Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2013 9:54 am Post subject: for Beta or worse
for beta or WORSE
enticing as it may seem to get a sneak peek at new technology before its made public, to help feather out problems so your friends and family wont have to, to contribute cause to developers who have given us the 360 dashboard. that is the sales pitch before you sign up to the Microsoft beta program, from then in its a little less exciting, you pledge your machine to receive software, a non-disclosure agreement (good or bad you aren't allowed to ever talk about the software). the information after this point is so sparse its just confusing especially for a first time Microsoft public beta tester. the first time updating brought little change with the addition of a beta tab, a slight difference in appearance to the familiar dash, a few more tiles a slightly different green. obviously the first thing anyone is going to do is click the new tab, nice, this is new, clicky clicky click, oh a link to the forums, nice, tappy tap tap on the keyboard, doesnt work, bummer, back to the dash. what else? current version, cool cool good to know. information, empty.
That is it? ok so whats different? looking, looking, loooooooking, loooooooooking, nothing! ok try the forum again, nope not getting there either, there is a FAQ in the beta tab, not much help though its only 3 questions. searching Google gets me somewhere, it seems that the forums unlock 3 days after you install the new update, 3 days later it finally lets me in to the secret beta forums and already there are pages of questions and bug reports, only it turns out most of the questions are people reporting differences that were there for years, like kinect facial recognition and settings that have always existed. whats strange about this whole forum is that Microsoft barely interacted with it throughout the whole beta process, many questions went unanswered many had other users guessing solutions and a ton of people with really messed up xboxes and ambassadors simply telling them to "stop crying" and that "they signed up for this so it was somehow their fault", it seemed like they were just out to get browny points, and posted links to troubleshooting help by simply resetting your console.
i was told not to expect a changelog as there has never been one in the past, so testers were expected to just figure out what was different, only this time round the entire beta was backend, so everyone was left guessing what was different, until some clever cookie quickly noticed the ms points system had transformed into dollars. with an update nearly every 7 days of over 100MB some users were reporting a very slow update taking nearly 12 hours, and a few alert testers noticed it was uploading 600MB of data as well, but not everyone and not every time so that was a mystery that remained unanswered and unsolved. this may have been why the forums weren't a very chatty place for Microsoft employees because they had received all the crash logs etc they could handle in that 600MB of mystery data.
to say the least once you are in the beta you will find frustration at some point, weather the updates take 12 hours to complete (some still couldn't update for various reasons and threatened to trash their perfectly fine (otherwise) consoles) or its the lack of communication on whats actually needing to be tested, maybe its the sudden cut to live services until you update, no matter if you are watching a movie, or playing a multiplayer game, they will cut you off and not allow you back on live until the update is complete, which may take 12 hours, if it allows you at all. maybe you like to read countless threads from first time beta testers amazed at the latest additions which have actually been there for years, or the murderous ramblings of beta testers on their last rope with a bricked 360s, consoles locking up, dvds no longer reading. if you complain at all theres always an ever helpful ambassador waiting to pounce from the shadows with their xbox nda tos and coc bibles with their posts summing up one thing, "its your fault", i couldn't help but sympathize with a lot of posters not knowing what they had walked into, i had walked into it, also unwittingly.
so this is my warning unless you have a spare console you wont mind losing for the beta duration (or forever in some cases) you don't mind being left in the dark to test for bugs, then this is your type of thing, otherwise beware of the lure, its full of crazy arguments and time consuming wild goose chases. just remember i tried to warn you.
forahobby Administrator
Joined: May 22, 2003 Posts: 23944 Location: NSW, Australia XP: 3,060,024
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 1:45 am Post subject:
yeh sounds like it was a frustrating time. I'm so glad i have really never had the time to check out the dashboard betas and I bet you never will again.. What a crock huh. lol Game betas are bad enough, they just lock you into one level and make you play the death out of it.
Quote:
so this is my warning unless you have a spare console you wont mind losing for the beta duration (or forever in some cases) you don't mind being left in the dark to test for bugs, then this is your type of thing, otherwise beware of the lure, its full of crazy arguments and time consuming wild goose chases. just remember i tried to warn you.
Thanks for the warning for our members, most of them including myself wouldn't even know about half of this shit. Some of our other staff have been involved in dashboard beta's in the past and they had nothing good to say either. _________________________________________________________ HQ Network:
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Websters Dictionary
M$ BETA- A test release of inferior crap
-A release so bad we didnt want to test it on our systems
-A release so bad we were just hoping at least one sucker would have good results we could trumpet to the masses
Synonyms- Ebola, Cancer, Pathetic, Lame, Embarrasing
they had so many people saying their machines locked up or rrod or dvd failsor network errors, it was crazy.
some of them were probably out to get a new xbox but they were told it wasnt their problem as they signed an agreement, which is the main reason i wont sign up again, they will refuse to fix any console outside warranty in the beta, a ton of 2006-2009 consoles were over heating and having problems. its hard to know if they were just scamming but there were a lot, so i dont know.
its quite scary as they just flat out ignored them when they reported problems.
they had so many people saying their machines locked up or rrod or dvd failsor network errors, it was crazy.
some of them were probably out to get a new xbox but they were told it wasnt their problem as they signed an agreement, which is the main reason i wont sign up again, they will refuse to fix any console outside warranty in the beta, a ton of 2006-2009 consoles were over heating and having problems. its hard to know if they were just scamming but there were a lot, so i dont know.
its quite scary as they just flat out ignored them when they reported problems.
Thats just WRONG. You write a piece of software, ask people to test it for free, you damn well better be ready to back the testers up if they hit a snag. Thats your app/code whatever that just killed or messed up Johnnies console so its your responsibility to fix it.
If the program is so pathetic, so badly written you need people to sign their life away to test it, then obviously its not even close to being ready for general consumption.
if you believe some of them, they were calling the service lines and the support said because they are beta machines they cant help, and the one that did get a repair had to pay ( i guess for refubished parts ).
i dont know first hand as i didnt have problems, but in the future im not signing up again.
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