Beta Software

Now that I have a week off of work, I am spending more time organizing things and generally improving my computer. One of these steps includes what is called beta software, something that many people do not use but some of you should consider trying.

Beta software is incomplete test versions of upcoming releases. It is developed and released by the software engineers who manufacture the primary product, but it is used as a test release. Software developers enlist hundreds or thousands of testers across the globe (the joys of the internet, thanks Al Gore) to trial the Beta builds on their computers in a variety of environments. The great thing about this? You get to see all of the new, cool features and options that are being developed by the software team. The negatives: it might not work 100% correctly 100% of the time.

I have been a Beta user of a few pieces of software for quite some time. Firefox, for starters. The Mozilla team just released Firefox 2.0, a vast improvement over 1.5 in my opinion, but I personally have been using 2.0 for months, testing it out, trying to break it and let the software team know what works and does not. Gaim, another one of my babies (if I have ever worked on your computer, I am sure I have installed Firefox and Gaim). Gaim 1.5 released in August 2005, which means it is old by software standards. I have been using the yet-to-be-publicly-released 2.0 since January, again, testing it and breaking it.

Beta testing is important for the software world, if not for the users themselves. It gives developers a chance to have more than just software geeks playing with their software, using it in the typical end-user environment, and giving their thoughts on what they think would make the software better. And while companies like Microsoft do allow you to use Beta builds of some of their software (Office 2007, for example), it take approximately 15 minutes just to register with Microsoft before you can download the software.

So needless to say, if you have some old software on your computer, see what type of updates are available. Maybe you are a year behind, and that is why all of the bells and whistles are not in the build you are running (I started using Gaim 0.80 in July 2004; imagine how outdated that would be now?). And maybe, perhaps, you should consider trying a beta piece of software on something you regularly use. Who knows, maybe you'll end up ahead of the curve.