Before I continue my rant, I want to make sure you understand what the word “Beta” means.
“Beta” is “β″ the second letter of the Greek alphabet, after Alpha (α).
When used to refer to software, “Beta” is short for “Beta-test” – a period where the software is technically “feature complete” – meaning no new features will be added – and possibly stable enough for most common usages to actually work. Alpha which happens earlier, and is often not feature complete and even more unstable.
What I fail to understand is why users of “Beta” software feel it’s safe to use in a production environment. 99.9% of all Beta software comes with a standard warning: Do not apply beta test software to production. Beta testing software is for testing purposes only.
It would appear to me from reading those two little sentences that its probably not a good idea to use this software in a critical or even a non-critical environment. But still people do.
But that’s not really what gets me. It’s that fact that they go to the manufactures website and get belligerent because feature “A” isn’t working, or feature “B” threw an error. Worse yet, is the person upgraded said software from an older version, keeping in mind the issued warnings, and didn’t bother to back-up the program before doing so. This likely has caused a loss of all application data.
And still, they feel they have to right to complain! At some point you have to ask yourself “Does the gene-pool need some chlorine?” (one of Dad’s favorite expressions.)
The bottom line is that you don’t want to rely on Beta software – it will have issues. Beta software support in resolving those issue will be very limited. Even if you need the new software’s latest feature-set, you’re likely looking for trouble if you’re going to rely on a Beta version of almost any software (Google?.) Stick to the latest stable release, even then, proceed with caution. Oh, and Back-Up!
