back to dogfooding

probably the coolest part of working for microsoft is the opportunity to dogfood so many amazing technologies before they are released.  from windows and office to xbox and windows live there have been so many opportunities to take a look ahead i have lost count.

there are times while i have been with microsoft that have involved more testing and betas than others.  i joined while windows vista was in early stages of test along with office 2007.  it seemed i never had a production system.  after vista and office 2007 were released there was a period of running a released operating system, but even then there was testing 32 bit and 64 bit, the different versions of the os, and by then there was service pack testing or something else changing.  all the same milestones with both windows 7 and office 2010 were eased with enhancements such as boot from vhd and the click-to-run/app-v options for office.  we were running bing before bing.  even though i'm not part of the mac group we were given access to office 2011 early.  live mesh and office online and web apps.  xbox console updates early on and kinect before the release.  there was hyper-v and surface and multi touch on hardware.

now i'm looking at the most significant set of tests ever at the company and looking forward to virtualized delivery of some and running some on physical hardware.  whether it's on my phone, a pc, my xbox or a mac, there is a lot of stuff coming from microsoft and the possibilities are endless.  some of the testing has already begun and some will be starting soon.  the summer will be full of preparation and the fall will be very busy with testing.