Windows 8 Preview Sends Feedback Automatically, Including Software and Hardware Info

Early adopters get to play with the Developer Preview of Windows 8 for free and Microsoft gets feedback in return. 

This quid pro quo arrangement must already be familiar to all testers of the company’s software products, since it traditionally governs all pre-releases of future technologies from the Redmond giant. 

Of course, Microsoft makes no secret about harvesting user data from early adopters testing Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3). 

All that users need to do is read the license terms that accompany the first public release of Windows 8 and they’ll get all the information they require. 

“Because this software is a pre-release version, we have turned on some Internet-based features by default to obtain feedback about them,” Microsoft reveals. “In some cases, you will not receive a separate notice when they connect. In some cases, you may switch off these features or not use them.”

“By using these features, you consent to the transmission of this information. Microsoft does not use the information to identify or contact you.”

There are a range of features that phone home to the Redmond company in order to automatically share information from the tester’s Windows 8 computers. 

Still, customers already familiar with the way that Windows works and the communications between the operating system and Microsoft’s servers already know that components such as Windows Update, Windows Time Service, Search Provider Update and others send data to the software giant. There’s really nothing new in this regard. 

But since I was talking about automatic feedback being sent over to Microsoft from Windows 8 machines, here’s some info on what the Feedback Features do. 

“The Customer Experience Improvement Program automatically sends to Microsoft anonymous information about your hardware and how you use this software. Windows Error Reporting automatically sends reports to Microsoft that describe which software components had errors. These reports may include memory dumps,” the software giant says in the EULA. 

“From time-to-time, we will also download a small file to your computer that permits us to collect information about specific errors you have while using the software. The data collected by these features helps us improve our software.”

Just as I said at the start of this article, Microsoft lets early adopters test Windows 8 for free, and influence the development process of the platform for the better, in exchange for feedback. Users that don’t want to participate in this feedback program should not run Windows 8 Developer Preview. 

Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.

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