Q: At the age of 78, I went through the historical process you described in your post today, February 19 (Geek’s Note: IGTM Issue No 760, February 19, 2022). I have a suggestion and an additional question.
I believe it is wiser for users to wait than to immediately accept an OS upgrade offer. Let the good old Microsoft fix its inevitable early errors. That raises the question. How long does the free upgrade to Windows 11 offer?
Personally, I don’t plan to upgrade until the last few months offer. I just see an advantage for accepting the upgrade very early. That would be a hobby, for the adventure involved in bugs. If users have that desire, they may want to sign up as a beta tester. That can be very interesting as in the Chinese curse, “May you live in pleasant times.”
– Roger H., Crestview
ONE: Well, Roger, with all due respect to your 78 years of experience, I must say that my opinion is slightly different from yours. But only a little. Not because your statement is without merit, because it is purely with merit. However, what you’re saying seems to suggest that releasing a version of Windows goes from the desk of an anonymous software architect at Microsoft to its distribution division, where anyone stupid enough to snap one of the early versions- available copies.
This process is more involved. First of all, Windows is not a monolithic entity. Rather, it is a collection of thousands of components, and Microsoft has specialized teams dedicated to developing each component.
The results of their efforts are individually tested to ensure that they perform the intended function, then they are integrated with other components and tested again. Finally, the entire Windows platform appeared.
This is, of course, an oversimplification, but the important thing to know in the context of your comment is that all of this happens before the software ships. The general public is not subject to faulty, untested software.
However, it was at this point that the “hobbyist” component you mentioned came into play.
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There is a Microsoft operation where people sign up to become “Windows Insiders” and only these people have access to the so-called “beta” versions of the software. It is the people involved with this program that have to deal with what you are warning about above, at the risk of having to do a lot of reinstallation because the error is detected and handled.
Microsoft also uses telemetry – which literally means “measure at a distance” – to receive automated reports of faults in the field. With hundreds of thousands of people running beta versions, you can expect the software to get pretty good practice before it reaches actual release status.
This large-scale testing is a necessary part of Windows readiness, if for no other reason than the diversity of testers. There’s no way Microsoft could hope to gather even a relatively small fraction of the possible combinations of hardware and other system elements that Windows would encounter in the wild. .
One thing I’d like to mention about the Windows components is that many of them aren’t even written by Microsoft. Drivers that interface hardware devices with the system are usually written by the device manufacturer. The back-end services are written by many different vendors for a variety of purposes.
Microsoft is not responsible for testing anything it has not authored, without certifying it as “compliance” with the guidelines Microsoft has set for any type of component.
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Back to the topic at hand, Windows 11 is no longer in beta, so it has gone through everything mentioned above. In fact, it was released to the general public on October 4, 2021. Like any major complex software, it is not perfect and will have updates and patches from time to time. However, as of the time of this writing, it is considered fully tested and ready for the critical time, and not just by “early adopters.”
As for how long the offer to upgrade to Windows 11 for free will last, that’s anyone’s guess. For example, one need look no further than the Windows 10 upgrade offer. It was widely advertised as a limited-time offer and the actual hard dates were in place when the offer was launched. is the end.
Those days come and go, and the free upgrade continues to be available. Years later, it’s still available, and only Microsoft knows exactly why. This geek argues that the so-called expiration date is nothing more than a false flag that, shall we say, “encourages” people to do the update.
It’s easy to believe that a large percentage of users would sit idly by if they knew the upgrade would be permanently available. Given the lessons of that process, Microsoft may choose to repeat their actions or may not.
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