen to the other or releasing it to close to the edge ...

      Yes you can.

      then it will go full screen automatically ...

      Windows 10 has different zones you can drag windows to in order to "snap" them into full screens, halves of a screen, or quarters of a screen. You can see an outline of where your window will land when you drag the menu bar around. If you don't want to snap it when you resize, just resize from the bottom or size it then move it in. Or, disable windows snapping. This is you not knowing how to use your tools.

      the search function in the explorer is not working properly ... since windows 7 I think.

      Searching in Explorer works, if you let it index your machine. I agree that it could use b


      • Dragging a window from one screen to the other or releasing it to close to the edge ...

        Yes you can.
        No you can't. It only "works" if you hit the edge of the window with the tip of the cursor.
        A cursor looks like this: <-> and you should be able to drag any edge of the window when the _ is over the edge. And not only when either (depending which side you drag) < or > is directly on a 1 pixel thin window border + 2 pixels or something.

        A Mac in 1987 wasn't a laptop with multiple displays
        Why you refer

    • Use FileSearchEX for search in Win7/8/10. Much faster, and works/looks just like the classic search in = XP.
  • This is exactly what I did...

    Doesn't work, tried over 5 months on the settings screen, debated it in the bugs forums etc...

  • I'm an "Apple Developer." How many apps have I made? Zero. Nice try Micro$oft.

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