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Fred Langa is a senior consulting editor and columnist for Windows Magazine. Fred's free weekly newsletter is available via subscribe@langa.com. You can contact him at fred@langa.com or via his website at http://www.langa.com.

For-Pay "Betas": Benefit Or Boondoggle?

By Fred Langa

A beta program used to involve the limited distribution of preliminary code to a relatively small group of trusted individuals or organizations. The beta testers would help find real-world bugs and report these back to the software publisher so the bugs could be corrected before the final "gamma" code was frozen and released.

Beta testers were unpaid volunteers. In compensation for suffering through the bugs and assisting the software vendor, the testers would get two benefits: There was the undeniable ego boost of having an early, insider's look at the new software. And there was the practical benefit of having advance, hands-on experience with the product that could help speed the later testing and deployment of the final version.

Sometimes, beta testers did get small freebies: a T-shirt, a coffee mug, or a free copy of the final software when it was released.

But just as it's done in so many other areas, Microsoft has turned that around. Starting at least as early as Windows 95, Microsoft has supplemented its for-real private beta programs with large "public betas" involving tens of thousands of sites.

I believe Microsoft started these large public betas with good intentions. It was a way for Microsoft to conduct very large-scale tests that would be far more representative of real-world conditions that the final product would have to face. Originally, Microsoft ran these huge beta programs as real bug-finding operations. You had to posses some minimal qualifications to be included in the program; you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement; and you had to agree to report bugs.

These huge tests were phenomenally expensive for Microsoft and were a logistical and support nightmare. But they resulted in better products (just imagine how buggy Windows might be without the large betas!), and the investment certainly hasn't hurt Microsoft's bottom line.

But about a year or so ago, Microsoft came up with a variation. They scaled back their true, classic betas, and in parallel offered the beta code to all comers in something called a "preview" program. There's one running right now with Office 2000. You still get beta code with all the warts and bugs endemic to all betas. But now you pay $20 for the privilege. There's no nondisclosure agreement and no requirement to report bugs; in fact, the only qualification you need to join the program is $20 in your pocket.

To be fair, Microsoft probably isn't making money on the beta...er, preview program. The $20 Office 2000 preview gets you a box of six commercial-quality CDs, each in its own sleeve, plus a slender (but commercial-grade) "Getting Started" booklet. Add up the materials costs, printing, CD mastering and duplication, shipping, and so on, and it's probably close to $20.

There are actually two versions of the Office 2000 preview: a consumer and a corporate edition. Both contain the same code and the same applications: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, FrontPage, PhotoDraw, Internet Explorer 5.0, and a 120-day-license version of NT 4 Workstation. The only differences are that the corporate version also contains a time-limited copy of NT 4 Server and some additional evaluation materials, while the consumer version also contains a copy of Microsoft's Personal Web Server 4 and much broader language support.

I personally dislike these for-pay beta programs because they're awkward hybrids. They fall short as true beta programs because there's no requirement that users report back the bugs they find; for-pay betas add nothing substantive to the final product quality.

And they fall short as preview programs because it's not the final code and may not even be the final feature set. You or your company might pay to buy one of these preview versions, but there's no assurance that features you might like -- or detest -- will be there when the product actually ships. Plus, bugs and crashes will almost certainly mar your preview.

I think Microsoft erred in blending their evaluation programs with their beta programs. I think they should be separate: Let the beta program be a true bug-hunt, designed to improve final product quality. And let the for-pay evaluation program be based on time-limited versions of the final shipping code of the apps.

What's your take? Do you or your company use the for-pay preview versions? Do you mind paying for betas? Would you rather see Microsoft split the beta and evaluation programs apart, as outlined above? Join in!

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