Today is a milestone. We are freezing the beta for HDXPRT 2012. It’s taken a lot of work–developing something with this many moving parts is a bit like herding cockroaches. However, the workloads are set and the benchmark seems stable.
So, what happens next?
First, the beta goes to a team who will spend a few days intensively testing it. The test team is isolated from the development team because, let’s face it, developers can’t test their own code. (I should know. I’ve developed a lot of products in my time.)
We’ll run it on a variety of systems, checking it for stability and repeatability. We will also look at the results and make sure that they are sensible. That is, they reflect that capabilities of the systems we are running the benchmark on.
The beta is approximately 10 GB. It includes installers for nine applications and a number of large content files. Because of its size, the beta will only be available on DVD. Once the tests look good, we’ll start reproducing and verifying the DVDs. Once the DVDs are verified, we’ll mail them out. The whole process should take about a week, so community members should have their beta DVDs within a couple of weeks.
While the testing is happening, we’ll be contacting each community member to confirm that we have their correct physical mail address.
Once you have the DVDs, please run the benchmark and send feedback. We need your help to make this beta into a truly great release candidate. We will work hard to address any feedback we get. If you find a problem, let us know. If you have a complaint, let us know. It you have a compliment, by all means, let us know!
Next week, Bill will be back from his travels.
Eric
