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Thread: Spybot S&D updating

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Donald Thomson View Post
    < SNIP >

    I've always regarded Beta releases as normal use releases that will have bugs that brave or foolish users should report. A change of terminology? Anyway I'm going back to 1.6.2.
    The Beta terminology has been distorted by much larger organizations wishing to drive interest in their newest releases. Since they have much larger resources, they typically perform both thier Alpha and Beta phases in the background with increasingly larger test groups of 'trusted' users they've developed over time. By the time these products reach the final Public Release phase virtually all the true 'bug's have been discovered and removed, with the final Beta really closer to the Release Candidate phase with only polish and rare minimal bugs that affect small pockets of users. Since the larger organizations recognized the public interest driven by 'new' releases, they've also learned to take advantage of this buzz and so purposefully release these products as 'beta', driving huge amounts of public interest and installations.

    Spybot S&D Betas have always been much more real, with significant bugs and even many product interface questions needing user input. This simply reflects the smaller organization that they are and thus the closer relationship between the developer and you the user. This also implies that the potential for danger to your system, which all products claim you need to assume during a Beta, might be higher.

    With a malware removal type of security product, the potential for system damage is always high, so the danger is even more real. Thus you should always use only the release versions of the product unless instructed otherwise by that organizations own support. In other words, "Beta does not mean better".

    Bitman

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by bitman View Post
    With a malware removal type of security product, the potential for system damage is always high, so the danger is even more real. Thus you should always use only the release versions of the product unless instructed otherwise by that organizations own support. In other words, "Beta does not mean better".
    But we have been asked to use the beta version - see http://forums.spybot.info/showthread...ferrerid=48204 which says:

    Quote Originally Posted by daemon View Post
    Please help with beta-testing so Spybot-S&D 2.0 final will be rock stable.
    For someone on the Spybot Advisor Team bitman, you seem to be way off message.

  3. #13
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    drghughes,

    Note the last post by Donald Thomson just prior to mine, you'll discover that he was told by Spybot Support to return to Spybot 1.6.2 based on his Bug Report. I was simply trying to explain to him why they instructed him this way and why you don't use a beta on a system that already has issues, malware or otherwise.

    You misunderstand the request by daemon, since they simply want those willing to risk their systems to test the new beta not everyone who uses it, since most users aren't technical enough or can't take this risk with their only operational system.

    I've seen too many neophites destroy their PC with a beta and then go off bad-mouthing the product (not just Spybot by the way) because they didn't understand the risks. Blindly using a beta program just because someone asks isn't a good policy for anyone, especially those not technically inclined.

    Bitman

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by bitman View Post
    Note the last post by Donald Thomson just prior to mine, you'll discover that he was told by Spybot Support to return to Spybot 1.6.2 based on his Bug Report. I was simply trying to explain to him why they instructed him this way and why you don't use a beta on a system that already has issues, malware or otherwise.
    Unless there's something that hasn't been reported here, that advice just doesn't make sense. A user reports a bug in a beta programme and is told to uninstall the beta and use the stable version. Why would you do that?

    Maybe my view is coloured by the fact that I've been reporting the problems with updating since v2.0.3-beta1, i.e. 3 bug reports, and the response that I've got from Spybot seems to be along the lines of "what bug?"

    I'm fast getting the impression that Spybot doesn't believe that this bug exists and isn't ever going to do anything to fix it. Your comments appear to be consistent with this. I'm starting to wonder what I'm doing here.

    I wonder whether I'll be told to uninstall the beta if I still have problems with v2.0.6-beta4?

  5. #15
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    drghughes,

    First, the OP who began this thread is clearly having basic stability issues with his system, whether these are due to malware or simply some other operating system issues, so this is why he was instructed to return to the current release version of Spybot S&D. Trying to trouble-shoot the existing malware and operating system issues is quite enough by itself, this doesn't need to be confused with known or unidentified bugs in a beta version.

    Second, I have absolutely nothing to do with development or fixing bugs, so my comments have nothing to do with that and never stated anything of the sort, so if you're looking for something to use as an excuse to stop helping with the beta that's your own decision, not one that I or anyone else here is involved in.

    As for the bug(s) you have been reporting, if the Spybot devlopment and testing team are unable to reproduce the bug or consider it a known limitation of the product, this is exactly the response I would expect. The difficulty I'm having getting you to understand the reasons for our responses to the OP in this thread indicate to me that you have difficulty communicating via writing, so I'm guessing you may be missing something within the response to your bug report that explains their reasoning. In any case, this thread is not the appropriate place for this discussion of your own issues since it only confuses the separate response to Donald Thomson, which is a clear issue of mis-application of the beta.

    If you already have a thread here discussing your issue, then reference that and exit this thread for that discussion. If not and you wish to understand the answer to your bug report better, then begin a separate thread to do that, since mixing responses to different issues appears to be a large part of your confusion.

    Bitman

  6. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by bitman View Post
    drghughes,

    First, the OP who began this thread is clearly having basic stability issues with his system, whether these are due to malware or simply some other operating system issues, so this is why he was instructed to return to the current release version of Spybot S&D. Trying to trouble-shoot the existing malware and operating system issues is quite enough by itself, this doesn't need to be confused with known or unidentified bugs in a beta version.

    Second, I have absolutely nothing to do with development or fixing bugs, so my comments have nothing to do with that and never stated anything of the sort, so if you're looking for something to use as an excuse to stop helping with the beta that's your own decision, not one that I or anyone else here is involved in.

    As for the bug(s) you have been reporting, if the Spybot devlopment and testing team are unable to reproduce the bug or consider it a known limitation of the product, this is exactly the response I would expect. The difficulty I'm having getting you to understand the reasons for our responses to the OP in this thread indicate to me that you have difficulty communicating via writing, so I'm guessing you may be missing something within the response to your bug report that explains their reasoning. In any case, this thread is not the appropriate place for this discussion of your own issues since it only confuses the separate response to Donald Thomson, which is a clear issue of mis-application of the beta.

    If you already have a thread here discussing your issue, then reference that and exit this thread for that discussion. If not and you wish to understand the answer to your bug report better, then begin a separate thread to do that, since mixing responses to different issues appears to be a large part of your confusion.

    Bitman
    It seems as though one of the worst strategies of companies is to *blame the messenger,* with comments that seems to cuff this person off a touch.

    I've certainly found Spybot Beta 2 to be a completely different & confused product, real bloatware.

  7. #17
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    firefox007,

    Just like drghughes you apparently can't read, since this entire thread really has nothing to do with Spybot S&D 2.0 itself, it's about the misuse of the beta version by someone who should never have been using it in the first place.

    And as for being defensive, I have no need, since I have nothing to do with Spybot S&D itself and am simply a forum helper from long ago. I haven't personally installed anything newer than the last 1.x version, since I moved on to Microsoft's MSE on all my newer Windows operating systems and simply see no need for any additional protection for these. I keep in touch here more for history's sake and very rarely respond to posts like those from such confused users as the one who began this thread.

    You on the other hand appear to be spending your time attacking what is clearly an early beta version of a product for being just that! If you've got nothing better to do than that then why not simply move on.

    Bitman

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by firefox007 View Post
    It seems as though one of the worst strategies of companies is to *blame the messenger,* with comments that seems to cuff this person off a touch.
    Thanks for the support firefox007. However, when Bitman told me, the first person to respond to Donald Thomson, to "exit this thread" as though I'd just entered it, I figured that it was best to just ignore this and concentrate on other things.

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