Why can't we all be Matrox beta testers?

[SomeGuySomewhere]

Surely the more people beta testing new drivers the better?

Samir.

[cjolley]

What makes you think we're not?

chuck


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ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@44kh, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, USB mouse,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[Himself]

You know what, I find that getting the same bug report a few times reminds me to actually fix it, and the more reports I get on one thing vs another tends to give me prority on what to address. Of course I don't have the volume Matrox has to deal with, and if I did I'd have to set up a news server or mailing list to deal with it, moderated like a fascist of course.

Now, obviously, 999 reports saying "It don't work, you suck!" isn't what's wanted here, but the solution to avoiding that is to use a group forum, like one of these web things or more ideally a news server or mailing list, (more efficient at high traffic) that way you reduce the redundant reports. I would hope that Matrox has a least a mailing list or something for it's beta program, if it's centric to Matrox then it's inefficient.
It's the nature of human beings to overlook details, but when you have more minds looking at something there are more opportunites for things to be caught.

I would assume that most companies have a rigorous internal beta testing group, or should, what I am referring to is a more casual discussion and reporting of bugs in a forum designed specifically for that with no deviation in topic allowed.

Imagine baseball with just an infield.

Just my $30

[Jorden]

Isn't there the other problem as well??
Matrox has to have exactly the same setup as the beta-boys do, in PC, what they change in their BIOS, when they change hdd's, etc. etc. etc. ... I think having a select group of BB's works better than over a thousand of them...

Then Matrox must have over a thousand different PC's and change exactly what we change everytime to fix the bugs.

I'm not a BB and my system is running stable.
Hope your's is as well... I gather that reformatting your hdd and reinstalling Win9x/2k must be a must for you if you want to test Beta-drivers Every time one of them new buggers crashes it'll take some Windows with it...

Jorden.

[Kruzin]

We are on a mailing list with Matrox, so that anything one of us mails, we all get it. This lets the rest of us try to reproduce the problems and also give our feedback to Matrox. It works quite well. We often find that a problem may be particular to a piece of hardware one of us is running, if the others can't reproduce it. This helps Matrox narrow problems down sometimes.

Our particular group (there is more than one beta group, for different products) has about 15-20 people on it (both testers, and Matrox personel). That list produces as few as 20 mails per day, and as many as 120+, when new drivers or apps are given to us. Imagine how insane that would be with hundreds of people on that mailing list...

[cjolley]

What i meant was that all of us who ask non-ranting questions or search for answers to peoples questions on this board are beta testers for Matrox in a way.
Remember-> No software is ever finished, it is just finaly abandoned!
Matrox has a history of tweeking drivers for years after a card is out of production.
Clearly, Matrox watches these forums closely. So when a question is asked or answered well, even by a non beta-boy, beta testing is being done for the next driver set, or the one after.
BUT, Matrox could not possibly officialy organize everybody in this forum, their entire staff would have to be rassigned to just answering and colating beta-tester traffic.
EOR
chuck


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ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@44kh, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, USB mouse,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[Himself]

Hi Jorden,

Isn't there the other problem as well??
Matrox has to have exactly the same setup as the beta-boys do, in PC, what they change in their BIOS, when they change hdd's, etc. etc. etc. ... I think having a select group of BB's works better than over a thousand of them...


I don't think a dozen or so is enough myself, not for a video card distributed world wide, I have more beta testers at times than that. The more configurations that get tested the better, if you only test a select few then bugs are going to persist for lack of a trial. I know I've had reports from folks amounting to a hell of a lot more than 20 configs, and they have all helped in some fashion or another.

Then Matrox must have over a thousand different PC's and change exactly what we change everytime to fix the bugs.

What I am talking about is just people reporting something wrong, other members trying to help fix it, and if it is unresolved then it is flagged as something for Matrox to look at. The current beta program can then tackle it in detail to track it down. (Suckers! ) It is what happens here really, just a lot more informal, unorganized, and redundant.

I'm not a BB and my system is running stable. Hope your's is as well...

Stable, smable, I want more speed! Stable should be a given.

I gather that reformatting your hdd and reinstalling Win9x/2k must be a must for you if you want to test Beta-drivers Every time one of them new buggers crashes it'll take some Windows with it...


ZPart is great (slow, but works and it's free), I have to switch configs all the time to test my own code.

Having said that I wouldn't want to be in the beta program, that's just grunt work and I'd want to get paid for it.

Right now, if someone has a problem they go here to either games or hardware and it gets lost in a million other threads about what people did last summer or something and become lost. I am suggesting that a one stop bug shop would be better. Instead of a dozen different threads in hardware about DVD problems every 100th thread or so they would be grouped together so there would probably be only one or two threads about DVD problems. You just have to keep the inane chit chat to a minimum and that means a moderator with big boots and long legs.
And no, I am not volunteering.

[SomeGuySomewhere]

Couldn't Matrox do something like what GlobalSCAPE does with it's CuteFTP beta testers? They've set up a forum/discussion board so that beta testers can post problems for all the other beta testers and developers to see.

Take a look if you're interested:

GlobalSCAPE CuteFTP BETA Discussion Board

[Joel]

We are doing the best we can. We don't get paid for this. We do it in our own spare time. And we do it for y'all. If this it's good enough then I'm sorry.

Also if you do have a problem that you would like for us to check out, then address a thread to us giving us as much details as possible of the problem, and if we can we will check it out for you. Just remember that we don't get paid for this so we have to buy or achieve our software the same as anyone else.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 18 November 1999).]

[JAZZ]

Imagine the following :
1000 beta testers and 998 or them giving out the same info on the new drivers, passsing the same suggestions, keeping track of what type of system they tried this in, etc. Ya right! I'm sure being a Beta Tester (or whatever you might want to call it)is a Cool thing, but just imagine how unproductive that would be...

[Gurm]

I'm _not_ a Matrox Beta tester, but I have beta tested other products... and it's no fun. I mean, it _CAN_ be fun, especially if you like getting stuff in advance, but it involves a lot of WORK. Not just complaining when you find bugs, but qualitative measurements, etc. etc.

And most beta programs... if you don't produce results, you get booted from the program.

- Ash

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[Hunsow]

Looks like it's time again for this old joke:

We are all beta testers, just not official.

[Alfie]

C'mon give the beta boiz a break,after all there Master betas.

[Himself]

We are doing the best we can. We don't get paid for this. We do it in our own spare time. And we do it for y'all. If this it's good enough then I'm sorry.

???

Also if you do have a problem that you would like for us to check out, then address a thread to us giving us as much details as possible of the problem, and if we can we will check it out for you. Just remember that we don't get paid for this so we have to buy or achieve our software the same as anyone else.

That's exactly where there should be just one place to go to talk about bugs and report new onces, you shouldn't have to be told where to find them.

[SomeGuySomewhere]

I'm a beta tester for CuteFTP and SiSoft Sandra - I think beta testing's great.

Samir.