I like the idea of a testing tuesday, but not sure how many companies set this up and what it actually entails?
Test your product on a crappy laptop
201–210 of 321 posts
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#202Should be pointed out you can simulate slower internet speeds in your chrome dev tools. The others- display/ram/cpu may be easier on a craptop, but a VM could also simulate resource constraints.
mind you that VM constraints are not to same as physical CPU contention and in some cases, this could be a bad test. (although unlikely for web developers).
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#203However, there maybe another darkside of the story. Almost a decades back I talked a game dev, asking him why the game that they released demands such high hardware requirements. The two reasons that he offered was: 1) It costs money to produce & maintain content such as Level of Detail assets to enable support for low end devices, and 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the ga…
> 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the game.
I wonder if they had any kind of proof of this. I would think that there are plenty of kids who could get their parents to pay five bucks for the game, but not 500 bucks to buy a fancy new computer.
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#204Most people in large cities in US and European countries are not aware that many people don't connect to the internet regularly nor do they use fast laptops. Always make software that works without internet or fast process. That way if it works on crapy laptop and slow connection or no connection, to me those are only software I'll use or buy.
an old colleague of mine work on a project bringing internet to rural communities in east Africa.
his reasoning about network usability were always useful, especially considering jitter and latency.
also, it is surprising how usuable some internet connectivity is compared to none at all. having a shitty ADSL based setup is far better then no internet at all.
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#205However, there maybe another darkside of the story. Almost a decades back I talked a game dev, asking him why the game that they released demands such high hardware requirements. The two reasons that he offered was: 1) It costs money to produce & maintain content such as Level of Detail assets to enable support for low end devices, and 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the ga…
Kids who can't afford fancy computers grow up into rich adults who have no nostalgia towards your game franchise
Like exposure, nostalgia doesn't pay the bills.
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#206Microsoft was famous for testing the Mac version of Office on base model 60MHz PowerPC machines
They did the same for Windows 95: developers were given 386s with 4 MB of RAM to test on, because that was the minimum requirement for Windows 95. And in the end, it ran -- just about -- on those specs.
the same with Dave cutler, the lead on windows NT, making sure everyone dogfooded NT as soon as possible.
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#207Crappy phones, too! At one of my previous jobs there was a "device lab" where they had all sorts of phones and laptops for anyone in the company to come in and use and test things on. They had various generations of iPhones and iPads, high end and low end Android phones, some Windows laptops and an old MacBook. The room was open to all and freely accessible by anyone. I saw UX, dev, QA, product managers, and even the occasional person from sales testing stuff the site in there.
Every time I went in there and used an old, slow phone it reminded me to consider the person using that device for real. It's so easy to forget when you're working on your giant monitor with a super fast computer and a high end phone in your pocket.
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#208If you don't have a crappy laptop in handy, you can test slow connection with Network Link Conditioner (if you have a Mac) and small screens with any browser's responsive design mode too.
Re: Test your product on a crappy laptop
#209> Wealthy individuals can, and do, use lower-power technology.
Surprisingly true. I've seen quite a few fairly wealthy people use some janky Android phones. Their reasons to use them can be best summarized as personal preferences, but the fact remains.