Microsoft's Windows 10 Now Has "Over 2 Million" Public Testers

From DailyTech: When Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) was developing Windows 7 -- the fastest-selling operating system in its long and notable history -- it decided to do something radical: put test builds of the upcoming OS in the hands of consumers. The beta was a tremendous success, and helped Microsoft identify and fix over 2,000 bugs or flaws in the upcoming product. That helped to transform a product that was reportedly a bloated beast in early builds, into a market winner. Ultimately Windows 7 attracted over 8 million consumers to beta test it -- a record-shattering effort.

Windows 10 -- the successor to Windows 8.1 -- is following a similar route and is attracting a large crowd of its own. Microsoft announced this week that 2 million consumers are now testing its latest and greatest Windows 10 build 9926. That's good enough to make it perhaps the second largest public beta test in history.

Interest in the upcoming Microsoft OS, which will be offered as a free upgrade for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 customers, is clearly picking up as well. At the end of October, a month after the launch of the first public Preview build, Microsoft announced that 1 million consumers were testing the pending product. In the two-and-a-half months since, Microsoft tacked on an additional 700,000 testers, and delivered two more Preview builds.

At its Jan. 21 press event, it announced that it had 1.7 million consumers testing Windows 10 currently. During its Jan. 26 earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that "more than 2 million" testers were now onboard.

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