diablo75
December 27th, 2009, 03:26 PM
If you've ever played video games on Windows (or Ubuntu via WINE) through Steam, you've probably gotten a "Would you like to participate in a brief annonymous survey to help improve Steam?"
I've always liked doing these surveys because they take less than 30 seconds and the stats that are published online after all the digits are aggrigated are pretty neat to look at.
I was thinking it would be benificial to the community if a small app were developed to gather general information about hardware usage to help generate similar statistical output for the community to look at but with an opportunity for the person taking the survey to include additional comments about specific hardware they're using if they wish. All this information would be stored in an online database. The comments could then be compiled and accessible to others through the same app to see what others have said about the same hardware they are also using. So for example, if I took a survey and left a comment specifically about the fingerprint scanner on my laptop, "I took these steps to get the fingerprint scanner working properly," someone else who has that exact same scanner in their laptop could see what I typed about that piece of hardware and even get their hardware running without having to consult the forums or google. All they would have to do is run a little utility that would scan their system and give them instant access to a live database that is populated with device specific stats and community comments.
Another potential use for this could be for people who aren't even running Ubuntu yet to download an easy to use "Hardware Compatabilty Check" utility that will scan their hardware and tell them whether or not they should anticipate specific issues. Something like this existed back before Windows XP came out which would let people know if their computer was ready for an upgrade or if there were still issues out there. The same kind of benifit could be used to help prempt the kind of, "I upgraded and now this and that doesn't work anymore" problems that seem to happen all the time.
Does something like this already exist? If it doesn't, I'd gladly submit it to Brainstorm as an idea. If it does exist, I think it really should be made a default app in the distro so people are asked after a week or two of usage if they'd like to become involved with this sort of thing.
I've always liked doing these surveys because they take less than 30 seconds and the stats that are published online after all the digits are aggrigated are pretty neat to look at.
I was thinking it would be benificial to the community if a small app were developed to gather general information about hardware usage to help generate similar statistical output for the community to look at but with an opportunity for the person taking the survey to include additional comments about specific hardware they're using if they wish. All this information would be stored in an online database. The comments could then be compiled and accessible to others through the same app to see what others have said about the same hardware they are also using. So for example, if I took a survey and left a comment specifically about the fingerprint scanner on my laptop, "I took these steps to get the fingerprint scanner working properly," someone else who has that exact same scanner in their laptop could see what I typed about that piece of hardware and even get their hardware running without having to consult the forums or google. All they would have to do is run a little utility that would scan their system and give them instant access to a live database that is populated with device specific stats and community comments.
Another potential use for this could be for people who aren't even running Ubuntu yet to download an easy to use "Hardware Compatabilty Check" utility that will scan their hardware and tell them whether or not they should anticipate specific issues. Something like this existed back before Windows XP came out which would let people know if their computer was ready for an upgrade or if there were still issues out there. The same kind of benifit could be used to help prempt the kind of, "I upgraded and now this and that doesn't work anymore" problems that seem to happen all the time.
Does something like this already exist? If it doesn't, I'd gladly submit it to Brainstorm as an idea. If it does exist, I think it really should be made a default app in the distro so people are asked after a week or two of usage if they'd like to become involved with this sort of thing.