Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/3118

Ah the beauty of stability

by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 22, 2004 3:53 PM EST


When a stable product arrives just in time it makes testing so much better. That's the one aspect of what we do at AT that rarely gets conveyed in reviews - the trials and tribulations of evaluating pre-release hardware. Normally all of the issues we encounter with pre-release hardware is corrected by the time the product actually ships, but the price we pay for getting access to things well ahead of its release is generally stability (or a lack of quirkiness).

I remember a couple of years back I had a pre-release motherboard that would only POST if I hit the enter key after turning on the testbed (it powered up, but no initialization until you hit enter). Then there was the time that I was testing a system that would corrupt any zip file it touched. It took me forever to track down why half of the files on my fileserver were now corrupt. Needless to say, these types of issues are incredibly frustrating and to have them all fixed for you by a new BIOS, final release hardware or act of hardware-deity is such a relief. It's this elation that I'm feeling right now, tests running smoothly, no crashes, all is good in the CT lab.

Now about that writing...

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